Why do bankers do this?

Currently doing recruiting and for a good amount of times I had calls and at the end a banker would agree to refer me to talk to someone else for networking or a screen or to hr sounding positive about. Then when I email them thanking them for their time and referencing the referral I don't hear back, I'll follow up and still nothing. Why do bankers do this? I understand bankers are busy and also maybe they say they'll refer me not to be awkward is there anything else I could be doing or am missing?

11 Comments
 

Half of the time they’re just super busy - bankers get unironically hundred of emails a day and they’re all more important than your referral. Follow up a couple times and if they respond they likely just said they’d refer you out of courtesy.

 

When I was in undergrad my mentor told me to never to ask for a referral over phone unless the call was a truly a top tier call (mentor told me to always put it in the thank u email so you don’t metaphorically corner the banker on the call). Now on the other side I totally get it - there are so many students that ask over call for referrals but they had an atrocious call with me. what am I going to tell the student over call when they ask me that “no, our call was bad - I’m not going to refer you to my colleague”; so I constantly say something along the lines of, “sure thing, I’ll figure out some people internally and circle back” then ghost

 

You never asked for anything - it has to come naturally (I.e. let’s stay in touch, can you send me your CV, have you applied for our x program, oh we are hiring do you want to come over for an interview)

 
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lol why PE catching strays?? Also what do you mean they did a bad job deflecting the ask for a reference after a bad call?

If doing a good job deflecting means I have to provide 1:1 coaching at the end of every bad networking call, after already sharing general advice on said call, I’m just going to ghost everyone that reaches out from the start vs. chatting with them… everyone is busy. Spending 30 minutes chatting doesn’t necessarily earn you a referral…

Going silent after an average call with candidate you don’t believe in seems like a pretty efficient way to deflect to me…

 

Usually I'll say yeah just to be polite on the call even if I didn't enjoy the conversation. The candidates should have enough grasp of the conversation to know it didn't go well, and just not ask at that point. I ask screening questions, but don't really care if you can't answer them, as long as you show a willingness to learn / curiosity. The candidates I dislike the most either lied about playing a sport in their coffee chat request (I play tennis, and they start talking about pickleball on the call after saying they also play tennis in their email), or just can't answer simple questions on the industry they are trying to recruit for. 

 

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