Curious to see what was the timeline of FT applications in London. Especially for people that upgraded their SA to a FT at a better bank. When was your Application - Interviews - Offers?
My guess would be: End of August - Mid September - End September
Mainly interested in BBs/EBs.
Thanks - trying to travel a bit after my SA!
Application End august/beginning Sept. First round interviews earliest mid Sept. Very rare to receive offers by end Sept. usually first offers are likely to come in during the course of October.
If you're an incoming MSc without a previous SA you should be applying to mainly SA 2022 positions with a couple of FT roles thrown in for good measure. Summer applications and processes usually start ramping up in August through September and progress a little quicker than the FT timeline. Lots of applications for networking events will come online in August.
You should start networking and preparing from June / July for interviews beginning the first week of September onward. For most BBs and EBs even if you're very on top of the process the literal first day of first round interviews is often in mid-October. Couple of major exceptions to bear in mind are that GS open their process very early but don't run it until November and PJT and PWP open and interview very early (can have an offer wrapped by end of first week of October).
If you've already done an SA this summer you can follow the September / October / November advice as above for FT recruitment if you don't convert or want to move elsewhere.
Build an Excel tracker sheet monitoring the process for the ~20 firms that you're likely targeting aggressively. Include a date for the last time you checked their website and make sure that you check-in with this sheet daily to make sure that you don't miss networking events coming up. Being within the first couple of days actually makes a big difference due to the volume of apps. This advice is broadly true for most SA apps as well but when I recruited I typically waited until I had confirmed some internal CV flags before applying for the SA - for the networking events just slam that app in as early as possible.
I wouldn't ask bankers about the networking event timelines (or even SA timelines) because it's an HR thing, unfortunately no real replacement for straight up checking the websites. Unless you're feeling spicy and feel like writing a script and macro to parse the careers pages and output to your Excel sheet.
Worth noting that although informal networking is important for the London process it's much more about structured networking events than in the US; people will flag your CV and give you some good insights but at the end of the day you need to make sure you're hitting the structured networking events so that HR can tick you off the list when it comes to the SA app. On the flip-side of this I was literally asked "Who do you know here" during an EB process so please don't neglect those coffee chats as well.
Have experience of both US and UK recruitment processes and find the UK recruitment process much more multi-faceted; i.e. all aspects of the application (experience, story, networking, standardised test scores, languages, target school, a stroke of luck) have to be there in order to secure the bag. In the US you can usually make up for weakness in one area by crushing another (e.g. massive networking effort can overcome lower GPA or non-target school).
*** EDIT: you didn't ask for all this but figured you might find this useful given your circumstance***
Yeah I would get a move on to try and get some form of relevant experience this summer (even if unpaid) before it all kicks off to help boost that CV.
Yes structured events are different from OCR. For clarity I break London networking "events" into four buckets and use them for different things but encourage doing all 4:
1. Informal networking - coffee chats and calls used to build out professional network, secure CV flags, generally keep on top of industry
2. OCR careers fairs (admission to anyone) - general shitshow, attend for any potential upside and crack a couple of jokes to the professionals / HR there on the offchance that they interview me and remember
3. OCR info sessions (invitation only) - use them to generate firm-specific information / learn about specific processes and transactions to drop during interviews, make sure that you talk to the HR rep to cop that recognition when your app goes through
4. Structured HR networking and info sessions (invitation only; pre-COVID were at the bank offices / British Museum for MS) - use this to get the HR recognition for SA application and secure senior CV flags
There is a very tight positive correlation between banks where I checked all four of the boxes above and those I received offers from. I'm sure you can wangle through without them all but better to approach it methodically and comprehensively.