14 Comments
 

the only issue is, i'm not sure how to even network for regular jobs. Like I'm not sure who I should even reach out to. For banks, its pretty obvious since my school sends kids to banks, but for fortune 500 companies, there are less alumni there

 

Fuck alumni then. Find people on linkedin that work at the company you want to work at and then it's either find out their email address or send them a linkedin message. Be the badass that they want to hire and the connections will come. Not everyone is going to respond to you so don't get discouraged. Hit the fucking reset button and send out those emails.

Protip: google linkedin X-ray search to have unlimited people searches for linkedin and not get caught in their commercial user filter.

 

i dont understand the question... you know you have to network for banking so wouldn't it make sense that networking would help land an f500 gig?

theres less competition but also probably less people in each class

just do the same reaching out to alum's (there might be less because there are so many varied companies), and know that the schedule for applications is october -> december for most rather than the early banking recruitment

 

it's a bit different because for banking, my school has recruiting teams at the banks, so it's pretty clear who I need to network with.

However, if I want to work at, say coca cola corporate finance, i'm not really sure who I should even talk to because I have no idea how recruiting works, and i don't know if talking to some analyst would even be helpful b/c they might have absolutely 0 say

 

with your example:

find people who work at coca cola in finance, talk with them for 15-30 minutes on the phone and ask for how to best position yourself etc etc and they'll probably refer you to HR or someone who can help

the higher the person is at the company, the more influence they have on HR/your application generally

from my experience, analysts help a lot because they can refer you to their managers/other people inside the company who probably don't have your school connection

 

I mean dude, you’re gonna get to a point in life where there isn’t a dedicated path to a career. It’s pretty simple what you need to do. Find someone with a career you like on LinkedIn, find out what their email is, introduce yourself and ask to take them out for coffee or speak over the phone. See if they’d be open to mentoring you and go from there.

 

F500 type firms usually seem a bit more open to make a coffee appointment through HR from what I have heard (from people at my uni). Get the number of the right recruiter from their careers website, say you would love to learn more about the firm and whether it is possible to speak with someone who is currently in a graduate program/traineeship can definitely work at these firms!

 
Best Response

If you're looking for a formal FLDP program then the recruiting is actually fairly similar to banking. The company will be at their target schools for presentations, job fairs, networking events and interviews. Note that their targets are often different than banking targets. My previous F500 had a very good FLDP program and their targets were Illinois, Indiana, Miami of Ohio and Notre Dame. We did have 1-2 a year who networked in from outside of those schools.

For non-fldps ("normal jobs") some F500s will come on campus, usually to local schools, but I'd just look on their website for jobs. They often just post what's available. Pretty much all companies have pretty good career pages by now.

TLDR - its pretty much what you'd expect. Network for anyone on campus, internet for everyone else.

twitter: @CorpFin_Guy
 

I am a Former F50 FDLP Finance analyst. Most of my interviews came from on campus recruiting. However, I received interviews from some large companies by simply applying on their websites. I had solid internship experience at this point and a good GPA so I believe that got my resume a real look. No need to network like IB at all. Its a totally different world for these types of jobs.

Luckily I was able to make the jump to IB. That kind of work was not for me.

 

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