Rejected From Investment Club
I am a junior at a Non-Target and have just been rejected by my school's investment club for the second time. I have interned at a hedge fund for two summers and have an internship for this upcoming summer at a boutique equity research firm. I am now contemplating my career decisions and I am not sure if I am still passionate about this industry. The kids who got accepted do not have the same qualifications that I have and mostly have just gotten internships because of a family connection through a parent or because companies want to hit their diversity quotas. Is it too late for me to change my career trajectory. I have been recruiting all year to try and find an internship where I feel I will be able to work my way into a BB ER firm and ultimately a HF. Does this rejection mean I am not worthy of a career in this field? I do not know what to do so anything would be helpful.
Don’t worry about it man. Ppl are uni clubs are students too and they just hire people that they like or personally friends with. I can speak from my personal experience. Ur doing well with interns that’s what it matters and u could join some interests club instead for resume. Rly shows ur personality and helps with recruitment. In the interest section I put record collecting and that was able to initiate a lot of conversations. Sets a light mood to interviews and calms ur nerves as well
Dont think its that deep bro. Investment clubs are mostly just stamps on the resume anyways. It looks like u dont need that stamp
Investment clubs are large freind groups - focus on leveraging your internships for recruiting and networking
Coming from a co-head of an investment club in my school, I can say that the recruitment process is almost never fair. People in the EXCO will often tend to pull their friends into the club, and it becomes nepotism over meritocracy. You may have the best interview/best pitch, but you'll never get in just because another candidate who may be 50% of your level knows someone in the EXCO.
Anecdotally, I'm currently a senior in my school and I've seen it happen year after year, where someone whom I feel does not deserve the spot get it over someone who clearly deserves it more. Often times, I would often later find out the real reason why that person even got in (Could be anything ranging from the girl being cute to person's dad is an MD at Goldman or something). Don't sweat it too much - it really doesn't mean anything.
Like what the other posters have mentioned, an investment club extra-curricular is a good to have on your resume. It helps if you're in your freshman year trying to recruit. However, as you become a sophomore/junior, it becomes increasingly less relevant, and your prior internship experiences will take precedent over whatever club you're in. Given that you've worked in hedge funds before (I'm assuming they're legit funds), you would more or less have an investment process/ ideas for a stock pitch, and this would definitely help you for ER recruitment.
All the best!
Just make your own investment club and become the president.
They all look the same, nobody will even know it’s a 2 person club.
I did this for the “alternative investments club”. Worked like a charm and I’m still working on alternatives years later.
It can be tough when students are running the show. Lot of things out of your hands in those opaque processes. It sounds like you’re in a good spot without it, though, so either focus on other activities or start your own investment club. With a paper trading ThinkorSwim profile you could just start building a portfolio on your own and document your theses with memos you write yourself. Ask your friends for feedback on the pitches or even run it by alumni you’ve spoken to.
I ran our student investment fund during undergrad and we would get hundreds of apps every year. Realistically most applicants would have been good enough to do it but the experience would have been diluted by massive teams working on only so many pitches per year. There was natural attrition, though, so as people stopped attending we filled sectors from people we told to apply in the next semester.
I ran our student investment club in college. Can definitely sympathize with there being an uneven recruitment process, but without additional color its tough to give more precise feedback and suggestions. Not knowing anything else, I find the fact that you've been rejected twice despite having great experience interesting. In general, it is in the organizations best interest to recruit high quality students, particularly those with good backgrounds and experience. Without having met you, I think there is a high probability you will exit into a post-graduate investing role of some kind just given your to-date experience and so I would assume the club would be going out of their way to recruit you. If the organization is formal enough to have an interview process then they should also care to track metrics like where their students are exiting to, buyside vs sellside conversions, etc which your profile would be immediately accretive to. Could there be something else preventing you from making the cut? Do you have social issues with anyone in the organization? Do you come off as arrogant or a know it all?
Like others said, I wouldn't worry too much about your ability to pitch/assess investments just because you were rejected by the student run club. Likely the students running the club don't have good ability to invest at all. I had a similar experience in school - I was rejected by the student run investment fund despite having multiple HF internships (most of the guys in the club didn't even have one) and pitching the same stock that ended up in a 20bn+ AUM fund's portfolio when I pitched it during an internship. Most of the spots in the club went to friends of the existing members despite having no relevant experience. You have gotten internships purely through your skills which shows your ability to learn how to invest, so don't doubt yourself. Focus on networking and leveraging your experience and use it to get wherever you want to end up. Not having the finance club on your resume isn't going to hurt you at all especially at a non-target.
Fwiw, I had a HF internships/one PE internship when I applied to a student run club (at a target school)... got rejected for god knows what. Got multiple FT buyside interviews over the guys from the student-run fund when we applied for the same positions, so the student run fund didn't matter at all on the resume. Now have 4YOE in the industry, whereas some of the guys from the student run fund don't work in the industry at all.. shows you how much you should doubt your skills over the rejection from the club.
Don’t worry bro. Rejection hurts - an escort rejected me once
I need to hear the story on this one
Just put the club on your resume and apply to internships lol. How are they going to know?
EDIT: Don’t do this. Read below.
Would advise strongly against that. I was the previous co-head of my investment club, and whenever some kid submits a resume with the investment club in it, companies with current interns in it tend to do reference checks to check on that particular candidate. It doesn't take long for you to be exposed if you were to lie on your resume.
Echoing this as well - I heard about someone who faked a leadership role in my school's investment club a couple of years ago (it's open to all, no application except for board seats - a fair amount of people have school investment club on their resume as filler despite having done nothing in it) and had it pulled.
Echoing above. Happened at Princeton not too long ago, kid was basically ruined… got a top BBIB offer pulled, now working in some random biz dev role
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