Sorry, you weren't good enough

Mod Note (Andy) - as the year comes to an end we're reposting the top discussions from 2015, this one ranks #36 and was originally posted 10/16/2015.

I liked this OCR thread by @Mephistopheles". Unlike the other OCR threads by @KREBSCYCLEOMG" (link to first one, second one) that highlighted the most dysfunctional candidates we all dread, it highlighted the fact that many people are doing many things right. It was encouraging and had a strong message to keep persisting towards your goals, but there was just one problem with it.

It might make you feel all warm and fuzzy to hear you were quite brilliant, that you aced it, you crushed the technicals. It might feel like a warm blanky to hear that you did everything right, but if you didn't get the job, then, obviously the people who beat you out did everything more right!

The fact is that if other people got the job and you didn't then you weren't at the top of the list. You can tell yourself all the reasons that it’s not your fault, or you can focus on getting better than everyone else. Some say, well that’s not reasonable or realistic, and that is why they will keep failing. Look out at the world and you see just how competitive it can be.

A professional athlete must be at or near the top of their town, high school, college, state, investing most of their life in their sport just to get a crack to go pro. An Olympic athlete is the extreme—your entire life training for one spot on top of the podium.

A friend of mine is a concert cellist. If you think it’s hard to land the job on Wall Street, look into his profession. There are few top orchestras in the world. The jobs turn over no sooner than every decade and hundreds of the best candidates in the world vie for one spot.

To get the job you must be better than everyone else. I’m comfortable taking flack from the beta-players on WSO, but if you’re serious about winning and willing to do what it takes, here’s some ideas for you:

1. Keep up your enthusiasm

It's crucial that you get honest with yourself about your level of performance and the true challenge of the goal to land a top job on Wall Street. It's necessary that you evaluate your weaknesses and figure out how you can get better and better, but it is absolutely essential that you stay optimistic and confident.

No-one. Let me repeat that. No-one. Absolutely no-one will bet on you unless you are first betting on yourself. You must do everything you can to get your thinking right and build the bulletproof mindset of a champion.

If you haven't, Read Think and Grow Rich. If you've read it, read it again and again.

2. Give up the BS excuses

If you did your best and you didn't get the job, then your best wasn't good enough. As Napoleon Hill put it, success requires no explanations, failure permits no alibis.

It may be the case that you simply will never get the job or that this is the catalyst you need to challenge yourself to get better and better.

As you read through the comments to that OCR thread you see the excuses stacking up. Nepotism. Blue blood era. It's no longer a meritocracy. So a PSD can't make it. As George Carlin said, It's all bullshit and it's bad for ya!

3. Get better than everyone else

Someone will get the job. will it be you?

That all depends on whether you are better than the other candidates. Do you have better grades? A better school? Stronger resume? Better connections? What do you have that makes you a better candidate than everyone else you are competing against?

4. Better doesn't happen overnight

In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell talks about the notion of accumulated advantage. He suggests that talent is over-rated compared to simply 10,000 hours of practice.

The reality for many candidates is that they are starting from behind. If you didn't get the right grades in your SATs and get into a top school then you are behind those who did. Even if you attended a top school, if you had a lousy GPA in your first few semesters you are coming from behind.

If you want to win Gold in the Olympics you have to start training as a kid, and the more time you have to build your track record of success the more likely you are to win.

Even if there is little you can do about this now, ask yourself how can you be taking actions today that are setting you up for the job you want three years from now?

5. Know what makes you exceptional

There’s a lot of excuse-itis on WSO. The cynical types revert to nepotism. Others talk about not being at the right schools or what-not.

The fact that it is rare for a sub 3.0 GPA to make it to Wall Street isn't something to be celebrated, but to be learned from. It says, if you want to win, you must be exceptional. And if that sub 3.0 made it happen, they clearly did something in the interviews that made them come across as exceptional.

You can be exceptional in many ways and your job is to figure out how you will be an exceptional candidate they want to hire.

6. How do you stand out?

Let's be honest there is a lot of luck to this. Behavioral psychology tells us that you are more likely to be successful if you are interviewed in the morning when the interviewer is fresh than in the afternoon. There's a lot you can't control.

But even if you said this is 50/50 skill/luck that's still a lot you can influence. If they have 20 perfect resumes and they choose one, then there is something about that person that leaps off the page.

As one of the commenters to the OCR thread discussed—If you are one of fifteen David’s with a math degree who the interviewer can’t even remember, then that is your fault for being as un-memorable as the other Davids.

So, how are you going to stand out? What makes you memorable? If they meet fifteen clones, what do you do to have them remember you?

7. Preparation, Preparation, Preparation

Vince Lombardi was known for The Power Sweep. As he talked about, there was nothing special about the move. What was special was that he made his players rehearse the move over and over and over again until they could do it in their sleep.

You can read the interview packs, do some mock interviews, and be pretty prepared. Or you can spend months (if you not years) of your life dedicated to how you are going to walk into those interviews and leave an impression they will never forget.

Again, this is hard, few people are willing to go far beyond what is reasonable in preparing, which is why few people will ever win.

If you're serious check out my other thread on crushing your interviews

8. Get exceptional at influence

I heard a story that Warren Buffett has one certificate in his office. It's not his degree from the University of Nebraska. It's not even his Business School certificate from Columbia. It is a certificate for a six-week Dale Carnegie course he took on communications.

Getting the job is about influence. Get exceptional at influencing other people and selling yourself. Learn how to carry yourself. To shake hands. To have a strong conversation. To build rapport. To get people to like you. Learn to speak better. Train your voice, your style. Learn to be exceptional at influencing other people.

And craft your story like a movie director. Your resume is the movie trailer. It must hook them. But everything you do in the interview must get them to say WOW!

About Geoff: A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and investor at the Carlyle Group, Geoff Blades is an advisor to senior Wall Street executives, CEOs, and CFOs, on corporate and strategic matters as well as topics of personal and professional development.