FT Recruiting 2024 Advice
Hi everyone, looking for some guidance here. I interned at an M&A focused MM coverage group last summer. Had a pretty atypical experience all around. 2nd week on the desk was thrown straight onto two deals, and ended up being tasked with re-building full historical P&Ls from trial balance info for one of them on the Friday of my 2nd week with a deliverable due for meeting with the client by the following Monday. By the end of the month I was driving the model and the analyst above me got rolled off the project, so I ended up doing a ton of modeling and and valuation work for one of the deals I was on. Even ended up getting to a point where I was emailing a client's CEO as an intern. Was ripping 110-130 hours consistently pretty much all summer and helped shell out and build 2 CIMs, countless databases, screens etc. My midsummer and end reviews were all fantastic, no negative comments, and even said my fit and personality were some of the strongest aspects I had. Then end of summer comes around and I got shafted when return offers came around. Immediately scheduled chats around the office with VPs, MDs etc. trying to figure out what happened but never really got anywhere and was told to say it was a "fit issue" if asked in interviews, even though it was not the case.
Ended up looking all school year for something for FT and only got 1 interview which didn't end up going anywhere. Including the IB summer position I did, I also did ones in PE and investment research, so I feel like those with my somewhat outlandish experience from last summer should've been enough to find something. However, still on the hunt for something for FT and search is pretty much exclusive to NYC and surrounding area since that's where I grew up and have family. Now starting to spread a pretty wide net, outside IB included, but search has been extremely dry.
Anyone know of any openings on the street anywhere? What would you guys do here / recommend?
Hello Luffy,
Sorry to hear about your experience. I was in a similar situation (not as much work as you, but was mainly helping lean M&A An/AS team on 2 deals, similar work). Also didn't convert. I was given rave reviews at midsummer, and when return offers came around they decided not to provide me with one, which was pretty tough. Since then I've had over 20+ interviews, almost all of them going through multiple rounds, and many of them having 10-25+ hr case studies. Brutal.
I have sent out 800+ applications and have individually reached out to many people, all to no avail, other than a small M&A shop in the Bay Area. I focused on IB because that is where I have experience, and have applied to many jobs outside of IB, including project finance, but that search has been dry too. I spent my whole senior year absolutely miserable and stressed out looking for a job. All the networking calls I have had inquiring about any open positions ended up being a "Yeah we aren't hiring analysts without any Full-Time experience at the moment, but I will forward your resume to HR" type deal.
I spoke with some friends' parents who are recruiters, and they all gave me the same advice which was "Keep your head up, something will come".
It's literally the last thing that I want to hear.
It's a jungle out there. Keep combing LinkedIn and reaching into your network is the best that I can offer. If you fall 1000 times get back up 1001. If it were easy everyone would have it, but it is not.
Best of Luck.
Look to boutiques. Seen an uptick in posting at a lot of those firms.
I found a list of 600+ boutique IBs all across the country. ~200 of them were in NYC. I sent emails to almost all of them (both individuals who work at the firms and HR) and still no bites. Would not hurt to circle back...
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