How to increase chances?
I just need to increase my chances. I screwed up early on in my college career and had to go to a CC. From there I transferred out to University of Washington on scholarship money. I am a current junior taking Finance classes and decided whether I should change to engineering or stick with finance. My GPA is 3.85 right now, and I don't want to end up with a dead end finance job, I'd really like to try and break into IB.
So what should I do? How do I network in a non target school? Should I speak to professors about my goals/see if they can help out? Start showing up to other school's events(I have family in CA so it wouldn't be too difficult to travel down there and visit a career fair or two at UCLA and Berkeley)
I am just worried that if I apply(which is reality) for an internship position, my app will just get shoved to the side.
I guess I am just trying to increase my chances every which way I can....
Cold calling and networking goes far! Look at old threads about this and start off with the alumni list at your school.
^thats what I've heard. I am trying to compile a list of alumni that actually made it on the street.
bump. Any other advice?
To be honest this is very hard to give advice on if you're coming from a non-target without more information. Example the first things that pop into my head are the following.
The thing with breaking in as a non-target is you need to make your pitch tighter than a can of sardines. Without any information you're going to get vague stuff like 1) network, 2) cold call 3) linked in.
Once you have a more iron clad story, you can find the right spin on the story to figure out which group will like you more.
EX. A bio major would be better suited to go after health care IBD Ex. A Guy with real sales experience may be smarter to go into sales and trading to start (equity desk simply moving volume) and the begin jumping around Ex. A Guy with no job experience... well you're going to have a higher hurdle rate and need to absolutely get lower end experience first and are on a tighter "timeline" so to speak as soon as you get your first job.
Non-Target = need iron clad story with a smart blueprint to break in.
^thanks for the help. So I have no real job experience in finance, but I am shooting for an internship at Russell Investments(come to my school) in the investment division, and hopefully getting another internship somewhere else(probably Deloitte)(goldman sachs comes here for jobs out in their Utah areas, no investment stuff) At my cc I had a 3.98GPA, and my major GPA is 3.85 with lots of upper division math.
Half a year with the investment club.
Is it a good idea to see if professors can help out if I let them know my intentions?
Yeah so to be honest you probably already know this but you're a bit behind the ball you're going to have to jump around a lot.
Do whatever you can to secure a job at the highest tier within finance and then work from there jumping ship every year or so or faster if you can.
Tier 1 - HF/PE Tier 2 - IBD Tier 3 - Research/ Equity sales and trading (ie pushing volume through a sell side desk)/ Corporate M&A for major company Tier 4 - Asset Management Tier 5 - Other finance gigs
The above is not a perfect cookie cutter approach but you need to "jump" towards either 1. Stock picking or 2. Transactions. Even a KPMG job in transactional services is not too bad but this is a statement that depends on your resume/experience.
There is no reason not to ping your professors, most are pretty detached from the corporate world but if they are not you may get lucky and snag a decent job.
Get on linked in, get on all the job boards (left a post yesterday on this topic) and also start cold calling and emailing as soon as you have some sort of legitimate finance job.
Again sure you know this but legitimate job experience will trump your 3.85 GPA. IE someone with 3 months Equity research + 3.5 is going to beat your 4.0 + no finance experience. So get into something ASAP.
On the good side, you do have some time here. 1. Land best internship possible as close to tier 1/2/3. 2. Search for small internships now that are unpaid so you can work those as well while you're in school and 3. when it comes to full time recruiting try to secure yet another unpaid or paid internship in finance.
Actions speak louder than words and thats what job experience does relative to your GPA. You can take a 0.2 hit to the GPA if it means getting better experience. Hope that all helps.
Thanks for the advice man I appreciate the help, I can use all that I get, haha.
So would you say that getting an internship in Russell Investments for the IBD area is a good idea? I figure it exposes me to some IB that way, and hopefully looks good on my resume.
As always "whats the alternative"
Working a K-Mart or Russel investments = yeah Russel is 100000000x better.
So what you want to do is jump as close to tier one, overall i think you're set up right now is "Okay to just below okay" because you've spent a bit too much time on school and not enough time on real life work experience.
So yes I would take that job, but if something better comes up get ready to jump ship. Gotta hustle to get where you want to go.
To clarify, what "better" means is something closer to IBD or a front office job.
Example: internship at boutique investment bank >>>>> internship at Citigroup Personal financial advisors.
What you do is more important than the name at this point in the game, you can worry about prestige once you're in the right field. We want candidates who can be as close to "hitting the ground running" as possible.
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