Journey from CC to EB
I thought I would give my story for anyone who might be experiencing or going down a similar path.
To start I have no industry connections going into this and nobody in my family is remotely in finance. I almost failed out of High School; graduated with an absurdly low GPA. Decided to go to a CC to continue my education and found myself failing out of the beginning years of my CC. After 4 years of community college I was able to transfer to a non-target school and that's where the grind really started. I had no idea what IB was but I knew I was interested in finance. I decided to inhale as much information as possible and sent thousands of cold emails for my first internship at a small shop, it was a great first experience and allowed me to understand what finance really was. I wasn't able to land anything for my junior year summer so I delayed my graduation. The following summer I landed myself a role for a non-IB internship. I did not receive a return offer from my junior year role but I kept recruiting. I sent thousands of emails and had hundreds of calls for the last 2 months. Got involved in a multitude of different processes from BBs/EBs/MMs. Couple weeks ago I signed with an EB as a generalist and couldn't be more happy the grind is over.
I thought I'd share my story with other people who might be discouraged about the position they're in. It is possible to make it to where you want to be; you just have to be willing to put your head down and continue through all the rejections. Recruiting should be treated as a full-time job; it is a combination of luck, determination and preparation.
Happy to answer any questions anyone may have.
what were the interviews for BB/EBs like in terms of technicals or modeling tests? did you send generic emails since it was quantity over quality? it would be kind of hard to customize every single email when sending that many. just wondering how you kept track of all these emails - was it an excel tracker?
To answer both of your questions
.1) FT Interviews were pretty standard what you'd expect. Accounting stuff, valuation, behavioral. I'd say there was a pretty heavy focus on LBO questions. For ex If we had 5x entry and exit with 50/50 debt equity what would fcf need to be to receive x% IRR. Seemed like a lot of banks focused on fit and passing technicals was more of just checking the box. Didn't find that much of a difference between EBs and BBs in regards to FT interviews. I did have a 1 hour modeling test for most superdays
2)Emails we're all generic, didn't have time to handcraft them. Since I targeted a few different types of IB roles coverage vs product etc I made sure to spin some of my experiences very briefly which made me seem like a good fit. All calls were tracked through an excel spreadsheet I made.
thanks for the information appreciate it. what kind of modeling tests did you do? lbo? dcf? 3 statement?
For resources to prep I used:
BIWS 400
WSP Redbook
WSP video courses
Rosenbaum & Pearl
Pragmatist Guide to Lev Fin
Moyer Distressed Debt Analysis
CITI Credit Primer
Damodaran Valuation
Reading up on major deals and overall macro news
~1 year of prep with avg of 1-2 hours a day.
Congrats my guy, you deserve it!
Congrats man, super well deserved! Similar case here, I went to my local CC after high school and didn't really know what I wanted to major in. When I transferred to a non-target, I learned about IB in second semester and grinded my butt off. Ended up doing 3 internships in IB and PE, and now work full-time as an analyst at an IB. The grind truly does pay off and the feeling I got was indescribable. So take in every bit of this feeling, this is a huge accomplishment and you should be very proud of what you've achieved.
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