Currently going through OCR at my school
Have
3.96 GPA
previous banking internships
leadership experience
Only got an interview with one middle market bank, passed over for others (or chosen as a back-up, which pretty much means no interview)
Is this normal?
Didn't really network too hard, but I thought my stats would carry me to at least a first round..
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Yeah everybody needs to network, even those with high GPAs.
Need to network.
And not that everyone who networked had a cake walk either.
Need to network, at the bank im at 150+ kids applied from one school and if no one in the room knew the applicant the resume got tossed
Like everyone said, you need to network. There are 100+ applicants for every interview at every school with 3.9+ GPAs, multiple banking internships and great leadership roles. There are only 12 (or 24 max) interview slots available. The only way you're getting an interview is if someone vouches for you, which will only happen if you network.
Is networking in terms of speaking to employees at informational sessions and a follow up e-mail afterwards too little?
Pretty shocked right now.
Would I go out of my way to vouch for a kid who spoke to me once and emailed me once afterwards? I hate to break it to you but that is the absolute bare minimum and takes exactly zero effort.
Echoing Sling Shot's post. How many kids are there at each info session? Do you think some analyst who's got a full turn of a pitch book back at the office has the ability to remember who he met anyway?
Here's what info sessions are good for:
Good luck with recruiting, and know that it's never too late to start meeting people.
Also, this ought to serve as a warning to those planning on going through recruiting in the future - even if you have the absolute best resume in the world, why not network anyway to hedge your bets?
So you had a "banking" internship but still felt the need to ask these questions? //www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/ib-case-questions
This whole thing is fishy, and the only way to see what's going on behind the scenes is take a look at your resume, which you almost certainly fucked up. My guess is:
Depending on what school you go to, they will pick 10-30 people for an interview at each bank. No way in hell every single one of those individuals networked their way in - there are always spots for strong resumes on their own merit. Seems you left a significant part of the real story out so that you could get some pity from these forums.
I think Sav solved the case...again.
I'll go against the grain here. If you're going to a target or semi-target with good OCR, then I feel that you should have at least had a first round interview. There are not "100 kids with 3.9 GPAs, multiple banking internships, and great ECs" at every school... at least not at mine.
Anecdotally, I decided on IB really late in my undergraduate term (I had experience in PE and ER, 3.9 liberal arts major). I didn't summer, so I went through FT recruiting, via the company's websites and our OCR website. I was invited to 80%ish of interviews from OCR (and corresponding resume drops), as well as two from just company websites.
I'd agree with everything the post above said, except less critically. In addition to (possibly) insignificant work experience, it's highly possible that he's green, and forgot a basic step along the way. I'd say it makes more sense for you to be dinged due to having a poorly written resume, or something to that end.
Gotta +1 here. Networking is necessary for the 3.5 kids/the borderline kids, but the kids with profiles similar to yours at my target did not really need to network.
I'm very surprised about your results... Like Hideandseek said, something like resume formatting/how you elaborated on your experiences could have dinged you. On the surface, this doesn't really add up.
Elaborating in more detail:
The banking internship was a boutique small no name in SoCal, so it didn't require intense finance knowledge at the time; it was basically grunt work. (But "ibank" none the less)
Major in Business & Minor in Spanish
Resume was looked over by my professors and my boss over the summer. Maybe the formatting could have been off, but how badly can someone F up a 1 page resume where templates are widely available? (Basically a cookie cut resume)
What I feel could have dinged me:
Our school is ibank recruiting is dominated by the business fraternities, from my research, most kids at BB are from these business frats (I am not, just a social one). Speaking with most of the analyst people at info sessions, they were in one of these frats. So they could have been the one pulling resumes?
No kid, not being in a fraternity isn't what got you dinged. Well maybe I'm misunderstanding. The fact that you mentioned OCR made me think you attended a target school. But none of the dozen target schools I know actually have a major in "business". Correct me if I'm wrong. And if you're at a non-target (meaning you don't have real OCR opportunities) and you expected to get in by merit alone, you're going to have a bad time.
Oh, and for the record, you can easily fuck up a 1-page resume pretty badly.
Wow, nice & strong response.
We received 150+ resumes at our firm and seemed like everyone had close to a 4.0 (school is starting to grade inflate) with multiple finance internships. Only 2 people on our recruiting team even looked at the entire resume drop, we just used resumes of kids we met that we thought were good/asked current seniors we know well who the best junior candidates are.
JPM IBD came to my school for "OCR." We are a semi-target/non-target. Interviewed only a handful of guys (6-8) and dinged all of them after first round, lol.
For whatever reason, I always felt that JPM recruiting was the most selective out of the banks. Know kids who get first rounds with GS/MS but somehow get dinged for JPM...
I attend a semi-target.
I'm not saying it's the only reason (I could have networked harder), but I'd imagine from people I've spoken to that analysts are the ones pulling resumes for 1st rounds and are typically a year or two removed from college, meaning they know all the kids in their frats currently recruiting. Given that they only have 12 or so slots for first rounds, is it wrong to assume that these kids with fraternity connections have a leg up? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
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