EB IB Recruiting Insights

Bump - Also Interested

bump interested as well

Went through FT recruiting 

• Do they hire a lot externally for FT or mostly return offers?
  • Market dependant, intern quality dependant
• What about return to external hiring ratios compared to BB?
  • Market dependant, intern quality dependant
• If they do hire externally, what backgrounds are most competitive?
  • In order
    • Brand name buyside
    • BB/EB with RO looking for a switch
    • BB/EB no RO
    • BB/EB random groups (ECM, shareholder activsm, etc) with RO
    • MM with RO
    • BB/EB random groups or MM without RO
    • Random adjacent jobs
    • Jerking off to porn all summer
• Insights on hiring trend
  • No real trend; market dependant, intern quality dependant
• Rx specific would require strong SA related to credit (other rx, BB levfin, credit buyside, etc), but I'm sure if an SA from Qatalyst wants to make the switch they will let him in the process

Believe it’s relatively sparse, for RX the FT slots open up when an SA doesn’t come back as return rates are almost 100%. Believe RSSG and EVR RX always return all SA. For non-RX, likely more spots.

All EBs to my knowledge have the capacity to return all of their SAs. Unless the quality of the SAs are really bad, like what seemed to have happened at Moe LA this summer, the return rate should be pretty high. Based on previous threads, seems like summer internship at a top BB or competing EB is realistically a prerequisite. 

Went through the FT recruiting process at this past fall after doing SA at a MM boutique and am heading to a EVR/PJT/PWP/MOE type bank. 

What's most important is getting a return offer from your SA stint. If you don't, it becomes exponentially harder to go upmarket. Being able to talk about your summer and what you did in depth is also extremely important. 

As for getting to interviews, try and build long-term relationships. I'm not saying you should hit up random people cold a year out from your SA stint. But, find opportunities to stay in touch with contacts (coffee when you're in their city, recruiting events when they come to your campus, etc...) that you found during SA recruiting. These people will likely go to bat for you in the FT recruiting process if you're able to maintain solid relationships. 

Over the course of the summer, apart from focusing on getting a return offer, make sure to network with the banks / groups you want to join. I'd suggest being selective here, as this is arduous and deep connections with fewer groups will likely yield more value than cursory ones with a ton of banks. 

Once fall comes around, it becomes a free-for-all. In my experience, the EBs move more quickly than others, and it's really the end of the summer that is most important. 

Recruited FT and got multiple offers from firms like PJT / EVR / MOE / CVP / Q / PWP (some restructuring). Spent a decent bit of time prepping, planned it out before my summer, and spoke with alum who did it successfully. Some info that might be helpful:

• Spots are ad hoc (e.g. reliant on intern returns / acceptances, the market, and group deal volume), but certain groups tend to hire each year. You can find these trends on LinkedIn if you look hard enough
  • The ad hoc nature of hiring makes networking 10x more important
• If you summered somewhere decent and maintained an ok GPA you should be able to interview at most groups that are hiring (barring exceptionally difficult groups like PJT RSSG / BCP that might require a stronger background)
• Having a return offer is crucial and will come up in all interviews
• EBs that are expanding are more likely to run full-time processes, especially compared to BBs. Most BBs have HR personnel that set hiring numbers. When the market is bad, these numbers won't budge, but at an EB, a growing firm in a bad market will still hire
• Never put your eggs in one basket, no matter how confident you are. Full-time is unpredictable; even if your contact explicitly indicates that the group will hire full-time, sometimes they don't