BB Commercial Banking or S&T at a Boutique

Yo whats up,

In a real fucked up situation. I am currently interning with a BB in the Commercial Banking Division (just started yesterday) as a Credit Risk Analyst and was given an offer to intern at a pretty dynamic boutique investment bank in NYC for Fixed Income Trading (the bank is lead by an all star cast with execs from Blackstone, goldman, UBS, etc.). The company seems promising and have been killing on the fixed income side but I am worried that I will lack a name brand going into FT recruiting. I am currently at a non-target and have been in touch with all of the campus recruiters from the firms I had superdays with (MS, Jeffco, BarCap, UBS, Gugg, BlackRock, etc.) and I am confident that I will be able to get at least 7 of them to invite me back to interview. I will also be interning with a top MM (think Blair, Baird) in Equities S&T late in August. I interned at a boutique merchant bank last summer and prior to that I worked part time in S&T at a boutique investment bank (both in NYC).

I am afraid that my resume will be too "boutique-ish", which will prevent me from getting interviews in FT recruiting as I will lack a name brand (you know how stuck up those campus recruiting hoes be). However, being in NYC will allow me to network my tail off which is hard for me as I am currently interning just outside of NYC. So what are your thoughts? I will be shooting for S&T for FT.

So... take the boutique S&T offer and run with it (could network in NYC)? Or stay in my current role as a Credit Analyst at a BB for the name brand and then intern at the MM? The latter would prevent me from networking in person all together.

Holla at cha boy.

7 Comments
 

Depends on what BB you are at. I think a Credit Analyst position is pretty good. if you want to do IBD, i might say stay as a Credit Analyst, especially if its with a top BB. If you are to shoot for S&T full time tho it is a pretty obvious choice.

Go with the boutique S&T, especially if the execs have all those credentials. you can be sure that people in finance will know that firm if it really is an up and comer.. also, any potential to get FT with the boutique after your internship?

 

the people within the investment banks may know, but would the campus recruiting ladies know? i doubt they would. the process was disgusting for SA recruiting as i was turned down by many campus recruiting ladies with an IBD and S&T internship on my resume, even with referrals from top md's. i could only imagine what it would be like without a brand name for FT recruiting.

 
Best Response
ogofnyc

the people within the investment banks may know, but would the campus recruiting ladies know? i doubt they would. the process was disgusting for SA recruiting as i was turned down by many campus recruiting ladies with an IBD and S&T internship on my resume, even with referrals from top md's. i could only imagine what it would be like without a brand name for FT recruiting.

hahahah what campus recruiting lady? the one who screens your resumes are analysts/associates. mayb you need to do a better job getting referrals from MDs.. the best way is to ask the MD to introduce the analyst/associate in charge of recruiting (every group has one of these, usually an associate or second year analyst). thats how you guarantee a spot for interviews. not some recruiting lady from your school. that makes no sense at all

 

I need some clarification on this, are you credit risk analyst or credit analyst? Because there is a huge difference between the two. I used to be a credit analyst in CB and its a great place to start and was able to transfer internally to an IB group focused on syndication deals. Being a credit analyst, you are essentially underwriting deals. Now, if you are a credit risk analyst, then thats a whole other thing. The CR analyst that I worked with pretty much just monitored the deals that we completed. So on one side you got the dealmakers the other side is more like the approval authority. Not sure how your BB classifies them though.

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