London Recruiting is Paradise
You wake up in a top target UK university, which max 1% of people outside of Europe have heard of. It's 8:00am, and the sky is grey and it's raining; August 1st, and the weather has never been this nice.
All of the internships come out today, so you're reading over 40 copies of near-identical CVs in your recruitment Google Drive, ready to press 'Submit Application' the second each form opens.
You didn't get any springs, but that's okay, because unlike the US, networking does nothing here. You'll probably have your CV tossed docked within seconds of applying because 50,000 people are applying for the same 10 open roles at each firm, but that's okay, because you're at a top target. Surely the offer won't be given to a QMUL/UEA student. Surely.
You already have an interview for an investment bank- yes, a REAL investment bank, whose applications opened early- in a few hours. You know your behaviourals, and your technicals are as good as they can get- $10 depreciation, linking the financial statements, pitching a stock... it couldn't get much better.
You dreamily imagine the possibilities- working on Liverpool Street, in Canary Wharf, in Mayfair, working 90 hour weeks while earning 50% of your American peers... One can only hope at this stage.
The interview is coming up, and HR pings you an email with your analyst interviewer's name.
Great, an Italian woman from Bocconi. I'm sure she won't favour the Bocconi students she inevitably interviews, you think smugly to yourself. You'll prove yourself, definitely.
2 hours pass. You've just filled out the same Workday and Dartmouth Partners forms 40 and 10 times each. Dartmouth won't let you down, you're sure.
You're now wearing your blazer, shirt, and tie, and you're sitting in front of your laptop, all ready to go. You've written down your questions in advance on a piece of paper, in case you get nervous.
You smile to yourself. This is it, you think, I'll be an investment banker soon.
You join the call and shortly the Italian is on the call with you and you smile and say hello. She asks you to introduce yourself with the thickest Italian accent imaginable- you barely understand what she's saying- and you deliver your battle-tested response.
She didn't understand a word of what you said. Being Italian, and all. You wonder why you even showed up.
London recruiting is paradise.
The post captures how competitive London recruiting can feel, especially when applications open simultaneously and firms receive huge volumes of similar CVs. Being at a target university helps, but it cannot guarantee an interview or offer. Preparation still matters, and staying flexible about firms, roles, and interview styles can make the process less overwhelming.
Ok clanker
Honestly London recruiting is turning into a joke. With trackers and AI you have thousands of people sending their applications within the minute the bank posts the role. No networking, only luck. You can just pray that Karen from HR will open your hirevue video
literally. i wrote this post 'as a joke' but this exact situation happened to me over the last week.
I know I have friends recruiting right now. I am an2 and can see how rigged the system is. Among the 20 CVs pre-selected by HR I receive, half of them I wonder how tf it passed the screening. Think about 2-pages CV, weirdly formatted, no experiences, etc. While I know for a fact there are hundreads of over qualified candidates that don’t pass the screening for some reason
How did people even apply before Trackr?
Spoiler alert (and something I only realised after getting lucky back in 2018-19 time but that has definitely become clearer since) - networking actually helps more than you realise. While ostensibly it's all HR / automated, having someone at the bank (especially in the IB department) vouch for you means that your CV is much more likely to make it through the "HR screening" round and be seen by actual bankers.
Thanks. Given I’ve already submitted apps to all the bbs/ebs/open opportunities (ie most of the “big ones”), is it still worth reaching out? If so, how do you recommend going about it? I’ve already received so many rejections lol
Will help you for when Off-Cycle comes around
Congrats on LSE
Godspeed
1st August*
27 y/o Europeans from hec bocconi escp with 10 off cycles please fuck off back home, and no I'm not being salty
Then stop covering other countries, so they have the respective high paying finance jobs in their home country. Will be even less places for UK grads.
Banks already have local offices and plenty of local language speakers. The reality is, London-based sector teams don’t need languages at all (apart from specific verticals of RE or FIG). They hire Europeans because they are staffed with other Europeans who look out for each other. The EU business school grads would rather work with other EU business school grads. This Continental nepotism is everywhere and also applies to buy-side seats.
The worst feeling I've ever had as an intern was having to work with an HEC / Bocconi / ESCP grad who couldn't understand me (a UK 2nd Year UG) and them trying to gaslight me for their issues.
If you are a UK student and you want to work at a BB, my top tip is don't - go to an MM and build a strong reputation there before considering to go to a BB because in all honesty, it really sucks.
That is the worst advice I have ever heard. MM brand on your CV is a stain. Saying this as someone at GS/MS/JPM in London in a EMEA team.
You can cut it, if you can cut it. Other people just don’t have the minerals and blame some imaginary Italian VP who hated their ass because they weren’t from Bocconi.
Imagine telling a poor kid, don’t go Oxford it’s for poshos, go to Leeds instead. That’s what you sound like when you tell someone to go to Cannacord Genuity instead of JPM
Why MM is a stain? Can still be a solid way to build your career if you couldn't make it at BB directly
Why is MM a stain? Curious to know.
I was also in a BB and it's not as simple as "if you can cut it, you can cut it". The conversations around returns were based on what the business needs were, what geographies could be covered, which languages were in demand.
