Future of Non-Target Recruiting

There’s been many discussions about decreased headcount either from COVID-19 or other factors. Will non-target students be recruited less to accommodate decreased headcount? If I’m a non-target is there anything I can do to standout? Should I look into other careers?

19 Comments
 
Controversial

Most kids at Target are going into MBB and FAANG over IB lately so Banks would have to recruit more Non Targets

 

it might be a controversial opinion but MBB pretty much offers better overall experience than IB. most people go into IB for PE but you can get into MF PE thru MBB. Their culture, support system, and other benefits are way better than IB. Also MBB provides transition time where they pay you to find job for like 6 months. MBB is fairly harder to get into since they focus a lot on meritocracy thru grades and target schools so it’s not likely that a lot of people can just network their way in.

 
Most Helpful
"Intern in IB-M&A"

it might be a controversial opinion but MBB pretty much offers better overall experience than IB. most people go into IB for PE but you can get into MF PE thru MBB. Their culture, support system, and other benefits are way better than IB. Also MBB provides transition time where they pay you to find job for like 6 months. MBB is fairly harder to get into since they focus a lot on meritocracy thru grades and target schools so it’s not likely that a lot of people can just network their way in.

The culture and overall experience has always been better at MBB vs. IB, but I disagree that people are gravitating more towards consulting vs. banking. I don't think anything has really changed in that arena.

I do agree that to some extent banking is losing out to tech / FAANG, which is a trend that has been taking place the last 10 years, but the trend has been much slower vs. what people had expected and there is a bit less overlap between these candidates as well. If anything, IB at top targets is losing out candidates to direct PE/HF, which have begun to pull from undergrad level for their analyst roles (increasingly). This is only a handful of kids per year, but this would be the "top talent" most likely. Other than that, I think the same profile of student today is going into banking as was going in 10 years back. IB lifestyle / hours suck, but that's no secret, and it has always been the case.

 

No! everyone goes thru the same resume filter and then get passed to their preferred location after round 1.

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