Assuming you go to a target and have decent work experience and grades how critical is networking to getting an interview at the BB's. Also how does a resume turn to an interview at these firms. Is a referral necessary or is simply talking to members at the firm enough.
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Unless you are extremely qualified (top target, great GPA, work experience in banking at a good name) you need to network. Even then you would need to have some luck on your side because as you know the process is extremely competitive. So definitely network extensively and spend your time speaking to juniors, at most BBs they decide who gets interviewed from their school. This does vary by bank so a better question would be: Which BBs take place most importance on networking?
I can't speak to every BB but I can tell you that at my target school Barclays and Citi are networking heavy but JPM is starting to rely less on networking and more on the online assessments. Most EB are also networking heavy.
Even with top grades, networking helps. Regardless of your contacts you will have to go through the official recruitment process for entry-level jobs. Thing is that if 10K people apply to a bank, 7K may pass the numerical tests and HireVue. You're still competing against 7K people. Having someone bat for you inside the bank and flag your CV to HR makes you go from 1 in 7K to 1 in 1-2K with some form of connection. Huge leg up for getting to R1 interviews.
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Even if you check off all the boxes/criteria they’re looking for, there’s a pretty significant chance that hundreds of other students are in the same boat. Networking is truly the marginal factor that enables you to stand out (as long as you don’t mess it up of course).
The key is finding the person that runs the recruiting process in the team, as they have the ability to flag your resume to HR and keep you in the back of their mind when recruiting/interviewing process begins. But just generally networking with folks on the team is good enough too.
Also, it’s a great feeling to go through a superday and find out you know a handful of people during your interviews from past networking. They’re less likely to be assholes from my experience and can vouch that you made an effort to network + they think you’d be great for the team.
Just don’t fuck up the networking part!
how many applicants do you guys think actually network? Do you think we’re at the point where more applicants than not have networked with at least 1 person in the bank?
At a top target, 3.9 GPA in decent (not math, not psychology) field, good work experience.
From the target alumni I've talked to who are at every BB, they all say networking is critical. The target alum are the ones who pull the resumes for superdays -- they will pull a 4.0 math major who did banking last summer, but otherwise, even if you're at HYP/Wharton/Stanford/MIT type schools, they'll only pull names that they actually have talked with.
If you're actually at a target, talking to alumni should be enough.
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