Buyside (namely HF) Recruiting w/Low GPA (sub 3.3) from BB

Here's a great response from a similar thread (https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/gpa-for-pe-recruiting-post-2-yea…)

"APAE" Short answer: GPA is a really meaningful part of the first screen your resume undergoes, and it also has lasting impacts on your next three major applications (first buy-side job, MBA, and post-MBA buy-side job).

Long answer: It sucks, but the GPA is an easy way for people to winnow the applicant pool down. If you're at MS or GS and on the campus team covering your alma mater like Ross or Stern, for example, you're going to see at least 400 resumes come across for the SA pool.

The OCR/OCI system was probably set with at least a 3.5 cutoff, perhaps a 3.6 depending on the firm. If the resume book comes back too thick, the team lead (usually a VP, sometimes an Associate) may push back to HR and say "Please filter this to a 3.7," and just like that, up in flames go the dreams of 150-250 hopeful aspirants.

You then sit around a table with a handful of other colleagues/alumni and a swath of highlighters. Launching a silent prayer skyward that the papercut demon spares you today, you all grab 40 of the remaining 200 resumes. How long do you really think each resume gets read?

You may've seen on Google that it's 10 seconds, 6 seconds, 3 seconds, whatever the clickbait bullshit some pimply social justice warrior-type "associate editor" at BuzzFeed managed to fart out of her brain in this week's "32 Professional Development Facts For Millennials That Will BLOW Your Mind" abomination.

Guarantee you it's under 5 seconds. Three things get looked at. GPA, prior internships, and leadership/skills & interests. If you have a 3.9 or 3.8 you're definitely getting moved to the "look again harder" pile. If you don't, you need either an "Investment Banking Summer Analyst" position or a different position at a recognizable brand-name (BB PWM, major non-BB PWM, hedge fund, private equity firm, etc.) to get into the good pile. Failing all that, some kind of really remarkable leadership or interest bullet may help you. Are you an Eagle Scout that completed NOLS at the age of 16 and went back as a teacher for the four summers since? Boom. Did you pay your way through school as a YouTube partner? Cool, I definitely want to talk to you, even if just to see whether or not you're a mouth-breathing sped.

If you make it into the good pile, you get a 30-second read. That's where people are reading more than the headlines under each section. Now it's time to see who might actually have done something more meaningful than smile-and-dial at a PWM internship. If you got into a BB sophomore IBD program, it's about your deal exposure. Again, if you have some kind of 'hook' beyond the classroom and work experience section, you're probably moving along. Beyond that, it essentially boils down to who has the best grades or prior work experience.

There's always a lot of 3.9, 3.8 kids who clearly haven't done much outside of the classroom that make it through. Why? Their grades show that they're the kind of people who sit down, beat something into their brain, and perform when asked to regurgitate it. Banking isn't rocket science. You take a lot of shit at the bottom of the totem pole. You're supposed to be quiet, do work exactly as you're told, be okay with having a lot of different things you're responsible for, regurgitate the right thing when prompted, and not be too intellectually independent. (A crummy situation overall.) The kid with the 3.9 seems like he's got the best chance of fitting into that system, so he gets past the screen.

Fast-forward two years to the six-month mark on the job. The analyst class is now composed of a lot of kids with 3.9s and 3.8s, a bunch of 3.7s, and a smattering of 3.6s and 3.5s along with the oddball sub-3.5 who had some compelling story that got him through.

Recruiters (CPI, Oxbridge, Amity, Henkel, Glocap, etc.) come knocking. "Hi Johnny Shitbanker, please let me know if you have time for a brief introductory call this week." They want to know your ranking in the group (asinine question given that you're seven fucking months into the thing and rankings/bonuses haven't been handed out), your GPA, and your deal experience.

The ideal candidate is a 3.8+, summa, Phi Beta Kappa/Beta Gamma Sigma, top-bucket kid with two closed deals. Very, very few people fit that profile. (As of late, they tend to be at the 'elite boutiques' as this site terms them: BX (PJT), EVR, Moelis, Lazard, Centerview, etc.; see my popular 'David and Goliath' front-paged blog post for more on this.) I worked with several. Some of the guys at the firm I interned at went on to have this profile. Some of the guys at my full-time place had this profile.

That profile sells itself. Headhunters get paid when they successfully place a candidate. The best funds have hundreds of banking analysts who would chew off their own arm merely for an interview. They can afford to be as ridiculously selective as they choose; they'll still have a multiple of 'qualified' applicants relative to headcount. When you're looking for two associates (Apollo), you have every reason to ignore anyone without a 2300+ SAT, 3.9+ GPA, and Ivy undergrad. There's still dozens of those guys scattered across top M&A and industry groups.

Guys will this profile are the ones who get the invites to pre-interview cocktail hours, who get back-to-back interviews with KKR, Carlyle, and TPG on the same Saturday, and whose process is done 72 hours after it starts.

If you don't have the same grades, you end up having to sell yourself a bit more. You have to drive the process with headhunters, find alumni at the firms you want to get into, and get informational interviews or coffees months ahead of the process starting.

Fast-forward two years to when it comes to MBA application season, the guys with the best grades (who got into the best banking groups) are now at the best buy-side jobs and being managed by teams of HBS and GSB alumni. At that point it's a process of picking which partner or principal you want to write your recommendation and deciding whether you want to pay $15k for a consultant to write 80% of your essay for you or do it yourself. (That decision often comes down to which firm you're at [because that impacts how much free time you have].)

If you don't have those grades (and didn't get the megafund PE job), you're now trying to figure out which of the M7 schools your profile's a best fit for (and whether your firm or any portfolio companies you worked on have senior people who are alumni at each of your target programs).

Fast-forward two years to all the first-year MBAs recruiting for their summer internship. The guys coming from Carlyle, BX, KKR, et al. either entered school knowing they could return to their firm (and therefore their summer internship is a chance to goof off and experiment with a new flavor) or are mining their network for a way to another megafund or comparable fund on the public market side. Given how hard the post-MBA hiring market is (see HSW's numbers on the incoming classes by industry experience vs. their outgoing classes' new industry placement), even this isn't a shoe-in, even for our bespoke-suited, prestige-draped budding titans of finance.

Imagine then the battle the people not at Harvard or Stanford who are coming from Thoma Bravo, Welsh Carson, Trilantic, et al. have. It's an uphill battle. And by no means is that saying that those people are slouches (as if a 3.7 from McCombs, a summer at BAML, an analyst stint at JPM M&A, and an MBA from Booth qualified you as a slouch).

Granted, there are exceptions everywhere. There's the guy from UBS who made it to KKR, the guy from Ross who got to BX R&R, etc. The point is that it's incredibly competitive from start to finish and only gets more so the higher you go. The guy from UBS to KKR may struggle coming out of b-school. The guy from Ross at BX may suffer in recruiting relative to the kid next to him from Wharton and not even get an interview at Centerbridge.

While you may absolutely find a way to back-door your way in somehow during the banking recruiting cycle (and should take absolutely any opportunity to do so), simply be aware that grades matter a ton and will impact your career trajectory for a decade. You are shooting yourself in the foot by not taking every opportunity to maximize the two digits that are the first thing people look for on your resume.