Best Practices for Networking? (SA 2022)

Hey everyone, 

Wanted to ask if people used any specific networking strategies that seemed to work well during their recruiting cycle for an SA position? I've personally been sending out quite a few of the standard '15 minute phone chat' cold emails, but the yield has been pretty poor, even though most of them are alumni from my school. Bit confused by this as I've been using the same format/timing as others. 

Moreover, wondering how many people folks reached out throughout the process- was it something like 15 new emails at the beginning of each week? 20? 30? Just don't want to fall behind. 

Also wondering if strategies should be targeted towards the type of firm- are fewer contacts necessary at one of the boutiques, vs. more contacts at one of the BB's.

Apologies if anything is unclear, and I appreciate any and all input.

Thanks!!

16 Comments
 

Thank you for your reply- I'm a bit surprised that I could be too early. The impression that I get from others that are recruiting from my school is that I was late, as I started networking in the last week of January. 

 

Sure you guys can MS me, but you don’t have to follow the herd to get an offer. I should state that maybe I have it easier going to a semi target/target - but nobody is gonna fucking remember you if you network now. Unless you’re going for Moelis/Evernote specifically (they hand out early offers) you really should not stress now. I started late March and got interviews at Lazard, PJT, WB, Baird, MS, WF, MS, GS, BofA (superdays at multiple places) and ended up securing GS this summer. Why? You actually talk to someone when they are thinking about it more (don’t need to be fucking first) and can keep a connection warm when it actually matters. The more recent people are easier to remember when it comes time to pull names. But what do I know yknow? Not to mention BB OCR doesn’t even start til like April

 

Comment above is incorrect, you are definitely not early. Lots of firms doing first rounds in March and superdays in April and will be mostly done by May... this is prime networking time to get on radars and have enough time to talk to a few people at each firm. I would probably send out 40-50 a week if you have enough contacts and aren't getting any traction

Can you paste your email as a comment? It might be too generic. I also don't respond to those without resumes attached.

 

i am going for barclays too,  come on just go for some other bank, i am telling you i see that GS is better fit for you, please  let me have barclays

 

I suppose I'm very far behind as I'm still searching for a summer 2021 internship. Do you recommend securing that first before reaching out to bankers regarding SA 2022?

 

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