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kellycriterion:

It's time to wake up and smell the coffee. 30 positions is N-O-T-H-I-N-G. You could apply to that many on LinkedIn or Handshake or whatever the kids are using these days in half an hour and get autorejected by 60% of them. Have you looked at the number of applicants on a typical LinkedIn position for IB Analyst et cetera et cetera? It's 250, 500, 1,000 or more on a lot of them, and that's within the first 12 hours. I get that a lot of that is bots or people just hitting the first button and not going deeper, but that should at least give you a proxy of what you're up against. What's going to differentiate you from those guys? VOLUME. VOLUME.

What do I mean when I say volume? You go to a nice school with some people in financial services? Email every one of them you can in the fields you're interested in and ask them to speak. Go back five years or more for alumni. Shoot the breeze with them. Tell them what's new with the school. Reminisce. Learn more about the jobs. Get some experience talking on the phone.

Learn about as many firms as you can. Figure out all the boutiques. You need to be sending out hundreds of emails and pounding that digital pavement. Cover the waterfront. Bring on your A-game, work the emails, work the phones, and stay encouraged.

The 30 that you're coming to us to talk about? Put up those numbers or even 50 in a day and do it every day for 3 months and come back.

Thank you for your advice. I’ll definitely focus on networking and apply to as many firms as I can in the next cycle.

This ^ is spot on. You have to be hungry and a networking volume beast to make it. I had an excel going of everyone I talked to. My school, other schools, I didn’t give a fuck. If you’re going to be casual about it you’re not going to make it, no shot. Applying doesn’t mean jack shit. Heed advice above or don’t waste your time

jcon5:

Senior in college now, just landed boutique IB full time having not gotten a return from my BB PE summer analyst role.



For that SA role, I applied to around 175 internships. Had a conversation or connection with about 25 of them. 5 interview processes and two offers were yielded from that.



For full time, I’ve applied to around 100, and had meaningful connections at about half. I had around 15 interview processes, 5 super days, 1 offer.



Cold applying to 30 internships, especially if they’re brand names, will get you no where and have you feeling like you’re worthless as you stated. I would say I’m slightly above average student (3.65 gpa) at a complete non target. If an average guy that came from low-middle class family at a non-target can land an IB job, you sure as hell can too. But you have to apply yourself. Network your ass off and apply like crazy and you’ll get a job in “high finance” (hate that term). But more importantly you need a mindset shift from, presumably, “I deserve this” to “I have to grind everyday for 5+ hrs to have a shot at breaking in”.

Thanks, I will keep that in mind and try my level best next cycle.

Research Associate in ER:

It's always very funny seeing Americans comment on posts about British recruitment. Most are incapable of imagining for 2 seconds that a world exists outside of the US which may not be quite like the US. So that said, I would ignore most of the above comments. 30 spring week apps is pretty normal.

No one in the UK is (or really can) apply to 50 internships a day for 3 months. Most people barely are able to apply to 100 total (not because they're lazy but because that's the number of opportunities around). Most people who get these internships probably applied to low-mid double digit places.

So my 2 cents:

1) The reality is that UK recruitment is very random. You may be an awesome candidate, you may just get unlucky. But with enough volume, you should be able to hit *something*. 30 is normal but you could be *above* normal.

2) Hirevues and job sims are *not* final stages. The final stages will involve speaking to someone. You're basically failing at the first stages. And sometimes these first stages are given after they've checked minimum requirements but before they've even looked at your CV and rest of application properly. Everything you've submitted up to and including the stages you're failing at needs to be reconsidered.

3) Rejection, ghosting, seeing others successes is part of this process. You need to get over it. You can only do what you can do. So do everything you can do. Unironically adapt, improvise, overcome.

​​​​​4) Read this: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6940372

Yeah but for some firms video interviews and job sims are the final stages. But yeah, I mostly messed up. Also, you are right. I thought 30 apps were normal. Cuz pretty sure where I study, people usually apply to 15-20 max cuz it is quite time consuming. First the cover letter and then the business questions (ok that’s pretty simple), (Hell, I still have to submit two apps where they require us to submit a video as part of our application), then the assessment questions, the job sim and finally the telephone interview (in a few cases job sim is the final stage but mostly an interview or so) all of it takes a lot of time plus uni exams. I have been to a few networking events and have reached out to numerous individuals and have received positive replies. I have been trying but it gets frustrating after a point. I will try to apply for off-cycle internships at small firms for the experience and will practice and improve myself. Thank you!

Do you think I’m ruining my chances by saying I’m mixed other instead of just black?

Analyst 2 in IB - Gen:

Your chances are slim unless you are women. Have you tried identifying as Hispanic / Black or LGBTQ on your apps. No proof is required 

Woman, bi lmao

Be sure to zip it up once you’re done.