Two unrelated questions: 1. my gpa is 3.6 from an easy major at a target school. How worried should I be? 2. Do banks ever contact past employers during the interview process? I ask because I didn't do a terrible job at my past internship but also didn't do a fantastic job, so if the bank were to call my past employer, he probably wouldn't have a glowing review about me.
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"I ask because I didn't do a terrible job at my past internship but also didn't do a fantastic job..."
Care to elaborate on this without giving away too much info? Coming in late a few times isn't something that could keep you from getting a job. However, if you were just absolutely terrible at your job and/or had a bad attitude then you better keep looking and take that internship off of your resume while you're at it.
I think I just made a lot of mistakes. Again, I definitely was not terrible, I did decent work for them, but I think I might have made too many mistakes, wasn't super detail oriented, and might have made mistakes twice in a row.
If that is truly the situation don't mention that particular internship. Of course there's always the chance that you did such a shitty job that word of mouth has spread all the way to people who work in the banks you're applying to now. In that specific case, practice your modeling and go work at a valuation shop for a few years lol.
No reputable bank on the street will give a review of you, they'll just verify your employment. It does sometimes happen that people have friends between banks and they'll give "off the record" reviews of you, but no one would ever cop to it and it would never happen from a HR perspective. It's also still fairly uncommon.
Thanks a lot. Is it even common for banks to contact previous employers during the interview process? Or do they just contact them after you get the offer just to make sure you actually worked there and not about your actual work
You should not be worried at all, 3.7 is definitely the "safe" cut off, but the actual cut off is usually 3.5, so you are fine given that you network and take recruiting seriously. Also - unless it is a school like NYU or UPenn where your major kinda matters as it indicates which school you are in (Business school vs. the arts and science school) your major shouldn't matter much. If your major is far from anything related to business, you would have to network harder and have a good reason as to why banking.
From my experience my employers only called the people that I personally listed as references from my past companies, as stated above, they really just want to verify if you actually worked there or if you were absolutely terrible.
1) I don't think background checks give your GPA, they would have to request a transcript if they cared that much about your grades 2) They usually only contact previous employers to confirm employment, not get a review of your work. That's what referrals are for.
I worked at a place where they only verified. If anyone asked anything other than dates, they would decline.
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