Didn’t get the promotion at a BB and I didn’t get the opportunity to do a third year. I’m having difficulty interviewing for both PE and IB because they keep digging into this topic. There were a wide range of reasons for the lack of promotion but I wasn’t intending on staying beyond my two years but obviously it makes recruiting harder when you don’t have a job. Thoughts on how to navigate this during interviews?
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Bump, curious about this topic as well
Did they tell you to leave/terminate your role?
Finished up my analyst program and left. No promotion.
You are burnt toast in this market.
Would pivot to another industry asap and dual track the IB recruiting.
.
nice
Bump - similar situation
No matter what title you are, recruiting without a job is really tough. IB is still a challenging lateral market right now and you need to be looking at other jobs, even if not your dream role.
Way too many people out there with a year or more of unemployment because they will only apply to IB jobs, that's not a good situation to be in.
1) Be completely honest and transparent about it. There's nothing more annoying than someone lying to us about why they were let go or trying to spin it and having to pull the offer post informal background check (we will always call your former group, if the story doesn't match up, it's a deal breaker).
2) Set expectations low. You'll get a job. It probably won't be on par with where you left, and you'll need to prove your work ethic to people to earn your way back to where you started
The baseline assumption (and maybe your bank was different) is that the bar to get a 3rd year is incredibly low and not getting it reflects either a very serious attitude problem or a complete lack of awareness.
All that being said, you're young and your first role won't define you. For candidates in your seat, we're looking for people who understand where they went wrong before, show enough maturity to acknowledge it and have a credible plan for how they're going to approach things differently if they're given a second chance.
Contrary to what others have said, we (and our competitors) are desperate for experienced analysts, but would still rather have an empty seat than someone with a bad attitude that risks spoiling the rest of the group.
What a load of BS. So don't lie and have effectively a 0% chance (you know this is true in today's market but again you'll spew BS for your own interests) OR lie and at least have a chance of an offer.
Then you go on to say we need to "understand where we went wrong before" and how we would "approach things differently with a second chance". Who is say we went "wrong" anywhere?? There were many banks this year where there were simply no promotions but you and every dipshit recruiter would jump to conclusions if told the truth about a return, so tell me what is the incentive to not lie here?
You act as if OP or anyone in this situation has implicitly bad work ethic or was a low performer. Why don't you talk to my managers or MDs who would no doubt would say otherwise? Oh right, you would never know because you ding before we would ever get to that point in the process. What a load of nonsense. If I knew this would be the prevailing attitude of you all, especially in the context of today's market, I would have never come into finance/IB and give up the last few years of my life and health for nothing. Or at least wouldn't have stressed and worked as hard on the desk.
Been recruiting now for half a year and nothing and I'm sick of it. It's easy for you to say take the moral high ground and be truthful. Well that hasn't gotten me shit so far while I have to pay for life. Whatever, I know your witty response will be some BS akin to "well, if this is the kind of attitude you are showing no wonder you won't get hired" yeah hilarious.
If your MDs or managers have been supportive, have them call their contacts on your behalf.
If an MD who I've worked with and respect calls me and says they have a great candidate but just don't have a spot for them, that would absolutely change my mind.
I don't think this person is taking the moral high ground. They are giving you practical advice that you don't want to hear. In fact, they're being a bit too encouraging. The low bar for the A to A promote makes not getting it a giant red flag.
You're in a tough spot. There is no universe where someone will hire you for a banking role without enthusiastic references and thorough due diligence. The issue with lying isn't that it's wrong, but that its stupid: it won't work and risks permanent damage to your reputation.
You need to convince people that you're capable and learned a ton from this experience. This means telling your story carefully, lining up A+ references, and crushing every technical question or case study. If you do this right, your red flag will become more like an asset - you're just as capable as anyone else and have been humbled by an early career obstacle.
Your response sounds a little delusional about the situation tbh.
What if they are still at their current role? Doesn’t doing that jeopardize the candidate’s job?
The context of the post was what to do if you were terminated after 2 years or if you have already been told you won't have a job in xx months. If you still have a job, none of this is relevant.
VP in IB, if you’re doing these informal under the table background checks in a process and not believing the truth we may as well say fuck it to finance. Hopefully your dogshit attitude is backed with being at a decent shop, the only people I know who did that worked at toxic sweatshops.
Hate to break it to you, but if you say you were great and the people you used to work with say you sucked, the truth probably isn't that you were great.
Has nothing to do with the quality of the shop.
You collectively asked how to get a new job if you were fired from the last one. I gave you the answer, at least for our group. You don't have to like it and if you feel strongly when you're in my seat you can approach differently.
From our perspective, work ethic and attitude are critical and the hardest to change. Everything else can be taught. As a result, we overindex heavily on the former and it gets reflected in our process.
You sound privileged. Not everyone is lucky like you to have such a linear career path. One day shit out of your control will go wrong, and you’ll understand and humble down
I'd bite this differently. Go to some finance, startegy role at corporate. The title from BB will open doors as HR look at that. Work there around one year (that will be a pay cut but better than nothing) while start recruiting for senior analyst/asso roles after 6 months in of your new role explaining that corporate job turned out not to be your desired role. This transition is easier to explain imho
Yeah agree with this. Going from a non promote/fired back to IB is going to be very hard. You have to create distance from your previous job.
OP here
I was able to land a banking role after only about 2 months. I was able to be in a handful of processes and this topic was brought up a lot. For me, it was important to have your story straight and to have good references at the place you were at. You also need to hit it out of the park throughout the interview process.
Duplicate
What did you break into?
Banking. I’ll edit my comment.
How did you find the opportunities and get those first round interviews?
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