Say you bombed on-cycle PE recruiting and make it to the end of your analyst program with no jobs/ exits lined up. Do they auto-kick you? Do you stay on for a 3rd year in IBD to re-recruit, then they kick you fr? Do they only kick the bottom buckets/ average dudes and promote the better people?
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At most banks, if you're good enough to where they can see you successfully transition into the associate role, they won't kick you out. But if you are underperforming and the writing is readily on the wall, some banks may not outrightly fire you (legal liability / severance issues) but insist you find work while you have a finite endpoint in your current role.
But for most analysts, they won't linger around long enough for the bank to have to make that review and decision, right? Best case: they get into PE, if they bomb on-cycle, as a banking analyst there's always plenty of recruiters out there for decent corporate exits.
Who are the people who would linger long enough for the bank to decide to make them A2A? The best peeps probs just jump to PE, right?
Completely depends on the analyst and their goals. Yes, it would be fair to assume most would jump to PE / buyside / corp. before ever facing that decision, but others may fall in one of two buckets 1) considering A2A given they like the work and don't see the "grass is greener" side of the buyside, or 2) those who don't really have a direction and are just staying the course for the time being. It's not like one is better than the other, its just that on a correlational basis, those who aspire to PE / buyside most likely are better at the job given the pre-selection of being selected by a prestigious PE shop. But nothing is causal and there are always exceptions to the rule.
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