CS shows what’s wrong with recruiting so early.
I’ll preface by saying that it’s my opinion that incoming analysts will probably be fine.
The fact that recruitment takes place several months to over a year before your start date is outrageous, and has been extremely harmful towards those that aspire a career in finance. It pushes up timelines exponentially, gives students less time to get meaningful experience and knowledge, and creates and anticompetitive environment where many are pushed to accept an offer ASAP.
I personally struggled hard with full time recruiting, and I knew several who are still in the process of recruiting and have had little to no success. Now imagine being an incoming analyst at a CS or SVB, having your job in limbo just a few months before your start date. If you’re smart you should be rerecruiting - but at this point, there’s few places that are taking anybody. If these banks start rescinding offers in the future, people will be extremely fucked.
This is all a result of the extremely advanced application processes. Nobody should be hiring two years in advance. Nobody should have to be networking during their summer internships. It’s unfair and anticompetitive.
I think that most would agree with you, myself included. What you’re underestimating is how little these banks care about you as a person and your well-being. They just need asses in seats and will fill them regardless of what people think. Furthermore, IB is not rocket science so you really don’t need to be attracting the best and brightest students to fill out your analyst classes. You basically just need someone whose willing to eat shit for two years until they leave or you can promote/replace them. You as an individual are in many ways just a cog in the machine and whether or not you burn out is immaterial to the bank.
CS didn't have a super early recruitment cycle? I interviewed for 2 IB roles at CS Chicago in July and August. You could make a more compelling case for the fact that it takes like an hour to do their brain teaser quizzes.
Front office IB related is a lot different than IB... CS IB recruits in spring of sophomore year along with everyone else. Even July and August is a solid year away from a start date.
Probably desensitized to recruiting since most of my peers were locking in as early as December - April, but you're absolutely right. Re-reading my post the roles sound ambiguous, but I don't want to namedrop the exact IB groups out of privacy.
Just wanted to make the point that CS didn't have the most brutal recruiting cycle out of all firms.
It's been an evolving issue. Banks like RBC should not be posting SA 2024 22 months in advance. It makes other HR departments at banks believe they are behind the curve and forces them to post earlier / move their timelines up. There is no reason to be recruiting a person who has "incoming SA23" on their resume for SA24 when they haven't even gotten a real finance internship under their belt.
Sadly this shit will never change because as the users above have mentioned these banks just need people in seats.
Honestly if better banks, pushed recruiting bank, I feel like banks like RBC would probably get a lot or reneged offers.
They tried to delay recruiting a few years back. Were undercut when others went right ahead in recruiting early and grabbing talent and they had to play catch up.
If banks collectively decided to recruit on a certain timeline, let’s say February to march of the same year, they could avoid this while getting candidates who were a better fit.
It's unfortunately a case of prisoners dilemma. Recruiting as you suggest is the collective optimal strategy, but banks are incentivized to start earlier and secure talent.
Most kids who are sophomores have no real clue what they want to do after college, let alone the amount of networking involved for finance jobs. Limits the talent pool and there are lots of smart kids in stem majors who are not in a finance club where all their buddies are gunning for IBD after 1 year of college
It’s also a massive barrier to entry for lower income and first generation. I know many who got interested in finance and banking way too late because it’s not common knowledge. Meanwhile I know plenty of kids who already knew the exact “IB>PE>HF” path before their first day of class.
Ended up getting my offer from one of the few firms that I didn’t network at. Crazy world.
There are diversity programs for low income, first gen etc. Some sophomores seem to find them.
At least from those that I know, a majority of students in diversity programs come from wealthy backgrounds.
The most common “diversity hire” I’ve had to work with is UMC+ white sorority girls who went to a top school.
Or kids from Argentina with German surnames
Diversity programs don't cover first gen low income... only ethnic and LGBT minorities...
Like it or not, the system rewards those who are on the ball early and go after those internships. Thousands manage to do so, even kids from low income families. You may not like it but it works just fine for the banks who get their committed bodies ( and what they seek for diversity) and for the successful early applicants who get their guaranteed job. It won't be changing.
Sorry to all you bums that couldn't get an offer at a better bank. Personally, I'll be working at a top BB (think GS/JPM/MS). I'm also from a TOP target (think HYPS) so I'd never recruit at a second-tier European bank.
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