Struggling with Recruitment and why is it so damn early
I am a sophomore at a semi target in the IB club and have been preparing seriously for a few months. I have done around 20 coffee chats and started cold emailing two weeks ago with about 10 positive responses. I thought I was a little behind and thought application season was in January.
I just finished the Raymond James IB Bootcamp and saw the SA27 application is due 10/27 which feels really damn early. I have not talked to anyone in the product group yet and was wondering why the deadline is so soon and how I can get coffee chats faster without sending hundreds of emails every day since I have exams coming up. But why is this shit so early....
Any advice on how to make the process more efficient would help a lot. Or if anyone can clutch up for me and send me a dm with their email.
Read about half of this. Recruiting goes earlier and earlier every year bc banks want the best candidates plain and simple. The ones who start earlier get to pick out of the whole pool, while those who don’t only get what’s left. That said, banks that aren’t top of the top are susceptible to kids reneging on their early offers for better ones later on, being left to scramble and fill vacancies. I think that’s where you see the turning point / peak in earliness.
Fact of the matter is that the job requires no real skill yet is so coveted that there are too many qualified candidates. Demand far exceeds supply and the hiring team (aka the bank) has all the power to do what they want in hiring.
As for the application dates, those are really a placeholder. Usually firms won’t even review them until months later.
Recruitment timelines in investment banking, especially for Summer Analyst (SA) roles, have been moving earlier over the years. Based on the most helpful WSO content, here’s what you need to know and how to adapt:
Why is Recruitment So Early?
How to Make the Process More Efficient:
Prioritize Networking:
Leverage Existing Contacts:
Streamline Your Outreach:
Prepare for Applications:
Why Deadlines Feel Early:
Deadlines like the 10/27 one for Raymond James are not unusual. Some firms even start interviewing and extending offers before the official deadline. For example, WSO threads highlight that some banks begin interviews in late summer or early fall, with superdays following shortly after.
Final Tips:
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, focus on the most critical tasks: networking with your existing contacts, applying early, and preparing for interviews. Good luck—you’ve got this!
Sources: FT recruiting timeline London, 2018 Full-Time IB Recruiting Timeline Megathread Page, Consulting Recruiting 2023, How One Student Did Coffee Chats Right - Received Offer From A BB, How One Student Did Coffee Chats Right - Received Offer From A BB
in the grand scheme of thing there's nothing of value that a a student can bring, which means that it is irrelevant if I recruit someone 2 weeks before starting the job or 2 years in advance
but HR spends their time jerking off on whatever HBR magazines say related to finding the best candidate, so you get useless practices like those given the oversupply of candidates for the role
I also think that HR has a blast in seeing how their recruitment ideas play out with real people. It's like having a statistical population to carry on business experiments and see how they play out with little consideration about consequences given that they can get away which pretty much anything on how thristy candidates are
I do like Schwarzman's quote on "recruit slow, and fire fast", but my condolences to those that go through this process
Raymond james SA27?? Haven’t seen an app, what location is this app for?
How many emails are you sending? What are the outcomes of these chats? I get the exam load but if you wanna get into banking, networking takes priority 10/10 times, especially at a semi. Needs to be a hundred a day, treat it like a full time job. Need to be asking to meet with other folks on the team at the end of every call, need to be getting in person meetings as much as possible, that sort of thing. If your school has pitchbook, use that as a way to find emails. Widen your search as well, just going for the BBs, EBs, and MMs like Blair, Baird, RJ, HL, etc is very difficult for anyone, much less someone who isnt a nepo, isnt at wharton, etc. You will get something, dont worry about that, just up your hustle and pray more.
I like your point, great advice! Since you mentioned sending a lot of emails, from those emails, how many coffee chats do you think we need in order to have a safe amount (7-8) of interviews in order to get an offer? I know everyone says it depends how good of a socializer, but i mean just in general (Heard 80+ is decent). Would greatly appreciate a number, and thanks for the advice!
Good question. A 4-5% success rate for getting coffee chats from cold emails is pretty standard, alumni emails boost to maybe 8-9% but not enough to warrant exclusively focusing on that. Distributing your time/emails around every firm, let’s hope to get on the phone with around 20 banks (that’s how many I spoke with for initial calls, spent too much time trying to get into PE lol). From there, 15 were good enough to talk to other people, about 10 put me through to the recruiter, and I interviewed at 7 of those banks. Ended up with a handful of offers. My total email count for banking was around 1.5k I think, took me a few weeks to do it. For sending these, be careful to not just dump all at one time in the same office. You will get flagged. Spread it out throughout the day and throughout the different banks. Send 20 at 9am to five different banks, send another 20 to the same places at 11am, etc.
Keep at it / don’t ever stop. It’s a numbers game and something will click. Irregardless this is an invaluable skill that you WILL need in life. It’s a win win and it will pan out. Max out your LinkedIn requests / messages a week… get premium… you have to make it happen
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