having gone through the SA recruiting process last year, I have had my fair share of run ins with good, bad, and horrendous HR departments. Curious to know which banks y'all had bad/horrendous experiences with and spill the deets on what happened. Hopefully this forum will spare any potential recruit in the future the worry that the long no-response is due to them getting dinged or simply dealing with an unorganized HR department.
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The worst HR department I have dealt with is FT Partners hands down. I had a superday with them for FT position and it was originally scheduled to be with an Analyst, Associate, VP, and finally and MD (in that order) all on the same day. To start, my first interviewer (Analyst) didnt show up at all during the 30 minutes we were scheduled for because it turns out that HR forgot to send my first interviewer an invite for the superday, and had that interview rescheduled later in the day at a time i had class. Next, prior to my interviews with the Asso and VP, i got an email from HR minutes before the interview was supposed to start saying that both meetings were gonna be pushed back by an hour and the interview with the MD is going to be pushed back to tomorrow. The interview with the associate was technical and the VP was behavioral. I didnt do so well on the technical portion, since my mind was racing everywhere bc minutes before my GF sent a text saying she's breaking up with me, but i had one more interview left so i figured i'd study/prep my ass off some more to impress the heck outta him, since he was an MD and his word is worth the most. Once again, i got all dressed up for my meeting and skipped all my classes prior to the interview so i could focus and prepare, but just as i was about to join HR emails me once again saying that a meeting popped up and its gonna have to be rescheduled and asked for times in the next week i am free, i immediately sent my availability. the next week rolls around, i don't hear anything. at this point i am basically sure that i didn't get the offer and was dinged in my earlier interviews. I follow up with them to give them some more times for the following week and they said that they still intend to schedule my interview. the following week rolls around and they still tell me that i am in the process and that they are very busy right now but they still are trying to get the final interview with the MD scheduled with me. The next day i get an automated email from Workday or whatever application software they use that I was not selected for the position. i thought it was so ridiculous why they'd lead on someone they'd already dinged for weeks on end. It wasnt like i was on their waiting list since i didn't have my final interview with the MD yet. Luckily I was able to finesse an EB offer (Gugg/Laz/Moco) that same day i got the automated email.
Congrats on Gugg
Confirmed FT Partners is the worst. Killed two interviews, associate told me to watch out for a superday invite….HR called me on New Year’s Eve to ding me.
You’re not alone, I also had an extremely bad HR experience with FT Partners
Congrats on Gugg man. Although, trying to be anonymous and naming 3 firms (2 of which don't have open FT openings) is funny as hell.
Who knows, maybe your love for fintech exponentially grew in those 30 days
adding another data point - i think this horrible FTP HR rep is indicative of their old team. They recently (literally in the past few months) revamped the entire hr team and I actually had a really great experience with them throughout my process. I'd get notified the same date if I moved to the next round and if something was rescheduled they'd give me a good amount of notice. I've also noticed how the only ones that complain about the firms' HR / the recruiting process are the ones that didn't get past the superday or get an offer. i'm never one to "back" a firm (especially with the amount of hate they get on here), but it seems like the horrible experiences, and they do seem quite bad, have been from a while back and things appear to have changed (at least from my perspective).
OP Here, I just checked Linkedin and all the HR people I interacted with are still employed at the firm, plus this was back in November...
had a very similar experience
BGL- friend on mine went through first round interview, crushed and was told see you at the superday. HR ghosted.
It’s certainly possible that the interview didn’t go as well as he let on. But after reading other stories on here, and them pulling SA offers in recent history, it really only reinforced how shitty their HR is in my mind.
Right. I don't know how Suzanne Rupert and the seniors at BGL sleep at night knowing they fucked over a handful of bright-eyed, hardworking college students all because they couldn't pay a few interns $15,000 for an internship (literally roundoff error on their books).
Yep. Ditto to BGL, terrible process all around and I’m honestly not sure how their whole HR team is still employed.
Ah, Suzanne… the braphog of cuyahoga county
Tbf, it could just be the interviewer being polite and maybe your friend took it the wrong way. I remember my first round interview at a bank where the interviewer confidently told me to sit tight and wait to hear about next steps from HR within a day or so. Never heard anything after.
Barclays has pretty dysfunctional HR from my experience.
I can attest to this. We didn't even know our start date for several months which is ridiculous when all of my other friends at other BBs knew clear instructions from their HR department.
Was an analyst at BARC. HR is absolutely fucking awful
I would like to nominate Macquarie.
please spill the tea on macquarie haha
Very curious on this
Citi is useless. Non responsive even to people who have accepted offers, non communicative with candidates and cancels interviews at the last minute with no warning
This. No call when given offer and just an automated email with offer with title "Your Job Offer from Citi." Very obvious that my interviewers were reading off of a list of questions and did not care much about junior talent. Pay in the offer was good though (quant trading division).
