Did everything “right” but still no offer - any advice?
Wanted to get some honest advice from people here. I feel like I did everything I was supposed to for recruiting. I sent around 700-800 networking emails, have a 3.95 GPA as a double STEM major at a target school with heavy grade deflation, and interned last summer at a boutique investment bank where I worked more live deals than a UBS analyst. I also spent a lot of time preparing technically and basically memorized every technical guide I could find.
I ended up with around 10-15 interviews and 3 superdays but still no offer. I’m not blaming the market or luck, and realistically, I should have converted at least one of those and I want to hold myself accountable. I genuinely tried to prepare as much as possible and put a lot of time into this process.
At this point a lot of the banks I originally targeted seem done with recruiting. I’m starting to think about switching focus to consulting recruiting that is opening up now, but my background is definitely more finance/technical.
For people who have been through something similar, would you keep pushing for IB recruiting this late, pivot to consulting, or try for off-cycle finance roles?
Ur resume was good enough prolly ur interviewing skills. Whether being genuine, interesting, or likeable i think all of those things matter
yeah agreed, will try to bring those mock interview numbers up
It's true that interviewers make snap judgments about your personality, your body lanugage, the way you speak, and all of the other soft factors.
When we coach job applicants and MBA applicants who we think are coming across a bit stiff and awkward, we send them to work for a couple of hours with professional actors from the theater, who help them develop their presence and come across as confident, relaxed and likeable.
The sessions with the actors are a bit fruity compared to mock intervies, but often help people break out of their shell, relax, and develop better rapport with the interviewer.
Rather than grinding out more reps with mock interviews, you may want to include some practice drills that focus directly on the softer skills. If you DM me with your email address, I could send you some of the materials we use for this.
Keep talkin bout UBS when u got no offer bud. And you wonder what the problem is
i guess ubs analysts can't take jokes now. it was clearly a joke ubs def gets overhated but still a prestigious bank i would want to work at for sure
Apologies for blowing up, and had a similar situation to you actually, but lucked out getting the offer at the end of last week. Def do consulting, don’t think your background will hurt at all, know lots of people who’ve done that. And than do an MM junior year and go for a BB FT if that doesn’t work. Do you have an idea of what went wrong in your interviews? Always helpful to hear from people and then fix common threads. For me it was basically people couldn’t keep up with me mentally once I started going so had to focus on tuning it down. Figure it could be a similar prob for you given your background. Just remember, very little merit in any banking recruiting, other sectors will be better. I had one of the best CVs in the country and didn’t get any OCR interviews yet got nontarget stuff with only 1-2 calls and no nepo, it all makes no sense, so go easy on urself
take a boutique internship this summer, gap semester to do another boutique internship while recruiting? this will push your start date by one year though
was wondering about this but ive already applied to these banks as co28 - wont my application still be on file and auto reject if i apply again as co 29?
plenty of people have rerecruited
They won't auto-reject and some people do re recruit, but the best case for that is if you missed most of recruiting or didn't network... it sounds like you did go through a full recruiting cycle and put your all into it, not sure what will change next year. Unfortunately it sounds like it's just a social / personality thing, which is tough to change.
I would try to get some honest mock interviews (maybe some paid or anonymous ones? your friends/peers aren't going to say much beyond very constructive feedback) and specifically say you want to work on behaviorals. Heck, go to a Toastmasters class and learn to be a killer speaker.
Do you need a visa? Assume not if not in your post but that would explain it if so
I like how UBS gets shots taken at it even when its completely irrelevant to the topic 😂
Honestly man, it’s probably your social skills / speaking skills. Having 3 super days and not converting whilst networking that much at a target is larger then random bad luck imo. Don’t beat yourself up about it but maybe next cycle try doing a ton of mock interviews? Also, I’d recommend pushing your grad date to utilize another summer if you really want to land something good. I know plenty of people who did that and it worked out.
yeah ofc its not bad luck but just trying to figure out the issue and just what next steps to take since ive already burnt out and put so much time and effort
All good man as long as you know you can improve. I’d take a few months off, then hit next cycle hard with your contacts and push your grad date back (on paper) for applying. If you get anything, then push your date. If you don’t, you can just graduate on time. Win-win really. 1 extra year of school is literally nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Sounds like a personality/likability problem, focus on being authentic and natural in your interviews, feel like so many kids interview like robots, reading off a screen these days
I agree, but I think that it's become so competitive that we naturally have to give "perfect and memorized answers," as that's easier to control and makes way more sense than just being personable
My best advice is just to keep pushing. Found myself in a similar situation where I SDed at Moelis, Jefferies, UBS, and Citizens, yet still didn’t convert one. Nonetheless, I had a mentor of mine who told me to keep pushing and “embrace the suck” as his Marine father would say. As such, I landed a good offer at a boutique bank. While in that process, I landed multiple consulting and transaction advisory interviews from top firms. Ended up accepting the boutique because I loved the firm/culture but keep going. No one is coming to save you and the more time you waste, the more your chances of a good offer/an offer shrink. Try to land anything like boutique IB, consulting, or transaction services and recruit FT if you want to give it another shot.
