as incoming sophomore at semi-target I was wondering how many hours per week networking is gonna take (from sending emails to calls...) I'm planning to try to connect with 50ish bankers over the fall
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I had about 120 phone calls (sent ~1500-2000 emails) over the course of 2 or 3 months before I got my first offer. At times I felt like it was all I would do from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. For context, I went through recruiting with nearly a 4.0 and 2 banking internships but went to a non-target. Most of my outreach was cold. I’m not sure how the hit rate varies at semi-targets and targets.
you are not going to get a clear cut answer for this as it varies for everyone but I would say 2-3 normally and 4-5 if things are really heating up
Depends how hungry you are. You want to work in IB, then networking is your life until you get the job.
I went to a semi-target. Did around 3-4 calls a week in the peak of it. That was enough for 6-7 first rounders. I believe 1-2 strong contacts are better than a weak relationship with 10 randos at the bank. Between prep/research/call itself, this would take around 3 hours of my time each week, so not bad.
SalesQL and LinkedIn xray can save a ton of your time though.
In my opinion, I think you should be a volume shooter for the first month or so and cast your net wide. During this time put who you've reached out to and somewhat have an honest assessment with yourself on how the call went and rate it on the excel sheet. For the calls that went well, after the first month you should continuously try to double down on those relationships and try to cultivate something meaningful without being annoying. In my experience, the meaningful relationships are the ones that yield the best results.
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