Boutique IB Networking ?
Hi! I've been helping out a friend break into investment banking at the no-name boutique level. For boutiques it's flipped, it's best to network with the decision makers, so Founder's and MD's, rather than analysts.
My friend goes to a super non-target. I am contemplating if I should have him strictly reach out to non-target MD's and avoid any MD's or founders that went to target schools, to hopefully increase coffee chat and response rates. The only downside to this is 90% of boutique founders went to a target school and he will have to reach out to the non-founder MD's, so although he'll reach out to MD's that went to non-targets, he may get worse results as he wont be able to reach out to the Founder, the true decision maker.
I only ask this because the 2 offers that I got my sophomore year at the no-name boutique level, when I networked with the firms, the bankers were founders, as well as non-targets, so I'm a bit conflicted.
Question: Should he reach out strictly to non-target MD's who may be less in a position to be a decision maker OR reach out to strictly MD's who are more Founders even if they went to a target school, as they are the decision makers and he'll have a better chance to be hired?
Maybe I'm overthinking this, but honestly if someone is a non-target, they have to take any advantage they can get. I feel target school bankers will be 3x less likely to network with a non-target student than vice versa. Thank you!
I think you’re overestimating the “elitism” of target school MDs. He should reach out to whoever he can, and there’s plenty of other places he can draw commonality from than just his school’s target or nontarget status
Why not do both? I’d focus on founder types regardless of target vs non target status though.
agree with the above - WORST case scenario, they don’t respond so that doesn’t affect u whatsoever. BEST case, they respond
theres no downside
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