How easy (or hard) is it to get an associate position in a BB bank with no experience as an analyst? I'm thinking I may have to start out in corporate finance or commercial banking (probably this) and then go into Ibanking after doing a MBA.
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Its not difficult at all assuming you attend a top tier b-school, although this may not be the case under current market conditions. Bottom line, banking experience pre-MBA is not a pre-req for gaining employment as an associate at a BB post-MBA.
In the upswing of the market, it was very rare to find MBAs who had banking experience coming into the market to do banking. That is, for the past 2-3 years those with banking experience and an MBA did more lucrative things. I knew only one person hired directly out of an MBA program (not to be confused with merely people with MBAs) who had prior banking experience. I knew MBAs with military, commercial banking, corp dev, engineering, and all sorts of other random backgrounds.
This is obviously changing in the current environment, but by time you would be entering the market should have recovered mostly.
Does the same general rule apply to a one-year MBA? For instance I wanted to go to Ivey (University of Western Ontario) for an MBA. It is considered the top Canadian school, but I'm concerned that without the value of a summer internship, I will not be able to enter into IBD as an associate(I have no previous IBD experience).
I understand it will be more difficult going to a BB rather than a Canadian big bank, but I'd like to hear opinions on both please.
You need to be able to do a summer internship if you don't have a banking background. Does Ivey have classes in the summer? Do BBs target Ivey? I don't know.
It will be easier to get an Associate position in New York by attending a top US MBA. For London, you want the top US MBA or a top Euro MBA (LBS, IESE, INSEAD). INSEAD is one year, but you can time it so that you can do an internship, if you want to.
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