Does anyone think they arent going to get a return offer?
As the titles says, if you don't think you are getting a return offer, why is that?
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Not an intern, but can speak to the offers we gave. 6 out of our class of 11 are getting returns, and it’s not because of headcount constraints. Previous years have had 90-100% offer rate, but this summer a lot of kids just didn’t want it in our group.
Same at my EB in NY. Considerable uptick in lack of drive / entitlement
Can you give an example?
Example #1 said they couldn't stay to help out with something urgent that came up because they already called their Uber.
Example #2 asked if they could push work for a live meeting since it was their birthday. It was a Wednesday with the meeting on Thursday. Disappeared for the night.
Example #3 said they couldn't do work one night since there was a mandatory intern social event. Again, deliverables due the next day.
Example #4 asked why bankers picked this job. Said they didn't think they'd make the same choice and don't find finance interesting.
General comments across all these that were common were:
Curious about example #3 (I'm going to be a summer analyst next summer) - would it be ok to do the work after the mandatory intern social event? wouldn't it be bad to miss an intern event? I understand that the other examples are definitely not ok.
Bro I love it. The gen Z’ers are breaking the stupid ass norms of this broken industry. If any interns are reading, keep doing this shit please. I don’t have the sack to be this bold so I’m gonna live vicariously through you guys.
Hmm. Seems all reasonable gripes besides #3.
Also at an EB and HR forces us to go and takes attendance. I even asked if I could skip one because of work but they said no.
#2 was me you hardo, keep your offer I'm going to an EB instead
If the only reason #3 didn't receive a return is stated above, that's a bit unfair. You're putting a 20 year old between a rock and a hard place. Also, was #4 a girl/diversity-hire? Would bet good money they were.
There's a better way to communicate it, but if it's an smaller event with seniors in the group, skipping the intern event is more likely to hurt the intern vs. getting negative feedback from an analyst for going to the intern event.
It frankly reflects very poorly on the analyst and associate on the project if they can't manage the workload in a a way that allows the intern to get drinks with the group head or whatever the event is.
Not even sure why you have got hit with so many low quality monkeys. With the exception of #3, these all seem reasonable. Projects really don’t hinge on interns’ availability but if they had any sense they’d offer to come back after the event.
Does anyone with a straight face seriously think it’s smart as an intern to tell your team you’re not available on a weekday because it’s your birthday?
I wonder how much of this is poor socialization due to COVID lockdowns
You got people like that getting in and I can’t even land an interview. Jeez.
It’s not really an entitlement or lack of drive issue. Return offer acceptance rate across the industry has declined steadily during my years in the industry (source: top tier headhunters). Fewer people in the world want to work 80-100 hour weeks and who can blame them?
I say this as someone who’s now on the buyside: Good for kids today on choosing alternative professions instead of spending all night resizing logos on decks that no one reads.
If the finance industry wants to retain its talent, significant intra-sector reform is needed, particularly around the area of work life balance. And reform starts locally (simple things like offering flexibility so my colleagues can have dinner at home with their families; if work needs to be done, they can remote in from home).
What makes you gage who wants it and who doesn’t?
Higher me lol I’ll gladly take there place
Hire* dipshit
Think I will get a return offer but don’t know if I will accept. Went into finance for the hookers and cocaine and all I got is they/them’s.
username checks out
Idk about you guys but our senior guys are SOOOOO damn picky about junior talent. We rejected a kid because of his haircut one time lmao. The MD “didnt like it”. We have gone through like 15 candidates interviewing and my director and MD find a reason to not like every single one. Maybe I’m Ignorant, but this shit ain’t that serious. Anyone can do this job. You don’t need to find someone perfect. Also, I love the fact that the new gen of interns don’t give a fuck. Maybe it will help improve things around here. Banking culture is just so damn antiquated.
Your seniors sound like tools. I agree that having more of these kids around should hopefully help change the shit way things are done.
What was the haircut?
Lmao my MDs also dinged a guy for his haircut. We're hiring an an1 atm and they genuinely met 50 candidates before progressing someone to the last round. waste of everyones time
I rock a mean mullet, think John travolta (no I’m not joking, I fucking love it, and so does every trashy chick) feel like it’s a toss up as to what seniors think, thoughts?
If I have 1 more intern tell me they can’t do something because of a mandatory intern event I’m gonna lose my mind. I’d rather you just tell me no or that you’d really like to go to the event instead. I’d respect that.
