Cold email → interview booked → canceled the day before. Now what?
Situation
A niche M&A advisory role popped up at a major bank in NYC, the kind of seat that does board-level work at the intersection of M&A, governance, and shareholder strategy. Specialized team, maybe 5 firms run a real practice like this. Posting was a few hours old when I caught it.
Applied immediately. Sent cold emails to 4–5 people at the firm the same day. No response. Right before the weekend, so I figured the trail was dead.
Monday morning the EA reaches out to schedule interviews. Three back-to-back with the junior team, an associate and two analysts, booked for Thursday.
Spent two days deep in prep mode. Activism frameworks, governance vocabulary, recent campaigns, regulatory updates, LinkedIn-stalked every interviewer and built tailored questions for each. I was ready.
Wednesday morning, EA emails: "Team decided to move in another direction. Meetings canceled. Best of luck."
Never sat down.
Replied with a clean, short note thanking her and asking to be kept in mind. She wrote back saying she'd forward to HR. Not nothing, but obviously not the outcome I was working toward.
Background
International student in NYC. BS + MS in Finance from a decent NYC school. 1+ year at a LMM boutique — tech and consumer retail M&A, $300M+ deal sizes. Lean teams meant I was in C-suite rooms from week one. Need sponsorship. Market is cooked. None of that is changing, so the question is how to play the hand I have.
What I'm looking for
- Honest read on what happened. Internal candidate? Senior referral landing late? Hiring freeze? Whatever it was, I want to understand it so I can adjust.
- Where else to look. Specialized M&A advisory practices hiring lateral analysts right now. Open to obvious names and especially the off-radar ones. Drop names if you've got them.
- Folks with similar paths International, LMM, trying to step up into a specialized seat. how did you actually pull it off? What worked, what wasted your time? DMs open.
- Recruiters and hiring managers, if your team is hiring or even just thinking about it, I'd love to chat.
IB only — lateral or step up. Not pivoting to buyside or anything adjacent right now.
Replying to every comment. Appreciate the time.
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