Hey, I'm curious to why I've heard MD's have little/no say on who gets first round interviews. Is it that they don't care? I mean aren't they the bosses of all these analysts that help decide. So, if a boss said I want this kid interviewed, would an analyst not honor his bosses request.
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An MD can get you an interview and in some cases can give you the job straight, but is unlikely to do so unless he knows you fairly well (ie not if you talk to him for 5 min during an info session).
Again, this coming from the kid asking if Bear Stearns as a sophomore SA would be worth it (due to the negative prestige associated with Bear apparently).
Banks are FLOODED with applications/resumes for first round interviews. 90%+ of the people applying just clicked a link on their school's career website and have no idea what they're getting themselves into. It's not worth the MDs' time to select quality applicants when analysts can do that.
That said, if an MD really pushes for someone specific to be interviewed, then yes, he/she will be selected for an interview. But this does not happen too often - usually analysts who went to the school select first-round interview candidates and the MD does not offer input on specific people.
MDs will interview Superday candidates and sometimes even before that. But you will not see an MD weeding through resumes - that would be like having him spread comps.
As a general rule, I don't read too many resumes until there's a warm body waiting in the office to be interviewed. When I was a staffer, I might flip through a resume book to get a sense of the general field. If there's someone I particularly liked, I would generally say so and expect that their name would be on the invite list.
I dislike "networking" events in general because it tends to bring out the type of behavior I dislike most. I go to them to speak about the firm and the group, and I think students tend to overestimate how much they can move the needle in their favor. My perspective is that there's very little you can say to really impress me at an event, but you can earn an automatic rejection fairly easily. My viewpoint is not universal - a lot of our analysts come away from those events with a list of candidates they want to push. Still, despite my view that talking to me is a high risk/low reward proposition, I try to log on to the debrief conference call to make it clear if there are particular people I want to see invited for an interview (or not). HR/Recruiting rarely ignores what a senior banker says.
I'll tell you a story:
Was talking to an MD with a few other guys. As we're leaving, one of the kids mentions to the MD that (Mr. Brown) told him to see the MD. MD replies, "Oh, of course. Mr. Brown told me about you. Mr. Brown was actually the one who got me the job at (current BB firm). Please give me a call sometime."
needless to say, that kid is getting an interview, and probably an offer.
look MDs can get you in straight if they wish to do so..ive seen instances where its happened...ofcourse...the MDs need to like you enough to actually give a crap...but ive seen instances where...the MD has spoken to a few people and hired them on the spot..infact a few years ago I was at an event where the CFO of JP morgan was there...one girl went up to him and spoke to him for nearly half an hour...and needless to say he hired her on the spot!!! no resume..no GPA...no target or non target...nothing...she got in..but in order to be able to do that, you need to be exceptionally charismatic and also speak intelligently...
Reconcile your lies in your previous posts before making new ones. Actually your most recent post isn't too far from the truth but the basic point remains.
Prathiba - please take it easy on the ellipses. They make your writing incredibly disruptive and hard to follow. Not to mention what it does to your credibility.
Point noted. I tend to type really fast, so I usually carry on with sentences without using periods, but that's only on blogs.
MDs can and do get interviews and even jobs for friends of the family, business associates, etc. However, some little kid they met at a info session or three, not really. In these cases, its the HR people, the sign-in sheets and whatnot. Also, the junior people at these events have a ton of say, especially for summer internships.
This is not to say that after you interview that MDs who are involved in the process have no say in getting you a job, just that most of they time they aren't that involved and really don't care. There will be MDs who are head recruiters (these are the guys to suck up to) and MDs who just came along (good guys to ask questions to).
your friends parents are also helpful if they are MDs.
Thats weird, people on this board have been saying earlier that MDs can only get you as far as the interview and no more. Obviously the interview will be much more relaxed in this case since you have an MD backing you but i didnt realize they can get you the job straight away.
GenghisKhan, since youre a VP i have to ask you is this correct? And what about VPs, how far can their support take you. Thank you.
