I’m trying to get my networking in before Christmas/new years week since I know a lot of bankers take off that week and I don’t want to bother them. I still have a decent way to go with networking, and I’m wondering if I can still hit the ground running and be ok with networking when January starts for SA 2026. Also, can I still start to network after an application opens, or is that a lost cause?
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I know timelines keep on accelerating, but I didn’t know I wanted to pursue IB until this time last year and was able to network into February/March. Landed multiple first rounds/superdays in NYC & CLT so it is totally doable. More about the quality of your conversations than the number of people that gets you into a process. I also will say you can still network after an application has opened if it’s a firm that keeps them open for a while so I wouldn’t be too concerned about that (obviously submitting earlier is typically smarter though if u did network).
Thank you, the timeline acceleration basically came out of nowhere for some banks and is stressing me out so badly. I’m trying to balance everything but it’s a whole lot. Do you recommend going hard starting January with the networking? It’s confusing because some big banks open Jan and others open in March, so networking is really all over the place.
I honestly wouldn’t recommend it unless you cannot get people on the phone in the next 2 weeks. Definitely had the worst semester ever recruiting because january-march was literally 25 hours a week of networking (phone calls, sending messages, scheduling) on top of my hardest school schedule thus far. It is doable but in hindsight I wish I started in the fall semester so that I could have developed stronger connections as I would typically do one phone call then hope i get referred. Since I wanna do FT recruiting, kinda feels like i’m starting at square one networking again because i didn’t have too much time to develop deeper relationships with bankers
You can network up til the point where all seats are filled which could take up to a month or two
Would that be around March/April?
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