If you go to an MM, develop some deal flow, you can lateral into GS / MS / JPM during a peak deal season where it's more about personnel requirement than intern matching to non-performance related criteria.
Dude luck plays a big part in if you can get into BB or not
They couldn't understand your English or what do you mean?
Everyone from Bocconi I've met is a spoiled insufferable. 80% of the interaction is just hearing about how Italy is better (despite the COL in Milan fucking them in the ass) and how great their holidays in Sicily were. Thanks for sharing about your friends' gathering, Paolo, now can I see the fucking model finished? - thank you.
The funniest part of this thread is the assumption that something has gone wrong because London banks no longer hand out seats to a second-year UK undergrad who did one spring week and Geography at a “target”. Nothing is “broken”. The competition just got better.
Continental Europeans figured this out years ago. If your domestic university system wasn’t giving you enough signalling power, you went to HEC / Bocconi / ESCP / LBS for a relevant Master’s. If you didn’t have experience, you did off-cycles. Then another off-cycle. Then another. You learned languages, moved countries and spent 2-3 years building a CV specifically designed for London recruiting. Meanwhile some people seem genuinely offended that “I go to a good UK university” is no longer a complete recruiting strategy.
And now the proposed solution is what exactly? Banks should deliberately prefer the 20-year-old with two society positions and a Geography degree over the 24-year-old with a finance Master’s and three transactions on his CV because the former happened to start university in Britain?
The old system was the anomaly. London is the EMEA financial centre. Of course you are competing against the best candidates from Milan, Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt and everywhere else. And AI makes this argument even more ridiculous. When everyone can produce a polished CV, cover letter and application in five minutes, credentials that actually require effort (internships, technical knowledge, languages, relevant postgraduate education, real deal exposure) become MORE important, not less.
You’re not competing with “the Italian”. You’re competing with someone who looked at the same job you wanted, realised the bar had moved, and spent three years clearing it while you were complaining that the bar shouldn’t have moved.
Welcome to a competitive labour market.
The British education system is cooked honestly.
The French kids graduate from Hec Escp etc. with apprenticeships, real world experience, and are used to working really hard academically as early as prépa years. Also they don't have student loans they repay till they're 65.
Isn't London IB just in decline period? I genuinely don't know of transactions that happen in the UK.
London IB covers the entire EMEA, not just the UK
All that hard work and experience and yet you hit the desk and still have no idea how to talk to a normal human being
Aye listen… you think London recruiting is hard? Try being Italian. And watching every British kid act like they’re God’s gift because they went to LSE. Meanwhile my people get the seats and you sit there confused. Cry about it. We don’t care.
As an American, it is insanely hard to get a job in London.
TIPS PLEASE. I am trying to escape the US!!
What do Brits like to see in foreign/North American applicants who may have a reputation of being "arrogant".
I noticed you guys start all your emails with "Dear".
Why would you leave the US. It's way more competitive to land something in london. You standout with languages, experience, spring insights, target school and a fuck ton of luck.
there's no way it's more competitive in london than us lmao
A big difference is that UK university courses are broad, but rarely specified. You rarely have courses going deep into say financial market theory compared to the European system that de facto requires a Masters degree to have a real chance to break into IB, due to the structural difference in both the educational and recruiting systems.
Junior talent way stronger in London than NY
15-20-% lower comp at some shops (equiv in others) but lower cost of living and way higher quality of life
Can’t deal with most continental Europeans, Oxbridge classics and PPEs very good
Thank you for tour attention
Bocconi (and maybe Italian schools in general) is such an enigma to me honestly. I just started out at HEC; I'm originally from South-East Asia so I wasn't as aware of the landscape of things before
For one, I don't understand what kind of target it is if most of the people who do their undergrad there end up doing masters at 'higher targets' to recruit. At least 30% of my cohort is from Bocconi. The best part is how incredibly behind they seem to be in most subjects despite literally every single one of them having a 4/4 GPA at Bocconi (not sure how they converted this but every single one of them apparently has the equivalent of a high first class). The cherry on top of the shit sundae is that they seem to have very little interest in studying/learning anything and have terrible discipline.
They will come to class 20 minutes late pretty casually and then 7 Italians at the back continue to laugh, giggle and chitchat the entire time. I suppose this is HEC's fault because you need to attend like 90% of the classes to pass. I recently discovered that you don't need to attend any class at Bocconi which I guess explains why these people just don't seem to be aware of what a lecture/class is supposed to be like?
I don't know if being Italian is enough of a help to get into London IB anymore but I sincerely hope that these people have some Italian woman willing to take them on IBD because they're not going to be able to get into a field that's remotely technical and doesn't rely entirely on who you know
Could not have put it better myself.
Same exact experience but at LSE. They do not contribute to class discussions, sit at the back speaking Italian with one another, and don't perform well (academically). Not sure what's going on there.
Yep. Same at escp. The italians are absolutely useless when working in groups and speak over the profs. Most of the time they're online shopping while in class.
If they do get top internships its usually through family/friends
All the money to go to top target schools but still can't buy class 🤌
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