MD told me to only screen Northeast men?
So I’m a new VP who internally lateraled to the US. I got pulled into resume screening for summer associate interviews. Thought it’d be chill, look for good GPAs, finance clubs, cool hobbies whatever.
Was told “only focus on men from the Northeast schools” And “make sure their names aren’t too weird” I thought he was joking but then he straight up told me to skip over anyone outside that profile.
I get that banking has target schools but this felt insane. I didn’t say anything because I’m not about to argue with someone who could fire me in 2 seconds. But is this actually how it works at most places where you get verbal screening rules?
Don't expect many comments on this one - if it's not about the unfairness of DEI to non-targets, most on WSO aren't interested
My MD said to only hire brown people. Racism is solved for today.
"As a black Londoner"
Gee I wonder why you support DEI policies so much.
No MD would want only brown people
Why did bro edit the comment loool
He must have been triggeredddd
Have always found it funny that WSO seemed to very easily understand DEI as covert and racist against whites but couldn't fathom that the opposite could occur and was possible.
Whatever fits the narrative 🤷
This tracks. Just to add perspective - I’m a female minority (i.e. female x POC) who went to target school with a strong GPA. Some examples of what I’ve experienced in the industry:
This isn’t to say every male or white colleague behaves this way, but these are a few of the many experiences of bias that does creep in, despite having an objectively ‘strong’ background on paper. I haven't really encountered blatant racism and sexism until I entered IB.
My friends and I have been inquired about these items in some shape or form during our interviews over the years. Pretty standard and nothing do with your gender. What you want is special treatment and your colleagues are sick of it.
I have personally witnessed special treatment for female juniors in the form of gifts, invites to special workshops and mentorships, lower bar during promotions at the cost of competent men, and all that while poor male juniors continue to toil and fight for fewer seats. To make it worse, a lot of them were more dedicated and competent than the women that are being offered opportunities in the name of DEI. Almost all DEI intiatives at our bank are solely focused on women.
Trumps America! LFG!
This totally happened. This vindicates my beliefs. I am intelligent.
Nah. This shit gotta be rage bait.
Do you work at UBS
Wouldn’t be shocked
interesting way to say "no Indian on my floor" lmao
Congrats on HW
this doesn't fit my narrative so i'm going to assume your lying
Since the post seemed to have created a frenzy for some and led to people jumping to conclusions, was the intent for the MD really not to hire individuals from a certain race? If so, was there one in mind?
I've seen an MD say that before half jokingly, because we had an intern with a goofy European name that he would always frustratingly butcher.
What type of shop if you don't mind?
And then the MD screamed out “this is MAGA country.”
Then Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” starts playing over the loudspeaker
Based and kinship-pilled.
If any other race was doing this (they do) no one would care.
true this happens so much in tech
What you smoking?
Edit: Meh, I won't bother
Saar, no saar. That we hired 14 Indian H-1Bs and no one else is pure coincidence, saar.
People give this MS because it's true and they benefit from it. WSO is disproportionately people who wouldn't pass the "Northeast Men" screening.
This. People need to realize India has internet now. There are a billion of them and they all seem to have loud opinions on Americans' ideals. Reminder that voting is the only opinion that matters; something they can't do (in some states lmao).
Case in point from this week:
An Illegal immigrant made an illegal U-turn, causing a crash that killed 3 people. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-turnpike-fatal-crash-u-turn-truck-driver-video-fort-pierce/
"Collective Punjabi Youth" started a petition for clemency yesterday and has reached close to 500,000 signatures within 24 hours. Even argues no criminal history (despite being here illegally), and appeals to the power of community advocacy (i.e., political activism on behalf of their kin). https://www.change.org/p/plea-for-fair-sentencing-commutation-request-for-a-28-year-old-punjabi-man-involved-in-a
They all need to go back. The illegal CDL and insurance scams for foreigners in the trucking industry is its own can of worms. Love that the trump admin is now starting to crack down on this and visas.