Same here; was interviewing, talked with manager twice, did assessment, then talked with other team member, director, and HR, then was ghosted. :\. Funny thing is HR reached out to me! Sent multiple follow-up emails...nothing.
I’ve noticed a trend among BBs that the more incompetent HR is, the less non-targets can break into that firm. And it doesn’t seem to correlate with the strength or “prestige” of the bank
Makes sense. An HR person who knows nothing and has no skills has to rely on school name to filter out applicants. Also just laziness.
I think filtering out simply based on school name is pretty lazy in itself.
real question is which bank doesn't have a completely incompetent HR???
I have actually had great experience with Jefferies HR. Very communicative during recruiting and post the process. Even know I get a quick reply for any queries (haven’t started FT yet).
I'm not naming names but Jefferies old IB recruiter was an absolute smokeshow. Had a London accent too. I had literally been in my current role for 4 months and still took the call just because she was so fucking hot. I didn't even talk about banking hahaha I just desperately tried to make small talk. "Yeah, yeah totally Consumer group sounds awesome. How you hanging in during COVID though? Ever get lonely? Ha ha, me neither, me neither"
PJT's HR department was super communicative and would send constant updates throughout the process.
They are completely useless in London, worst of the worst
PIMCO, Insight Partners, and Wellington Management all had very intimate and clear communication along the entire process.
BofA BY FAR - the lady in charge of campus recruiting literally didn't do anything right - out of 4 recruiting events, she managed to mess up every single one. Event 1 - wrong date, event 2 - wrong time, event 3 - forgot to send location, event 4 (superday) - double booked people into same slots. Not to mention that after wreaking havoc by sending incomplete/wrong info, she'd go awol and couldn't be reached. Pretty terrible for such a large company.
seconded. BofA HR was an impediment into my recruiting there when there were already bankers who wanted to superday me they took weeks to schedule it. GS and JPM were pretty good. EBs also did decent in general. At Citi and CS the bankers were able to sidestep HR to get my process done so that was helpful. Had not so great experiences with DC Advisory also (invited me to an interview that they reneged on). 10/10 experience at Harris Williams and William Blair.
FTP hired the old recruiter from Greenhill also for MBAs and she was pretty good so maybe they will get better.
Knew it was true as soon as I read "the lady", this is what happens to modern society when you let those harlots out of the kitchen and nursery.
Credit suisse pretty ass
State Street Corporation….100% hands down
Basically literally every firm's HR is the worst /thread. Navigating bankers, investors, and other professionals is a piece of cake compared to getting a shred of competent professionalism from HR.
HR is completely useless 99.9%. During the recruiting process AND EVEN MORE after.
Must mention that out of those ladies (lets keep it real here), there is a small minority that is actually very good. Head of human capital at a Quant fund & HR from a Market Maker I met were spot on and as solid as you can go.
Maybe the quanty side makes it more important to have solid people in these seats as top candidates will have close to no tolerance for BS.
Do you think nerdy wonderkid with 4 offers from top prop trading/market-makers/quant funds will lose his time to wait tHill Katty for HR BB comes back from holiday to inform that "after careful consideration ... decline" just to find out 3 days later that it was an auto email sent by mistake ??
BB HR = MM Bank HR = No name Bank HR = Range from joke to absolute dog shit
JPM: https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2022/02/jpmorgan-internships-c…
Citi was alright as far as HR goes but at a target though. BAML was also alright, but the communication was terrible. EBs def has the best SA recruitment process since bankers run the process and not HR.
Citi. Citi. And a thousand times Citi.
All of them.
Not banking but still a shitty HR/interview experience. I had just graduated from undergrad and had struck out 16/16 interviews (granted, I studied engineering and was interviewing for a wide variety of jobs like consulting and finance) so I moved back home but was still recruiting in my UG city since my school has brand recognition there. I had a few more interviews for different jobs, flew down for them but nothing came up, so when I had another interview I told the HR rep straight up I'd prefer to do a phone call for the first round. She said that my HR screener call went really well and they're really looking forward to meeting me, so I sucked it up and went down.
Meanwhile, I let another recruiter know I was in the city for a week and gave them my availability if they wanted to set something up, no word from them. I go down, they moved the interview from Friday to Monday morning (luckily I went down for a week to crash at my friends), and I had to rent a car because their offices are in the exurbs. I finally get to the interview, the guy spends 15 minutes asking pretty basic questions, then stands up says he has another engagement but he'll email me a list of questions I can respond to as the second part of the interview. At this point I'm pissed, I spent time and money to meet them for 15 fucking minutes, when I specifically asked to do this round over the phone.
