Lying About SA Return Offer. What Do I Do?
Hi All,
I’m totally stumped. Last week my SA internship ended at a decent MM in SF, and I was declined a return offer. When gauging why, I found out the reasons were twofold. Firstly, I did not fit the culture of the specific team I was in - I performed well technically on the job and got along with several seniors, but just could not appropriately crack the shells of some fellow analysts and associates. Secondly, the group is slowing down it’s growth over the years, and I knew this coming in - as a result, I networked and studied technicals aggressively and landed a few interviews.
Now, I am a candidate in the play for several firms - I have read through almost every single WSO post on how to ideally play the scenario, but it is so situational given differences in reason for everyone, especially being at different firms. How do I tackle this? I know lying can come back and bite you, and it is totally against my morals. However, the work I’ve done to not only get my recent gig, but also these interviews, means the world to me and I don’t want the return offer undermining my stats (Target School, 3.7-4.0 GPA - and I provide these stats as humbly as I can). If I come clean, I fear that it is 99% an auto-ding no matter how passionately I can justify my situation. No return wasn’t necessarily a reflection on my personal capabilities as several people at the firm could speak highly, it was being in the wrong group at the wrong time.
Any constructive insight or advice would be appreciated. Thanks all.
tl;dr - no return offer for reasons more firm-specific than me-specific. How can I finesse this the most appropriate way?
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/if-no-ft-offer-after-jr-year-int…</a">A relevant recent thread for you to check out
As stated in that thread, your best bet is to reach out to everyone you can and say honestly, the group is slowing down which limited the number of full-time offers they could extend. I did extremely well technically but the cultural fit wasn't perfect (in the back of your mind come up with reasons if pressed on this). I loved my job and am very passionate about doing banking ... etc. [as discussed in that thread].
I think it is highly personal and situation dependent. If you developed a good rapport with someone at another bank, you may get farther there than with a cold intro. Or maybe vice versa and it’s good to go in with no preconceived notions about you. I’m not so sure there is a common pattern other than it will get asked and you just have to grin and bear it.
Don’t lie about your return offer. Ever.
You have a valid explanation for why you didn’t get a return offer. Just roll with it. If you act ashamed it will look like you messed up.
Just own up when asked and be confident when you explain your answer. Don’t go too in-depth. Just hit the key points. Don’t sweat it
You probably won't get caught right away if you lie, because it would be incredibly bad form (and pointless) for the firm potentially hiring you to contact the firm where you summered. But once you're hired into the new place they'll probably learn the truth, and might fire you then.
One way to spin it, in addition to getting an MD at the MM to give you a genuinely positive reference, is tell the other places you're interviewing that the MM is substantially overstaffed relative to their dealflow, but extremely sensitive about that information getting into the market. Will help if you can drum up any data points on how many summers they hired back full time. Hopefully it's zero or some very small percentage.
That way when they call for a reference, they'll interpret anything they hear from the MM as an effort to deflect from a slowdown in dealflow, even if there isn't one.