And that VP resume screener's name? Was Jussie Smollett.
Based AF ngl
This site is hilarious because if you replaced “northeast men” with minorities or asians or whatever other demographic, the comments would be filled with outrage.
"Northeast men" are less likely to see race:
Yet how often do you see a minority get elevated into a leadership role, and then the entire team beneath them slowly morphs to the same racial group as their leader?
Whites are the only group demonized for showing in-group preference, while others are praised for it. We're expected to be colorblind, while everyone else is praised for discriminating against us.
Best start believing in a Fratriarchy... You're in one.
Dawg you work in corpfin in a T3 city, nobody is coming for your job😭😭
Grow a pair and stop using the term “minority”. The group with such tendencies is “women” and more often than not led by white women. But stating that won’t fit your racist agenda. When was the last time you saw an all Black / Hispanic / Brown / Arab management or Board. It is always white men with a few white / colored women. These women when empowered turn the group into a cult and only hire/promote other women.
I know you are lowkey racist and aren't posting this data with the best intentions. Regardless, I would agree with this generally. The West was built on the fundamentals of a high trust society - being race blind and meritocracy focused is a key pillar of our success. Therefore, the more "native" a person in the West is, the more likely it is they don't focus as much on race. However, when you start importing an unsustainable number of people from low-trust societies, our social fabric starts breaking down
Our immigration system should disincentivize mass low-wage immigration from low trust societies (ie. India, Latin America etc)) and focus towards high-wage immigration from high-trust societies (ie. Nordics, Canada, NZ etc)
"make sure their names weren't too weird"
rage bait used to be realistic in this country
As a student in the northeast, this is dumb considering Duke/Stanford/UChicago clearly aren't in the northeast. But yeah not surprising.
Also what firm doesn't hire women?
It's somewhat amusing. I remember when I was a VP leading a hiring for a few associates. I was told, "Only interview women, preferably non-white women." It's funny how nobody lost their sh*t about that one.
Well what was your ratio of men to women, and how many diversity people did you have? If it’s zero for both you start questioning whether it’s purposeful sexism/racism or if you honestly ran into no one qualified from those groups
Agreed. If the team has no diversity, it's uncomfortably obvious when you are purposefully targeting female minority yet haven't created the culture that attracts/retains this type of talent.
Eternal whiners as usual pushing for equality of outcome disguised as equity. Most DEI initiatives prioritize women (especially white). If a team doesn’t has female VP, as they often quit for jobs with better work-life balance. However, racism is another subject. The Klan which dominates above VP level try their best to keep it all white. These days they use DEI as an excuse to push Asian / Brown / Arab men out while proritizing incompetent white women.
My fault for looking at the IB forum
Countless times been told to prioritize women in our hiring efforts which inevitably ends up benefitting white women, mostly who need the least diversity support. DEI intiatives will only be fair if white women are excluded from them. If white men aren’t diversity then white women aren’t either but this will face firm resistance from old farts at the top, and at that point they would rather abolish all DEI streams.
Yes, intersectionality matters - most DEI programs don’t fully address those nuances. They often treat ‘women’ or ‘minorities’ as broad categories, without accounting for compounded disadvantages certain groups face; this ends up disproportionately benefiting some groups, while overlooking women of color. From my own experience, I’ve received valuable mentorship from female x POC leaders, which has reinforced for me how both female and male leaders bring different strengths - and how both are needed in the finance industry.
This news is so horrific yet expected. As soon as I read the headline, I knew exactly what this was about. The prejudice in finance against non-North easterners is something I have long suspected from my own experience. Yes, my response is political. Yes, I'm going to mention historic injustices. Yes, I know the average elitist WSO "monkey" is going to downvote this comment. This is because they are unwilling to accept that they benefit from systemic privilege at the expense of those who have been historically marginalised. People can shout DEI - this, and affirmative action that. All of this is performative and does not actually offer redress those who have been legitimately marginalised.