But the fact that you think this intern event is actually “mandatory” and has more impact on you returning than you doing work for the team shows you have no critical thinking skills.
This is ridiculous. Let the interns have some fun...
I never said they couldn’t or shouldn’t go … but do you really think it’s ok for an intern to declare to the analyst / associate what they are going to do?
No one is ever going to say they can’t go… but I think as a formality you should at least ask if it’s ok???? I don’t see how this is wrongful thinking….
Lol realistically interns aren’t adding much value, you could do whatever work you are asking probably faster and maybe add 30 minutes to your night. Let them enjoy their summer, fucking dick.
Another person who didn’t actually read my post — I can’t believe some of you make it full time man.
As an intern, I know what you are trying to say - the events the company/HR or whatever scheduled are not "real work," and you should be grinding as much. I am finding that most interns miss the "fun events" and lunch and learns or whatever virtual events are scheduled to work at my company.
It seems like you're used to shit culture and want to pass that no-fun all-work mentality to the summer interns. Those events were put there to make the learning experience enjoyable and better the culture wherever you are, so you need to see that side of things. Whoever approved/set up those events is probably YOUR boss anyways. I remember I was going to miss an event to finish underwriting a model. The associate was applauding me, then the Senior MD comes by like "why tf aren't you at the event? Get up there right now" he told me he wanted to be at every one of them and the company puts them on for a reason...
i'll be honest, if at this point you think you aren't getting one odds are you aren't.
it should always be a "im not sure but there's a decent chance" type of deal
My personal take on the situation (at a high level, recognizing there are unique factors in specific situations that can change things)…
No deal team should put themselves in a position where an intern taking 3-5 hours out of an otherwise 80-100 hour work week for a planned event causes the team to miss a deliverable. While it is nice to give interns real deal experience and responsibility, the expectation is pretty much always that the intern is going to need a ton of hand holding and therefore it will take more time for the associate/analyst to coach the intern than it would just to do it themselves. No offense to the interns here, but if you were to walk out of the office and never come back, it should have a negligible impact on any live deal. Interns just shouldn’t be on the ‘critical path’ to completing deliverables by the (actual) deadline unless you allow ample time for the work to essentially be redone. Because of this, an intern attending an event should be little more than a minor inconvenience.
Additionally, the purpose of the internship is to create a “talent pipeline” and improve recruiting effectiveness. That means to test out an intern’s capabilities before giving them a full-time offer. Similarly, if the interns don’t have a good experience and reject a return offer, the bank just basically wasted a lot of time/resources attempting to recruit this person. Worse, if they return back to their universities and tell everyone how bank XYZ sucks, it makes recruiting even harder. This is particularly important in recent years when banks have been losing talent to other industries as well as the waning desire by young people to spend 100 hours a week grinding. Intern events, interacting with more senior bankers, and having a bit of fun is all a part of the experience the bank is creating in order to achieve this objective. The purpose of the internship is NOT to make the associates’ / analysts’ lives easier.
That said, I certainly think interns (like everyone else) need to effectively communicate conflicts to avoid confusion. They should give as much advance notice as possible if they don’t think they will be able to hit deadlines they’ve committed to. This is all professional courtesy. But when it comes to mandatory intern events, I think the priority goes to the event and the deal team can proceed without the intern. I don’t think the analyst / associate should get a vote in the matter and therefore it shouldn’t be an issue of ‘asking for permission’ but more ‘giving your team enough notice so they can plan accordingly.’ Heck, I don’t think the VP should even get a vote either…
I agree with your response in theory but in my internships I was assigned real work that an analyst or associate would be doing and in fact was there to make their life easier (they would take off a day here and there since I was doing the work now). I think the nature of internships has changed from just grabbing coffee to seeing if someone can hit the desk quickly post-graduation and contribute. Anybody who consistently makes mistakes and has to be hand held for everything would definitely have been canned where I interned (not disclosing firm for anonymity). I think the discrepancy in our responses might be that the standards to break into finance have risen dramatically since you were an analyst or the groups I happened to intern at were uniquely understaffed. Interested to hear your response.
Few thoughts:
1) As an intern, you should definitely be doing ‘real work that an analyst or associate would be doing’ … but there is a huge difference between critical tasks and supplemental tasks. For example, if you’re pulling together a pitch deck, the intern shouldn’t be in control of the model. However, they should be doing research to help the team understand the sector, building profiles on high probability prospective buyers, etc. These are tasks that the analyst otherwise would be doing — but it isn’t a critical problem for the deal team if the intern doesn’t do a good job. Internships really haven’t changed in the last 15-20 years in this regard.