I return the rental car, in a terrible mood, on my way back to my friends, when Firm 2 emails me asking if I can meet for an interview the next day. I gladly accept, ace the interview, and they ask if I'm free the next day, which was Wednesday. I was flying out in the afternoon so they scheduled morning interviews. I show up in a suit and tie, with my luggage in tow, finish the interview and hop into a cap to the airport. Got the offer from Firm 2, never heard back from Firm 1 (if I ever meet anyone from that rinky dink piece of shit I'm gonna give them an earful) and had a great start to my career. Life works in mysterious ways, if I wasn't in town for the shitty interview I wouldn't have had the good ones.
Moral of the story. All HR Departments fucking sucks ass.
It also doesn’t help that they have a bunch of eager kids all horned up wanting $100,000 + job offers out of school lmao
TripleTree’s sucks ass from experience that’s for sure lol
Cain Brothers interview process was an absolute mess. Forgot to send out info session invites at my school, so only a few people showed up. Then they forgot to send out interview Zoom links. Then they just ghosted everyone. Makes sense though when their entire HR dept is run by like one person.
Second this. Know exactly who you are talking about.
UBS. Got a SD invite the day after the SD happened. Wtf.
Spoke with an alumni and their whole recruiting practice got fucked this year. They split their team into core and non core. Non core team was fucked. I got multiple referrals and heard nothing. The two people from my school that got into ubs were diversity so maybe they prioritized diversity.
You could sue for that.
second this UBS mention
I know everyone here basically has no idea what HR actually does, and that's fine, because this forum is centered on banking. For most, you are confusing recruiting/university relations with the entire HR department. Recruiting is one part of a much larger HR department. HR covers training and development, HRIS and analytics, workforce planning, compensation and benefits, employee relations and of course, recruiting. University relations (the people that deal with college students applying for internships and FT offers) are typically a part of the recruiting team.
By all means, put shitty people on blast when they don't do a good job in their roles, but be aware that HR is is much larger and complex than the average college student applying for SA positions is aware of
>HR covers training and development, HRIS and analytics, workforce planning, compensation and benefits, employee relations and of course, recruiting
Only in America are these real jobs
So do people in whatever shithole you're from not get paid? If so, who determines it and how do they make it happen? Every time you've ever gotten a paycheck before, HR was the reason. Do people from your shithole not have training and development programs? Everyone just gets hired and that's that? They do the same job the same way forever? Do people from your shithole not have recruiters who find new employees? Do they just walk into the building and say "I want to work here, give me a desk"? Because I'm pretty sure recruiters hire most of the people that work in the finance industry. Do people from your shithole not get together and determine what kinds of staffing needs a company will have in the future and how they will address it? Do people in your shithole leave a company and then you just wait for the above mentioned people to just walk into the building and ask for their old job?
Thank god I live in the US then so that businesses can actually function because wherever you're from sounds like it would be miserable trying to run a business.
I like how this thread turned from naming and shaming banks worst HR experience to just being misogynist (albeit some of the stereotypes are true).
she's not gonna see this nor sleep with you bro
lol and why would I care? Says a lot about me if I'm attracting some middle-aged HR lady.
JPM
Had a superday at Loop Capital for a FT position and I log onto teams(should have been my first clue) and no one joins. I finally email my contact and she joins the call and says they forgot they had scheduled me and could they reschedule me for the next week. I had taken a day off of work for this and then they didn't even put effort into interviewing me. Obviously did not end up there but got another good offer
Small private Swiss bank for FO role.
Head of HR basically told me everything about the other candidate (are they supposed to do that?) Eg overall profile, grades, offer from BB rescinded etc. She was also extremely dismissive and clearly favoured the other candidate. The other lady (her subordinate I suppose) kept quiet the whole time and tried smiling to encourage me. I think she felt bad for me. Worst interview ever.
Fidelity's HR team is pretty horrid.. also very invasive spam recruiting emails with broken links and weird titles.
Bad experience with Wells Fargo a few years ago
RBC BY FAR!! surprised they aren’t mentioned
Had a SD in their FiDi office, showed up early and told the security in lobby I’m here for the interview. Turns out HR forgot to put me in the clearance list. Ended up waiting in the lobby for 45 minutes for HR to sort it out with security. Ended up being 25 minutes late to my first interview out of three (each being 30 minutes long).
Needless to say I didn’t get the offer, which ended up as a blessing in disguise but still, screw RBC HR
Also took them half a year to process my travel reimbursement
Citi HR was absolutely horrible in my experience, was at the firm for around a year and had nothing but bad experiences (when they were reachable, which was not often). Seems competent HR people are tough to find and even harder to retain.
Can confirm this as well. Kept on sending interview invites for divisions I never even applied for, even after I unsubscribed.
The Blue Eagle don't fly in the HR department at BarCap
Lol I wasted so much time doing their stupid IQ tests and personality tests only for them to send me an email 3 days later saying it was never completed (it was, the application page showed that it was). Went through like 10 HR emails before they said anything of use, said they’d look into it and never did. They suck.
Agreed, Sara was definitely a gem among HR.
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