Why can't I even get any interviews?
Title says it all. I'm a junior at a top NESCAC with a 3.40 GPA in Econ, some solid finance experience my sophomore year and plenty of finance activities and leadership on my resumé. Additionally, I speak several useful languages and know basic coding in C++. My knowledge of financial concepts is good, and I think I interview well.
My problem is, I haven't been able to get very many first round interviews. The only one I have had was for an elite energy boutique in Houston, and I made it to the superday and from the feedback I was told that I was rejected based on fit.
I've been networking a lot with alumni from my school, but many of them give me vague responses and have given no concrete information to me, even when I prompt them to.
What am I doing wrong? I'd like to break into IB, but increasingly it seems like an impossible task!
My strategy has been to approach alums and ask for a phone call to talk about what they do and my interests. Recently, I have started to mention the summer analyst programs in my opening email because recruiting season is really heating up. Many of those I network with do not respond, even after I follow up, and if they do they say vague things like "you're resumé looks good, keep me up to date with the process" and when I follow up, they simply reply with "if there is interest, you will be contacted."
I'm not really sure how to proceed.
Yeah, they're giving you vague/unhelpful responses because you're basically asking them for a job right off the bat. They don't know you and don't really care about you. Not to say that this doesn't necessarily work, it can be effective when dealing with smaller boutiques that don't have structured recruiting, but you won't have much luck doing this at bigger firms, even with alumni. You should stick with your previous strategy of cold emailing & asking for a phone call, in order to build relationships that you can then leverage to get interviews. I'd work more on your email template and wording, it does seem like your networking is the problem here.
You're just not really qualified. Even at Ivies and top targets you need to break the 3.5/3.6 threshold to even get looks, so obviously someone at a lesser non-target school with a low GPA is going to have trouble getting interviews. At a non-target, they usually want to see an unbelievable resume and academic record because they have to justify taking you over qualified kids from their target schools who have alumni pulling for them and the brand of a top school.
There are just 1000 candidates for every spot, it's numbers and it sucks. I know kids who had 3.7s at my top Ivy target who didn't get any interviews because all the kids with deep networks and/or 3.9+ took the best jobs. They ended up reassessing and looking at ER, AM, etc. Try thinking of that because right now it's so damn competitive that you'd have to get really lucky to get a top job.
I generally disagree with that. There are plenty of students at my school who have similar GPAs and resumés and are getting interviews. Definitely going to start looking at AM and ER in any case.
I don't mean to be rude, but perhaps this why that superday didn't work out. When someone offers you free advice on how to fix a problem, saying "I disagree" isn't really the best way to elicit further free advice from anyone. Again, not trying to be rude, just trying to help. TrackBack is 100% on the money.
What is happening is that alumni see your resume and decline to push it because they think that you would not get past the original resume screen and/or that you would not survive a first round interview. When someone pushes your resume, they put their name on the line, and it's just not worth doing so for someone who you think will not at least make it to the superday. The killer points on your resume are that you compare unfavorably to candidates in general, but especially to candidates from your own school. IB is as competitive as it ever has been, and 3.4 GPAs just does not cut it (yes, I know, I know...there are exceptions), especially when your fellow classmates have much higher GPAs and more relevant experience.
My suggestion would be to take a look at my networking overview and to start reaching out to boutiques for a summer internship. There are many, many boutiques up in the Northeast. When networking, always make sure to ask bankers, especially alumni, for advice. That is usually when they offer to push your resume, and if not, at least offer some genuine advice on what they would do if they were in your shoes.
As a person who just suffered through recruitment on the other end (picking candidates), most of this is on point, with maybe one caveat. The best candidates were kids with above a 3.6 (we autofiltered everyone below this in the excel master of all the candidates) who people could identify by name, either because they knew them from school or because they had made a very good impression, or several decent impressions, in a conversation / conversations. The candidates we ended up giving interviews were not necessarily the ones with the highest GPAs, but the deepest networks. We did give a few interviews on the basis of pure horsepower (one kid had a 4.2 comp sci / applied math double major lol), but at a certain threshold GPA stops being as important as people seem to think it is.
But it is very important to hit that threshold, and also network enough so that your school's team knows exactly who you are. If you don't have a school team, you are basically getting in purely on networking, since whoever is evaluating your resume likely is not using grades as a benchmark anyways.
You have a shit GPA in a bullshit major from a non-target with little-to-no internship experience. Start working on your MSF apps.
Don't push the MSF down his throat. IB is becoming increasingly more difficult from msf programs given how accelerated FT recruiting is and who the fuck knows how deal activity will be in 2-3 years. I'm tired of seeing these non-target frat bros who think an msf at nova will get them GS TMT.
Who said anything about just banking? The reality is that his resume isn't really compelling for anything. He's a perfect candidate for an MSF; the program is made for this sort of background. It will give him a chance to actually learn finance (which he hasn't with his economics background), boost his resume (by going to a semi-target from a non-target) and another chance at recruiting/interning.
So yeah. I'm not just talking about banking, which may never be in this person's reach.
I've never said anything that's remotely close to this.
Honestly, by reading your post it's quite simple to diagnose why you're not getting past first rounds... I'll give you a real life example that's very close to heart: I know this engineer from south america that got an analyst offer in a top tier IB. Three months later, he was promoted to associate. This guy had a crappy GPA (3.2), and while he did found a couple of startups and such during university, nothing remarkable.
Why did he get the job and you don't? Simple: grit and passion. The guy didn't just network "a lot", he met with most senior bankers on the street and every senior banker in the industry group he was passionate about. He thoroughly specialized in his industry of choice, reading up on every news piece he could and forging his own well-thought opinions. He used every advantage he had as an engineer, as a Spanish speaking person, as a Latin American, etc etc... When he networked, he did it for fun and for the beauty of it, and usually he would offer help instead of requesting it. In doing so, he made plenty of friends and learned insights that would've been impossible to get without working in the industry for years. It took him 6 whole months, but he got 5 full time offers from excellent companies, including 2 IBs, 1 PE, 1 VC, and 1 in corporate M&A.
Just to add to this, this guy was by himself, in a foreign country, with very few contacts (if any), almost no money, and with very little comparable prior experience.
Trust me, if he could, anyone can.
Best, South American guy