2) I agree that the expectations have increased for converting an internship to a full-time offer, but you should recognize that it isn’t a straight line. During COVID when teams were desperate for more headcount, standards dropped dramatically. The same was true back in 2006 - 2007 when it was relatively easy to land an IB job … but nearly impossible in 2008 - 2010 when global deal activity ceased and there were mass layoffs across the board. The idea of ensuring someone ‘can hit the desk quickly post-graduation and contribute’ has always existed — but per #1 above, this can be tested in a way that doesn’t put a deal team in a bad position. Not that anyone here is disagreeing, but I think the primary driver of the increased expectations is the existence of sites such as WSO. Pre-WSO (and dare I say the earlier days of the internet), the investment banking career path was relatively unknown and one couldn’t just grab 1000+ resources to prepare for interviews and the job. With broadly available information, even a philosophy major is expected to know their technicals.
3) The other thing to keep in mind is that the objectives of the analyst/associate are typically not very well aligned with those of the bank and there aren’t exactly a lot of resources on “how to manage an intern.” As a result, the internship experience for any individual can often be dictated by their deal team rather than uniform across a bank. If an intern is staffed with an analyst who views the intern as their subordinate to push work down to, that is going to be how they behave. Communication is often better at smaller banks, but if you work at a big bank where everyone cares a lot more about their individual success than the objectives of the bank as a whole, you see more deal teams managing interns strictly in the deal team’s own self-interest. Let’s be honest though, most analysts aren’t even going to be at the bank by the time the intern joins … and often times they act accordingly.
Additional Note: Another way to look at the intern’s responsibilities relative to the analyst is how the deal team would react in the event of a failure. I’ll use the initial example of an intern going to a mandatory intern event instead of working on a deal. Let’s say the intern goes to the event and as a result, the model doesn’t get done because the analyst had expected the intern to do it. The deal team meets the next morning and the analyst says to the deal team: “We don’t have a draft of the materials ready yet because the intern left to go to a social event and I needed him to get me a draft of the model before 10:00pm, which he failed to do.” If I were the MD in this scenario, I would absolutely put the blame on the analyst for the failure rather than the intern. The intern would probably also lose credibility (based on communication), but the majority of the blame would be directed at the analyst for mis-managing the process (in the form of relying on an intern to produce a critical path item). I recognize this probably infuriates any analyst who reads this — but that’s my perspective.
Final Thought: There are probably two different concepts here which I think should be treated separately. One is what is ultimately the responsibility of an analyst versus an intern, and the other is the standards to which the intern is held. To me, higher standards does not mean that the intern is treated as a substitute for the analyst working on critical path items. Higher standards primarily means the same quality of work which would have resulted in a return offer years ago may not result in a return offer today.
I hate to break it to you bud, you might have been doing “real work” but people were giving you low hanging fruit that wouldn’t be an issue if you messed up.
Does anyone when we actually get the return offer, is it sometime during the last week or the last day?
My bank told us it’s the last day
I do a good job, am great at excel and ppt, and have become a reliable value add who analysts can default to for work product. E.g., someone requested that I improve a tedious backup and I automated it down to a button press. That's time saved perpetually into the future as long as it's still constantly needed for decks.
I don't mind the hours. I'm in before full-timers and usually am the last intern out.
I love the industry and I want this job so much. My feedback has consistently been that I have the drive, the passion for finance, and the intellectual curiosity to succeed.
That said, my EQ is beyond terrible. It's not that I'm oblivious to social cues, a robot, or an asshole. I just come off the wrong way, and to be honest, this friction has existed my entire life. I've never really meshed in this world, no matter how I've changed my personality to be part of the tribe or the interesting hobbies I pick up to be more sociable and personable.
Another year this could've been overlooked, but in this economy I think my luck has run out. Now, I'm just beyond defeated and depressed that it will ruin me.
What examples of you coming off the wrong way? In that case, it is a matter of communication skills that you may have to work on.
asdf
How did you get in if you never really jibed with interviewers?
Lucked out with zoom super days? It's also just logically easier to be clean over 2h of interviews rather than all day, every day for 9w.
