I was telling my friends/family that I think I could stick out at least three months. (Obviously didn’t happen) but the way that I was spoken to was appalling and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. The day prior to getting fired it was the two year anniversary of my best friend dying so not a great start to post college life lol

 

I was in a very similar situation toward the end of my life at the hedge fund I was at. I think you could have stick it out for x months, but you will be miserably minute-by-minute which I do not wish to see, also at the end you will get the axe. Framing it differently, you are out of your misery sooner, and now you can move on and do what you need to do. Seems to be quite a toxic situation. 

Oh, my condolence regarding your best friend. Stay positive - it's not the easy times that make your character, it's how you handle the adversity that does. 

 
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While stories like this will always be biased, even discounting for this, it sounds like a pretty bad situation. 

I know you mentioned this, but were you actually hiding your anger? Did you have attitude toward others? Anything you can think of that would be construed as a negative attitude or “not a team player”? I’m not trying to blame you, I mostly just think it’s important to really understand the situations to see if there is anything you did. 

Next, how big is the firm? This behavior sounds incredibly unprofessional for an established firm. There are generally protocols to follow when someone isn’t doing well (make sure you let them know, make an improvement plan for them, etc), in my 15+ years I’ve never seen anyone fired that quickly (unless it was for cause) and definitely not a new hire. 

Anyway, new hires should get more time than this. You need a real training plan, support from seniors, and time to screw up a bit and it doesn’t sound like you got any of that. So going forward, anything about the interview that could have tipped you off about this? Did you ask questions to try and understand the team dynamics? So often junior people don’t really ask tough questions because they are so focused on just landing the job, it is a missed opportunity. 

Other than that, I would just focus on getting your resume setup and applying to roles. You will also need to think about how to answer the question about this stint. Is there anyone at the firm that can vouch for you?

 

There wasn't a set up honestly for it to be a team player it was more individualistic. In terms of my attitude, my anger was more so inside than anything. When I analyzed myself over the weekend, maybe a RBF when I was doing work but if someone was to come up to me and ask me to do something I'd have a smile and be friendly. I asked why I was being fired and he didn't say anything about my performance or my attitude. I honestly am just confused as to why I was fired in that manner.It was very small under 10 people.

In terms of my next opportunity, I’ve contacted a professor to talk about the situation and maybe try and find out why it ended like that. I ended up just going home and have applied to a few places already and have an interview this week. I think I fucked up taking this opportunity everyone just seemed so cold even in the interview process, the receptionist was even cold when I first came in for an interview. I’m not even going to have this on my resume and I just want to forget this experience altogether tbh

 

Small shops are very hit or miss, I’m sorry to hear about your experience. The smaller shops don’t have the same checks and balances, usually don’t have formalized training, many times they haven’t onboarded a fresh college grad, and you are taking a big bet on the personality/culture/attitude of the few senior people. If they haven’t hired many (or any?) college grads they could have expectations that were way off (in addition to no real idea on how to train people). Smaller shops can be great, if you truly believe that they’ll invest in you and believe that the partners run a “fair” firm, but as you can see, it can also be a total disaster. I doubt you’ll get great answers from them, I’d see if there is anyone there that is willing to be your reference if needed. 

 

Possible that recent market/macro conditions have changed their circumstances in terms of staffing? To me that just sounds like they knew from day one you were out. Maybe they didn’t have the spine to cut you before you started as it would be a bad look on their small shop. Given recent job market conditions I am surprised even the worst places wouldn’t at least try to hide the toxicity for a month or two.

 

You are right you don’t need to put this on your resume. Also if you were honest, and just said you got fired, its not like you got fired from an internship at an established BB program. Hedge funds / family offices are very fickle and prone to this kind of behavior, though this is def extreme especially for a fresh college grad. The positives are that you are young and when looking back lets say when you are 30, you will realize this stupid 2 week position had no impact on where you ended up. Watch a good movie, have a good night with the boys, and then attack the job hunting progress. 

 

Definitely not the skill set, anything that was asked of me I was able to do either being shown once, or I already knew how. & tbh there wasn’t a culture to begin with. No one had lunch with one another and I did go a few days without even saying anything to anyone. I asked that in the interview and an employee said that there wasn’t one, I was just excited to work. I should have taken that as a red flag but whatever

 

OP sorry to hear you went through this. Can you describe red flags you may have missed on the job? In a similar situation as you re: small shop with lack of culture, would be great to compare some of these red flags, if any.

 

Really sorry to hear that OP. As others have said, this is very unusual - in my 10yrs of IB/PE, personally I’ve only ever known one case where a recent hire was let go of within a month. In that case the graduate (despite coming from a great college and obviously being smart) had an absolutely atrocious attitude and came across as super-arrogant, to the point where my boss wasn’t sure he’d be of any value ultimately.

Not saying that was the case here, just that being let go of so quickly is a rarity - the way you’ve described the place, it sounds pretty toxic. Unless there’s anything particular you can identify in your behaviour, it’s likely you just chose a really toxic shop unfortunately. And next time you shouldn’t (hopefully) be so unlucky. 

 

No joke my MD just called me and said it was because I didn’t ask enough questions and seemed disinterested. I was literally working through my lunch and first one to get in the office and last to leave

 

What a joke fam, they would be pissed when you asked questions. Not a welcoming culture so obv you’ll be less inclined to ask questions. Also how tall are you? Given that the guy was 5’4 and ruffled his ego

 

i haven't logged into my account for a while but thought i'd share some words of reassurance :)

the good news is that these 14 days you spent is by and large really insignificant to anyone who is still hiring, in any capacity, for any career. please do not feel bad. the time you spent with these people is akin to nothing happening at all. go out there and give it your best shot at recruiting again!

i can't emphasize enough how this was a major loss for them, and not for you. as a recent grad, you have nothing to lose professionally by getting fired after only 14 days.

i know it must have been a demoralizing experience, but as i said, luckily it was only 14 days. in that sense, it is, as they say, a blessing in disguise. could you imagine if you had to slog it out for even longer? that's what happened to me -- i was working at a tiny company with no training at all and the person who was assigned to train me was swamped with their own work and never even bothered to get me up to speed. unlike you however, i kept going for almost a year -- and that worked against me. by the time i was let go, ALL of the recent grad programs and hiring had already concluded. i could not even benefit from recent grad programs specifically designed for hiring people with little experience due to the timing. it was so difficult trying to get another job because i was stuck in a terrible position: little experience, no opportunities, in the middle of the initial shock of COVID-19. it took me over a year to get another job.

i want to caveat that i am not trying to make you think that anyone's grass is greener. but, what i want you to take away from my words is an illustration of how the timing of what happened in your situation is still to your advantage -- you can still make good use of being a recent grad to your advantage.

in fact, one excellent takeaway from this experience for you is that you now gained valuable LIFE experience:

1. you know how to better probe a company that you are interviewing for

2. you gained more experience of identifying red flags at a company

3. you now have a better understanding of what "good fit" should look like at a company -- and what you want to get out of a team.

best of luck, and let us know how things play out! i am certain you can pull through.

 

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