Q&A: International Student Full-Time IB Recruiting - Class of 2020

Covid is obviously making everything shit and Trump is giving companies heart attacks left and right about sponsoring students. In light of all this, and to give back to the WSO community, I want to try help out internationals trying to recruit for IB this year, particular for FT.

Not going to disclose too much about myself, but a couple of points to kick off questions that I think people might want to ask:

1) Sponsorship: plenty of firms don't sponsor now and you're banging your head against the door applying to them. The single most helpful resource I used was https://www.h1bdata.info/ - search up a firm and see if they've sponsored anyone in recent years. Here you can see how some firms say they don't sponsor but occassionally do, or some firms who say they sponsor but don't (e.g. try PWP - no one since 2016 last time I checked). This isn't 100% accurate, e.g. some firm policies may have only recently changed, but is a damn good place to start. I'd triangulate b/w this and word of mouth - the latter can be more up-to-date but is also possibly false marketing.

2) Mentality and networking: as northkoreanbanker frequently mentions, stop being afraid about being international. You are first and foremost a student and a fucking normal human being. Just open up and that gives a better chance to connect during networking. Don't trap yourself into acting FOB just because people tell you you're FOB. You can even turn your home country into something to talk about (if you're sure they sponsor and that the person across the table expresses interest in it)

3) Is it worth trying? One caveat to the above idealistic mentality is that you will still run into cases like: the chat is going well, the guy nonchalantly asks "oh btw you don't need sponsorship right?" "uh...actually" "oh...I'm sorry man". It happens. The tide is still overwhelmingly against you. The point is there is risk, i.e. you might be better off spending your recruiting efforts elsewhere, and you should be aware of that before jumping in. Think about it first - maybe the right answer isn't to dedicate 110% of your time to IB recruiting with a miniscule chance of getting in. Maybe you can't afford to be jobless after graduation. No shame in that. What's your long term plan? To go home in a few years? Then tbh you might have a smoother life going back PwC in your home country compared to starting at a no-name boutique in NY. But in the end, if you do decide to accept this risk, see point 2 - don't look back.

Feel free to add any other questions and I'll try to get around to answering.