Might sound like a weird idea but you should try some acid/shrooms. Take the proper precautions (great info about safely tripping on reddit) obviously, but I had a similar issue and my first psych experience helped a ton
Fellas -- I did not get a return offer in my junior IB internship at a BB. Felt crappy about it for a long time. Fast forward a year and a half, and I ended up at a top AM doing my dream research role. Fast forward a couple years after this and I’ve been promoted once and have a good shot at being promoted in a few years to Analyst
Just remember, it isn't the end of the world if you don't get your return offer. There are so many amazing doors ahead of you
FT recruiting is gonna suck this year though
Similar thing happened to me. Worked at a EB and now work at a top LO. Very happy with my current position. I'm super curious about your career path and what brought you to research as well
Always wanted to do investing, esp interested in public markets. Only reason I even did IB was because I idiotically thought at the time that was the best way to 'keep options open' with buyside. Only realized later that I should've directly recruited for AM out of school. Basically ended up recruiting for most of senior year, got connected to this job via a PM I'd kept in touch with
IB life is not for everyone. Some guys can at least grind for 2yrs, personally I could not even muster up that -- that's how much I hated the work there. Research took a while to get good at too, but far more enjoyable and cerebral IMO.
Not getting return offer as I don’t have a job
Tbh sometimes it’s pretty obvious when intern just doesn’t want to be there to begin with
My MM bank allowed me freedom in working on anything I wanted to bring value to which is why I am inclined to accept my FTO. As far as attending intern events… I did not attend any of them and worked on deals. Worked out just fine. Only worked 50-60 hrs per week. Great experience.
~Sounds like paradise~
Sounds like a great experience. What city were you interning at?
1/2 the reason i left the industry are because of the replies here, you fuckers are so uptight about what junior bankers do, and are whats wrong with the industry. none of the shit you do matters one bit, an intern going to an intern event won't hurt anything other than your tiny egos.
good on the interns for not putting up with your sweatshop corporate slave mentalities, i hope they can drag banking culture into the 21st century
Sounds like someone didn’t get a return offer
LOL i left ~9 years ago after putting in 2.5 years as an analyst. decided not to take the associate promotion and bolted to sf to take a job at a startup
What’s your salary as a non-profit director?
lol i don't work at a non profit, i work at a tech company that is planning on going public. we haven't hit a profitable quarter and are what some like to call a "millenial subsidy", so I joke that I work at a "non-profit"
Granted I am at a small boutique but we are offering 100% of our interns. Just some hope amongst the doom and gloom.
Pretty sure we are offering all of our interns FT positions, even though a couple are less than stellar.
Just shedding insight, at a national MM bank and we hired ~60% of our summer analysts. Many of them were great and didn’t receive offers, while some didn’t work as hard and did receive return offers. A lot goes into the decisions, but seems across the board that places aren’t giving FT offers as much?
Which bank? Was it HL / Piper / Blair? Also at MM and unsure what return rates will be though historically been near all, but this deal flow..
Nice
Nice
Nice
Also chiming in, my group (albeit within secondaries, expecting sustained deal activity moving forward) is planning to give offers to all our summer interns. They've been incredible to work with. Know friends across the street whose groups within IB are planning to give out similar % of offers as past years.
Analysts are expensive ($ and time) to train and hire, but cheap (relative to folks at the top) to keep around, so not to worry about return offer %s. If you met expectations this summer, you'll be set.
are you able to share which firm?
Has to be one of Neuberger/ Ares SS (Landmark)/ BX SP. Only funds that I know have summer interns
As far as work and attitude, I believe my class and I did a decently good job. No one was obviously bad, or stuck up. However, it feels like our class didn’t connect with the full times that much. Feels like all of us should’ve made a better effort to network with everyone, the first comment was right about this one imo. If I were to not get a return offer, it would be because of that.
On the flip side though, it was the first in-person internship for our class (Summer 2020 online + summer 2021 online) so none of us really knew how to behave in a real office setting. I was personally so scared to say or do something out of pocket to the point that I just didn’t talk to full timers that much. I was dumb looking back, but it’s hard to know what’s weird when u know nothing about the people/culture/real office setting.
My firm don’t offer return offers, only shortcut to AC.
I’m at a top BB and I think it’ll be low. Terrible effort across the street tbh. My interns leave 3-4 hours before the analysts and associates. Not a great look.
Got the offer, 80%+ return offer rate at GS! Living the dream, top bank in a top group!
Del
Seems like it, not sure about financing groups
JPM solid/top coverage group, 100% offers for MBAs and 70%+ for analysts, headcount wasn’t a concern
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