Do you think you were just unlucky or did you change anything differently to get an offer? Assuming you did nothing wrong in your Supers.
I know that nepotism was the case for two of the SDs upon further review but unsure about the other two. My feedback was all positive and I’m still connected with a lot of the people I spoke with during the recruitment process so I’m assuming I was just unlucky.
If you’re getting first rounds but not converting to SPD (a good conversion rate would be 40-60%), the issue is clearly your interview skills. How many mock interviews from upperclassmen / analysts have you done? It’s probably either you don’t have your story together / tailored to that specific role / bank, or you are coming across in a bad way socially.
at least 7 mocks a week, 10 if there's a big interview coming up, definitely in the triple digits for mocks. When it comes to social skills, a lot of my interviews are chatting about sports and just the city in general, so idk
Are these people in an ib club that can give you good feedback? Or just random peers? Are your technicals solid?
It could just be genuine bad luck, especially if you’re not diversity. Keep pushing dude, it’s a tough cycle fs
Do you have friends at any of the banks that can give you honest feedback? Certainly an element of luck but with your profile and that many interviews, one of the banks should have converted.
I think you're doing something wrong. It's hard to know what that is. You really need people you trust who care enough to give you very honest feedback.
On the surface, you come across as too intense. 7+ mock interviews is a lot and may rub people the wrong way. It's a lot of people's time to ask for. But I don't know if that's what everyone is doing.
Your post history suggests a lot of people do clubs or business fraternities at your school who get offers. Was there a reason you didn't?
Yeah got a lot of advice that I internalized, but they might have been lenient. I'm trying to find people who I can trust to interview but not being in a top club is hard to find those people. For hte mock interviews I know of a lot of older people so I ask them, including a couple bankers who are more senior or ex-bankers who have more time. For the last point, my school is very club pipeline-orientated, hard to get an offer without one. But I did end up getting those interviews even if the odds were stacked against me, just couldnt convert.
NYU?
damn 15 1r and 3 supers is crazy. I had 2 1r's 1 super and landed an offer by the grace of god. insane
yeah man congrats, def my interviewing skills
bros roasting UBS without an offer in his hands from anywhere lmao
u don't need to be a professional basketball player to hate on brandin podziemski
Congrats on UChicago
You’re likely weird and unlikable.
maybe but if I was weird and unlikable I wouldn't have made it past several first or second rounds
You've been receiving some great advice here. Building upon it, some of the best guidance I got from a mentor at the beginning of the process was literally "dude, you gotta relax."
Remember that in this job you will be working long hours and late nights alongside your interviewers and if they think you are robocop they will not want to deal with that. Cracking jokes in an interview is mostly not a winning strategy either, but there's a middle ground of just being normal and genuine. I cringe slightly at the term "interviewing skills." Interviewing well is a skill, sure, but mostly an interview is a personality assessment.
My $0.02: I was too late, not totally sure about IB, and too non-target in undergrad so went the consulting route instead. Had a great, fun handful of years, learned a lot about leadership and communication and client management, worked my ass off on the GMAT exam, and got into a T5-10ish MBA program where I was able to recruit very successfully for IB Associate openings (am in my mid-20's). In consulting though I still made 6-figures and my $/hr was WAY higher than being an IB Analyst, and I had a lot more time for fun in my early 20's than I would've as an IB Analyst, too. I still have lots to learn but my point is that there are plenty of routes you can take to IB and you might actually enjoy some of them.
Would second this advice. In college its really easy to think of finance as a super meritocratic industry. Fact of the matter is that even the best analysts in the world can only add so much leverage. For most junior roles (and most relationship-based roles tbh) it's better to hit the bar on competence and then stack extra points on being a normal, agreeable, likable person than to max out competence but be super annoying/ not likeable / not someone you would want to spend time with in the trenches.
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