Interview with Piper Jaffray
I'm interviewing at Piper Jaffray for Diversified Industrials and Services Investment Banking, can someone shed some light on how the interview process is like? Anything about this group at Piper Jaffray will also be helpful.
If you want to work at Piper, you need to let them know that you have absolutely zero respect for yourself and you don't mind being abused by your MD's. Don't wear a suit, wear a gimp outfit.
Seriously, the place is a sweatshop. Stay far away unless it is your only opportunity. You will not be happy there, all of my friends who were at Piper jumped after less than a year.
FYI if this is Minneapolis, that's one of the worst groups for work life balance at the firm.
In MPLS? I'd stay far away. As others have mentioned, it's a sweatshop. Have a friend there now and he's miserable. Decent pay, but works 7 days a week doing mundane tasks. Far better shops in the Minneapolis area. Check out Marquette, castlelake, Columbia(amp), lakestreet, craig-hallum.
This is wrong. Most of those places you mentioned will not get you any recognition. Mentioning Craig Hallum for example is laughable when their entire M&A team left to merge w/ Quetico and form Hennepin.
Places worth being at will be the ones you recognize: Houlihan, Lazard MM, BMO, etc.
If you’re talking about work life balance that’s a different story, but as shitty as it can be to work at Piper, it’s still an established and recognized MM shop and will get you better looks and exits than the names you listed.
Switch out BMO with HW and you are dead on. BMO is in disarray post-acquisition. They tried to go up market ($250mm floor) and failed miserably. Now they are saying they cover the LMM like they used to.
LOL, wut? As Nuclear pointed out, you are terribly ignorant on banking in the TC. Castlelake is a distressed credit shop and OP hasn't indicated he is qualified for that gig.
Marquette is dead. WTF is Columbia? Lake Street is a shitty small capital markets shop. Ditto for Craig Hallum. Once the team split to form Hennepin, there are like two bankers left and one of them was an associate that they promoted far too early b/c they needed someone with a reasonable title to pitch whatever businesses that they haven't a prayer of repping on the sell side.
Spot on - HW def merits being on the list of places that matter in Minneapolis. Add'l color you added is all accurate. To elaborate on Craig Hallum, heard a VP basically got pushed out there a couple months before the split and they hired him back as an MD, haha (I think this is true, didn't personally confirm).
To add even more detail - at Piper I interviewed people who interned at one of the previous places trying to make the move after getting an offer all the time or laterals trying to make the jump. Don't know anyone who got an offer at Piper / Houlihan / etc. leave to go to fucking Marquette or Lake Street lol.
Lol wut? You clearly aren’t from/informed of the Minneapolis shops. I’m not going to put forth effort in explaining to you the cons of piper. Plenty of other forums on here that provide details.
I was in Minneapolis for 3+ years and went to college there. I worked at Piper and know numerous people at the reputable firms in addition to many who are at or were from the less well known ones.
Yes, work life balance blows there and you’ll get unnecessarily crushed, but to say you’d rather go to the shops you listed and not even mention anybody actually legit is hilarious. Exits are going to be better at Piper than Lake Street and the like. Period. Surprised you don’t think of like fucking Bayview Capital as a good shop given the inaccuracies you’re spewing out here.
Listen Mr. Ameriprise, I know you think you know what happens in IB, but it is clear you haven't a clue. Nowhere in my post did I commend Piper, but if you think some of those dog shit shops that you recommend your neighbor to for micro-cap follow-on offerings are legit firms, then you might as well join Primerica.
Some people are legitimately coming on here for advice and you aren't doing them any favors by providing misinformed fallacies that could cause them to make a poor decision.