Things will not change until we all recognise the Harrying of the North as a crime against the Northwesterners - those of Yorkshire descent - and its lasting impact on our prosperity. Things will not change until we recognise, as country, the institutional bias and advantage given to Lancastrians, the House of Lancaster, and her allies. The stain of Norman conquest has not yet been rinsed from the landscape of England. The unspeakable genocides inflicted upon us Viking-British descendants by Aethelred the Unready is only made more painful by the disorder and decline brought upon these lands by incompetent Plantagenet rule.
My ancestors shed blood in the War of the Roses. They travelled, left their families, suffered deprivation, fought in combat, and died in the name of our people and just kings of England. Although having a Yorkist representative on the throne is progress, this is not even close to proper justice. Richard III was clearly the superior candidate to Henry VII, but NOT ONCE did either of these squabbling French overlords even consider supporting an Anglo-Saxon, Viking, or Celtic claim to the throne! Tokenistic gestures, like swapping the court language from French to English is no replacement for real reparations. Cultural appropriation of the English is an insult, not integration or inclusion.
All my life I have known that my stature, hair, eye colour, and coarse accent betrayed my Yorkshire heritage, and that I would not have as many opportunities because of this. It's disheartening to leave jobs wondering if I did not get it because the interviewer found a better candidate, or if they were simply a Frenchman in disguise; an agent of the house of Lancaster gleefully conspiring to maintain the power of their centuries old Kabal. No true son (or daughter) of England should suffer this.
Hearing that once more the Lancastrians, in their hubris, are hiring their own, and excluding the noble sons of Yorkshire will not stand. Doubtless news of this treachery will spread from the shires, and into the pained ears of all sons of Britain, whose hearts erupt in righteous indignation at such odious and craven designs for power over their fellow countrymen.
It is time for all Englanders to put aside their differences and unite in an intersectional alliance. The Celt, Anglo, and Viking descended peoples have long had their differences. We have stood in each other's way before and still suffer prejudice toward one another. But now, we will join hands. We strive together, labouring in common understanding that the Lancastrian menace is the principal source of our pain. Beyond the machinations of the perfidious North Easterner, is a world of peace, tolerance, and understanding. We must erase our internalised Lancastrianism, our self-doubt, and our excuses for inaction. This is a problem that affects us all. It isn't enough to just "not support the house of Lancaster", as that enables Lancastrian oppression. We must be actively anti-Lancastrian.
Do not despair, for the 2nd war of the Roses will soon ignite, and all Northeastern Lancastrians will be subjugated in that very same dispensation they are so eager to impose. The House of York shall rise again, the "Union of the Houses" error shall be rectified, and the slanderous propaganda disseminated by Lancastrian sympathisers (not least Shakespeare) against the great ally Richard III shall be corrected.
Take heart, as the hour of reckoning nears, and this dishonourable interbellum will soon draw its final breath. The scouring of Lancashire is upon us. With purifying flame, we will herald the new dawn.
Genius. The trauma of Bosworth Field.
Cheers, lol
If you want to help a marginalised Yorkist in his effort to break into M&A, I'd love if it an MD would take a glance at it. Would you mind if I sent it your way?
Yikes, that’s pretty wild to hear, but sadly not totally shocking. There’s always been an unspoken “target school” bias in IB recruiting, but when someone actually says it out loud (and even throws in “only men” and “no weird names”??), that crosses into straight-up discrimination.
From what I’ve seen, different groups and MDs definitely have their own “filters” they quietly push — some care only about Ivy/Northeast, some like athletes, some look for people that “feel like bankers.” It’s not official policy, but those biases absolutely show up in the process.
The tricky part is exactly what you said: you’re not really in a position to challenge it without risking your own role. Most people just nod, follow instructions, and then maybe sneak in a few candidates they personally think are strong.
It’s definitely not “how it works everywhere,” but it’s common enough that nobody would be surprised. Welcome to the sausage-making side of IB recruiting — it’s messy, political, and often not nearly as merit-based as people want to believe.
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