Citi Group - breeding ground for idiots
Recently hired two associates from Citi where they worked their last two analyst years. They interviewed fine, but holy shit… I did not realize how fucking clueless and untrained the analysts were at citi until these two hit the ground running for about 6 months. Literally in every aspect, below mediocre credit knowledge, inability to navigate processes, lack of interpersonal skills and inability to navigate conversations with colleagues and clients, among many many other issues. Not sure if we got their worst ones but holy fucking shit! Wtf are they doing at that bank. Had to let go of both within weeks of each other and think Citi analysts are going near the bottom of my list for now
Where did they slip up in terms of knowledge? Anything specifically like “how do you not know this?”
You can’t say you spent 2 years as a commercial banking analyst and not know the different between daylight overdraft and ACH, not know how to do a financial model, don’t understand cash flow to cash reconciliation, don’t even know how a letter of credit works or what it is conceptually… among numerous other things
Lots of well-credentialed stupid people out there. A lesson only learned with time. Better luck next time :D
when you say explain it conceptually, do you mean explain these concepts to a 5 year old kid
Ex Citi here. Way back. 2012-2015. Think highly of my colleagues there.
I was in FIG and later TMT
From what I understand it’s a very different bank now from ~2015. They literally just made these guys do data entry on their ops systems for their 2 years, filling in for much of what back office does at other institutions. Both of them mentioned that their lead underwriters are so busy they had no time to spend with them to teach or provide feedback, and the UWs would just do the work rather than giving revisions back to these guys… also seems like remediations are just a normal part of work from the constant changes to the process and policy. Sounded like a nightmare and a full force downward spiral.
What did you hire them into?
I don’t really know what a commercial banker does, but can only assume people who start their career there are looking for an easier lifestyle or didn’t have the same background as those in IB or other areas of finance.
For most of us, this post reads like someone saying JP Morgan analysts are all idiots. I went into a Chase branch and the teller didn’t even know the difference between a money order and a postal order
not a Citi employee - support this view
OP is implying their investment banking analysts suck whereas they actually hired "commercial banking" analysts
totally different. and if OP can't get the investment banking analysts (because they're probably not interested?), then what type of Private Credit does OP do...
This is key. Commercial banking is a completely different ballgame!
I see what I did there. I hired commercial banking analysts into commercial credit associate roles. Hence posting this in the credit group. Not related to Citi IB, commercial analysts support the debt origination side, credit structuring and underwriting. They actually seemed to have been putting in similar hours to IB which is not typical for commercial banking (or maybe times have changed since I was an analyst). Unfortunately their time was spent on things that didn’t matter and didn’t help them build foundational credit skills that are externally marketable. This is more so on the bank and their management, doing a complete disservice to their analysts’ careers. I found the skill gap to be surprisingly having hired many associates over the years and coming up through the ranks myself.
I don’t deny that I may have by coincidence hired their worsts analysts from two separate industry verticals, but given how much it has cost me operationally, I won’t be taking a chance on them for the time being.
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