2026 SA recruiting more competitive than the past?
Hi all, I am making this to weigh in on the theme I keep hearing from people in many different capacities (VPs, analyst, recruits etc). I was curious to gather opinions on a central location on whether you feel like recruiting was especially more competitive this year than the past. If so are we expecting this to be better or worse.
Rationale (don’t need to read this):
I have heard this from many others whether reaching out to interviewers from my own experience or just generally chatting with people in the industry. However, do to my role in recruiting I want to get an unbiased approach to this opinion. This is because I will make my decision to recruit again next year and delay graduation based off this (not solely). The hardest part I think is gaining info from multiple sources and though it might benefit from being in a central location.
Doesn’t appear to be particularly more competitive than the last couple years. Recruits tend to call their year the most competitive ever every year, but generally the # of qualified applicants seems to increase ~proportionally to the # of seats, and most people that should get an offer tend to end up with an offer.
This is, of course, a year to year observation. Was quite likely very different 10+ years ago, but then it was competitive in different ways (much harder to break in if you were outside the desired applicant pool, fewer seats overall).
This cycle is easier than the last two, with more spots available compared to recent years. The market is bullish, hiring is picking up, and while we’re not back to 2020/21 levels, this is one of the less intense years. I help with recruiting as a senior both to build goodwill with HR and partly because I see it as a way to give back.
That said, candidate quality has declined. More people are applying, but a surprising number, even from target schools, aren’t networking at all and do not have any believable interest in IBD. The biggest shifts since I recruited: (A) diversity recruiting now takes up a lot of spots, (B) target school preference has weakened, opening doors for more candidates but reducing spots for my alma mater, and (C) analyst class sizes at EBs/BBs keep getting bigger, especially at top boutiques like Evercore. Want to note both points A and B are not a this year thing, has been the case for the past ~5 or so years at the very minimum.
The bottom line, is if you put in the work at a target or a semi-target, you should be able to get an offer, just like 10 years ago. It's always been a competitive industry and you have to work hard both in your college and throughout your recruiting process to get an offer. I am speaking generally as in getting an offer and not EB/BB because you can basically never guarantee that; too much luck at play as has always been in the case, but if you put in the work you should be able to get a respectable IB starting analyst job.
Something I found interesting is you mentioned it’s. It necessarily harder or more competitive but then you mentioned more spots goto DEI and non targets. So would you say that for target school students it would be more competitive? Also, you mentioned it wasn’t at 2021 levels quite yet. Would you say the applications are at 2021 levels however?
I think it's just a fairer process now regarding target/non-target, it's harder in the sense of fewer spots but also easier because I think at targets recruiting is more institutionalized than ever and you have a vaster array of resources than ever to get you placed alongside the previously aforementioned overall increase in spots. I think what the newer process has done is make recruiting much easier for non-targets.
More spots do go to DEI, but that's a longer-term trend not unique to this year. It's been at a roughly ~50% gender target rate for the past 5 years at most places for example. I do not have particularly any points on the diversity recruiting stuff as it's mostly done by HR, but will say there are still more than enough non-diversity spots for qualified spots as class sizes for analysts have gotten bigger. Also , diversity hires stay longer at the firm on average statistically, which is also I believe a part of the reason for the push.
In regards to applications: they are higher than ever but quality is also lower than ever. The average candidate is some kid from a no-name non-target who doesn't even know what IB is and never talked to anyone in IB with a 3.5 GPA at most. I don't think the number of candidates matters at all; it's always been super high in IB.
Also, what would you say goes into building a believable Why IB that is lacking in current years recruiting ?
People say this every year... any difference is negligible
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