I'm just curious because the upperclassmen/recent analysts can't really provide a good answer as to why recruiting is so early now. I'm just curious how does this benefit banks? Doesn't this mean that there will be more finance bros since the recruiting starts so early?
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Game theory. First movers advantage I guess
Gives them the opportunity to lock in candidates early and avoid having to go through the recruiting frenzy in the fall, where students are getting multiple superdays, leveraging offers, etc. potentially forcing them to have to hold more interview rounds to meet intern headcount. They know that if you were given an offer in April, it'd be pretty hard for you to turn that down and gamble for an offer for a "better" bank down the line.
No idea. But it makes going to a target all the more important and it makes gaming the game a total breeze if your aware of how these timelines work prior to entering college.
As an incoming freshman, what can I do right now?
Network, learn how to model and get A's.
1.Take the SIE Exam
2.Front load your courseload with easy classes to boost your GPA, this is huge.
3.Figure out the optimal resume template. This is very easy to do.
4.Start studying the interview guides, and I don't mean really studying. Just keep it on your nightstand and read it casually to familiarize yourself with the concepts earlier rather than later.
I don't care what anyone says, the earlier you can start networking the better. By the time I got to my SA I knew one of the analysts in the group, who was now an associate, very well because I met him at the end of my freshman year and he hooked It up when I was an SA after seeing via my resume and our conversations that I had been busting my ass at school and in life. Then when I started full time and he left for PE he passed me over to one of his other friends in the group and now instead of being a victim of the staffing gods all the time I've been pulled on good deals with people I want to work with.
Concerning networking I got the impression from a lot of my peers that they weren't really seeing the big picture. Successful networking to them meant achieving some short term goal like getting an SA position or a return offer. That's the wrong approach. You really want to be out there genuinly trying to join a team and the earlier you can start doing that the better.
If you wait too late to network your choosing to sell yourself only as the "finished product" and thats just not as impressive. People want to see how it's made. They want to see you on day one not knowing shit about this industry with nothing for them to trust you on except your genuine passion and hope of breaking into IB and then they want to see how you manned up and molded yourself into a worthy candidate based on that passion and hope.
Also another note. Breaking into IB can actually be a lot of work and be stressfull. Go have fun in college but select your fun carefully, dont just go with the crowd. You'll just end up wasting time doing stuff you dont really want to do and you'll never really blow off the steam that you wanted to blow off and blowing off steam is important because juggling IB recruiting, courses, and whatever else you do kinda sucks.
We eventually gonna see kids interviewing in highschool for junior year college internships
It benefits banks and those students who are aware they want to do IB by the end of their freshman year. It's really only a disadvantage for people who don't find out about IB until ~junior year
What can I do now to improve my chances during recruiting? Incoming freshman
one criticism that I have of the current recruiting process for IB is that the banks that recruit late summer/fall miss out on a decent portion of the talent pool that already signed an offer in the spring. It makes much more sense for everyone to start interviews at the same time-- some of these banks overestimate the willingness of students to give up other offers for them.
I think you're overestimating how much "talent" actually matters to banks. Analyst attrition is huge and the work at a junior level isn't rocket science so as long as banks can fill up a competent class where maybe a third would stay on for A2A then they don't really need to move up their process.
honestly I agree that talent doesn't matter that much on the job, but definitely think it's still a huge priority for the banks themselves. Otherwise, why would there be such a race to start recruiting earlier and earlier every year. Also, look at the salary bumps and bonuses being given just to make the talent happy. Plenty of competent people that would be willing to take the $85k base and grind out 100+ hours without complaints. I think it's always going to be in the DNA of banks to get the best of the best, so was just pointing out that the way their going about their goals aren't really making sense in my eyes.
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