Generally, nobody gives you a job straight away. While it is possible to ensure it, doing so costs a substantial amount of political capital, no matter what your level. At some point, you need to justify why the entire organization should bend to your whim, and you always answer to somebody, whether it's the group head, the head of IB, or the CEO of the firm.
I'm actually not a VP (I'm technically a director/ED/SVP level banker, but I'm in a promotion year and have been given the unofficial nod that I'll get it when the official announcements are made next month. We'll see, given that this promotion is always the most uncertain in a banker's career), and when I was I certainly didn't have the power to give anybody a job on my own. As a staffer and high performer, I could certainly help push the outcome in the direction I wanted, but at the end of the day I was in no position to veto the group consensus.
As a new MD, I still wouldn't be able to offer a job to a candidate without further review, but could probably ram it through if I felt strongly enough about it I suppose. The issue is, why would I ever feel strongly enough to do that for someone I just met at a reception? Like I said before, the chances that you do something that will make me ding you are decent, the chances you do something to really wow me involve considerably longer odds.
As for the CFO - that person has no influence on an investment banking offer - perhaps for the "financial associate" program (that's a back-office CFO track program), but certainly not for IB.
Wow... what has this forum become? Seriously....
And I am pretty sure no MD can give you a job on the spot, because you talked to him for "like 30 min. at a recruiting event." What bullshit.
MDs can get you the interview, but everyone needs to perform after that.
MDs can get you straight in. I have seen it happening. Although, it is highly unlikely that MDs will do that to people they meet at recruiting events, they can and will do it for kids of family friends and business associates. Especially for summer analyst positions, I know they can do it, have not seen it happening for full time positions.
Look, if you read the two posts carefully, then you will realize, that in one case it is a CFO and in the other it is a managing director. There is a substantial difference between the two. A CFO is far more powerful than a managing director.
I'm not going to argue this.
prathiba, the point is, the anecdotes you told us about recruiting events are SO unlikely that they are not even worth mentioning.
We're giving advice to potential analysts here, so we should just be straightforward and tell them what works and what doesn't, instead of giving them (possibly made up) stories about some ridiculously exceptional, once-in-a-blue-moon incidents.
My advice: To my surprise, I got an interview by contacting an MD a mere 3 weeks or so before they started recruiting. However, this was by getting in touch with him personally, on my own - NOT by walking up to him at a recruiting event. And furthermore, all I got was a first round interview. His passing on my resume didn't help me any more than that.
If you want to do it right, then start freshman year and keep up with them, so that by the time summer analyst recruiting rolls around you've known them for 2 years. The longer you've known the MD, the more likely it is he will want to get you more than just a 1st round interview.
a very close friend of mine is probably the laziest asshole ever. he smokes obscene amount of pot, gets terrible grades and has no desire for finance. his father, an SMD, has gotten him 3 internships at hedge funds and last year got him into lehmans sophmore rotation. and he came into the program two weeks late. MDs have serious pull if they want. if an md likes you and wants you to work there, you're going to work there period.
that is insane. Was his dad a SMD in IBD or S+T and does this guy attend a target school/ivy.
very non-target, liberal arts school, SMD in S&T and now a global co-head. i hate the kid sometimes because he shits on his internships and these are chances that i, coming from a non-target, would kill to get. he could literally say "dad i want to work as an SA at goldman" and it would happen. so irritating. kid has a 2.7 gpa, which im sure lots of people as you go on in your career probably had in college, but most had to work their asses off and get in the backdoor in some way and then prove themselves. he gets to get stoned all day and take incredible jobs and not care at all. fucking kid would take off fridays to play golf. i was like "bro you're an INTERN, not a MANAGING DIRECTOR."
well whatever it is. This goes out to all prospective monkeys, whether you come from a non-target or a target or your dad is MD or not, once you are in and don't perform, you are out. No one can save you then.
Blankfein's sons go to my school. Whether or not they perform, they are in.
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