Advice and Encouragement For 2028 SA IB Recruiting

Hey everyone,

I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experiences recruiting and put together a more comprehensive post on what I learned. Hopefully this helps people avoid some of the mistakes I made and navigate the process a little more effectively. I came from a non-target so I already know this is going to save a few students hella time. 

Thankfully, I ended up with offers that I’m extremely grateful for, but the process definitely wasn’t always smooth. I’d generally break recruiting down into three main areas: work experience, networking, and interview preparation.

Work Experience

Fundamentally, I think one of the best ways to prepare for recruiting is to build a solid understanding of what investment banking, private equity, and other finance roles actually involve. That means getting some early exposure to businesses and learning how finance professionals think about companies.

Typical freshman-year internships might include a search fund, corporate development role, boutique investment bank, or something similar. From my experience, working with a search fund can be especially useful because it forces you to think critically about evaluating companies, understanding the key drivers of a business, and performing diligence. A lot of those skills are pretty directly transferable to banking and PE interviews.

That being said, if you’re at a target school with a decent GPA, I wouldn’t stress too much about the prestige of your early internships. I’d prioritize experiences where you actually learn how businesses work and develop some basic financial and strategic thinking. In general, if you’re at a target with a good GPA, not having some crazy prestigious freshman internship probably isn’t what is going to hold you back.

In my PE interviews, I actually used a lot of the same logic and ways of thinking about businesses that I originally learned while working with a search fund.

Hedge funds are a little different. A lot of them don’t necessarily care about prior traditional finance experience, although there are definitely exceptions. Some programs seem very focused on candidates who have already done a lot of pitches and investment work, while others have summer analysts who have barely done much finance beforehand.

That said, HF positions are few and far between. As good as some of those seats are, I wouldn’t completely optimize your recruiting strategy around them because there are so few spots and it’s easy to simply luck out of the process. Banking and PE interviews tend to be much more standardized and predictable.

Networking

First, everyone sucks at their first networking call. Mine genuinely sucked.

Networking can feel overwhelming at the beginning, but I think there are a few straightforward things that make it much more manageable.

First, be deliberate about geography. Most banks only let you recruit for one office, whether that’s San Francisco, Houston, New York, or somewhere else. Try to figure out your preferred location relatively early and be strategic about it. For example, if you’re mainly interested in tech, targeting San Francisco might make sense.

I also wouldn’t spend too much time talking to three analysts in San Francisco and then another three analysts in New York at the same bank. Those offices usually run separate recruiting processes, so it helps to have some focus.

When reaching out to bankers, keep your emails short and to the point. You don’t need a paragraph explaining your lifelong love of banking or finance. Mention something you have in common if there is anything relevant, briefly introduce yourself, and politely ask if they would have some time to speak.

If you’re at a target school, alumni generally respond pretty well as long as the message feels normal and doesn’t come across as overly formal or desperate.

Another thing that helped me was realizing that most analysts are literally only three or four years older than you. A lot of them are happy to have a casual conversation that breaks up their workday. They usually aren’t sitting there expecting you to dramatically impress them.

Think of networking conversations more like talking to a friendly senior at your school than going into a formal job interview.

Your goal should be to actually make a connection. Talk about common interests, clubs, sports, classes, career paths, or small personal details that come up naturally.

This was something I definitely got wrong at the beginning. I always thought I needed to use every conversation as an opportunity to impress the banker and demonstrate how much I knew. That was completely the wrong approach.

If you’re at a target school and already have a couple of finance experiences, you’re probably fine. There’s no need to constantly flex the work you’ve done or show how knowledgeable you are. Be personable and be curious.

During these conversations, I’d aim for a semi-casual but energetic tone. Show genuine curiosity without sounding like you memorized a script.

At the end of the day, networking is largely about being likable and showing enough genuine interest that the person remembers your name positively.

They also usually won’t drill you with technical questions. It can happen, especially as networking gets closer to actual interview season, but I don’t think it’s particularly common. I had Deutsche Bank do this once, but that was more of an exception than the rule.

Interview Preparation

Interview preparation is much easier if you approach it in a structured way.

Even if you come from a STEM background or have never taken a finance class before, the amount of material is genuinely manageable. The easiest way to think about it is to divide technicals into the major core sections and work through them one at a time, similar to how guidingwallstreet.com organizes the material.

For technical preparation, GWS has a pretty good question bank which I found represented what I actually found in interviews. Work through the questions and, more importantly, make sure you understand the concepts behind the answers.

People always say you need to know these materials like the back of your hand, but I don’t really think that’s true.

I’d say my technicals were definitely on the stronger side, and even I didn’t know every random detail. There are obscure topics that occasionally come up, such as some of the more detailed goodwill questions in M&A. Certain firms can definitely go deeper than others, so you should adjust accordingly.

The important part is having a strong enough understanding of the major concepts that you can confidently discuss them and apply them when an interviewer changes the facts of a question.

At the beginning, it can feel like there is no end to the amount of material you need to learn. You’ll work through a few sections and wonder how you’re possibly going to remember all of it.

Then, after a while, you realize that the total amount of material is actually pretty manageable.

Start early and give yourself at least a month of consistent reading and practice. Treat it almost like another class. If you spend time on it consistently, your brain slowly starts connecting everything and technical questions become much more intuitive.

The next step is something I think people underestimate: understanding the concepts is not enough. You need to practice.

I REALLY recommend doing a lot of practice questions.

We’ve all had the experience of sitting in class, understanding everything the professor is saying, and then walking into the exam and wondering what just happened.

Interviews are similar.

One of the best ways to perform well is to have already seen questions that resemble what you’re being asked. We aren’t geniuses solving completely new problems every time. Most of the time, we’re applying familiar rules and observations to slightly different situations that we’ve already encountered before. Basically LLMs haha.

I think there are a few stages to practicing.

First, work through all of the practice questions in guidingwallstreet.com, including the questions organized by individual topic rather than only the main question set.

For example, during my PWP Superday, around half of the questions I received were very similar to questions I had already practiced beforehand. Hate the game, not the player.

Some of the questions in guidingwallstreet can get extremely difficult. Once you’re consistently comfortable with that level of technicals, I’d stop obsessing over learning increasingly obscure concepts.

At that point, your time is probably better spent improving your story, behavioral answers, and overall ability to come across as someone the interviewers would actually want to work with.

Lastly, keep a very close eye on recruiting timelines.

There are paid recruiting trackers, but I don’t think they are necessary. There are free options such as the "Trackr" that accomplish basically the same thing.

Staying organized with application openings, deadlines, and recruiting timelines is important because being early can make a meaningful difference. You don’t want to miss an opportunity simply because you didn’t realize an application had opened.

Hopefully this post is helpful to everyone. Would appreciate a banana if you got something useful out of it.

For transparency, I’m a non-diversity candidate at a target school who eventually landed offers across MF PE, EB, and HF recruiting. I’m only mentioning that to establish some credibility behind the advice and to say that, looking back on the process, these are probably the biggest things that helped me and the areas I would focus on if I had to do everything again.

Good luck to everyone who is still recruiting, and hopefully this can be useful for future recruiting classes as well.

If anyone has questions, I have a little more time on my hands now, so feel free to leave a comment. I’ll try to help however I can 

TLDR

1. Don’t stress too much about early internship prestige. Find experiences that actually teach you about businesses and finance.
2. During networking, focus much more on being personable and curious than trying to impress people.
3. Study guidingwallstreet's guides, for general practice, use GWS question bank for more difficult and bank-specific practice questions, and use Trackr to keep track of recruiting timelines.