Hi all , happy new year !
I’m a Junior at a target with a high GPA who just want through recruiting. Despite getting a fair amount of consulting interviews, was not lucky with getting interviews with the banks. Will be interning at a T2 consulting firm. Is fulltime IB recruiting a realistic pursuit given my background ? Any tips about navigating through the process ?
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Depends....
If T2 = TAS or financial DD work at a Big 4, yes I've seen it happen, though more common at boutiques and MMs. Given the droves of yr1 / yr2 analysts quitting, the lateral market should be ripe in the coming year.
If T2 = LEK, Parthenon, OW, etc. you should really just consider staying. Those shops will exit well enough to PE or corp dev / strat on par with the MMs / boutiques you'd be able to lateral to, but the work will be more interesting and you'd have marginally better hours and WLB.
If your T2 = tech / HR consulting it will be more difficult, but you can hustle and start networking to makeup for any perceived lack of deal experience
Im in a similar position to OP, but in the second bucket (ie. Parthenon/LEK/S&). Would it be completely out of the question to try for the big banks? I know you'd advise staying, but what do you think are the best reasons to not?
If you are dead set on HF or UMM / MF PE , you have a much better shot from a BB / EB than T2 consulting. While there are exceptions, the DD focused T2s usually exit to LMM / MM PE or growth funds.
I think if you gun for it, you will get looks coming if you want to recruit FT or lateral into banking but I've almost never seen this anecdotally. Usually it's folks who do a banking SA, don't like banking, then pivot to one of these T2 strategy houses.
Bump
I went from t2 consulting to ft IB, can shed some light, feel free to pm
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