Ignore HHs, they nly work with candidates who they can close, it’s not their job to find you a job

Ur advantage is ur from a target school, alumni are your best best advocate

If ur summer is from one of the top 5 banks, go down the ladder, if ur summer was in consumer, say ur trying to switch to tech as it’s more exciting and consumer did not excite me this much and getting a consumer summer was a way to break in and pivot

 

Ditto to this. For any company that sees your school as a target, reach out to the alum before applying and then let the alum know you applied (assuming the alum are receptive, had a few cold shoulders - ie. the alum clearly ignored my email / LinkedIn message and I heard nothing from those companies).

 

There are two challenges here -

1. there are plenty of people who got offers looking to switch banks or jump into IB... many banks will take a slightly unrelated summer (corp banking etc) with an offer over an IB with no offer

2. It doesn't make you a terrible candidate at all, but interviewers have very little to go off of given your limited experience, and your old team not wanting you back is always going to be a red flag. Your skill set as a college student is still pretty limited and isn't going to outweigh the lack of offer for teams who have a ton of choices on who to hire.

I would move downmarket, MM type banks and also consider some non-banking roles. It's very late to be trying to land FT IB.

 
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What year did your friends graduate if they broke in without offers? Really anyone from 2019-2022 had a MUCH easier recruiting experience, banks couldn't hire fast enough. This year there are almost no "extra" FT spots available. You are also honestly about 2-3 months late to FT recruiting - most banks run the entire process in the last few weeks of August, so you are competing for the scraps right now.

I think it's less categorical inflexibility and more just that you have 1 real work experience and the binary result was you didn't get asked back. Imagine you were applying to Harvard and had a 1100 SAT score but were brilliant... that latter part is just harder to show off to decision-makers when the only tangible data they have is not in your favor. 

Also worth asking - what is your story for why no offer? It's a tough line to walk in that you want to give honest, true feedback and not just "there wasn't headcount" but you also don't want to seem like a slacker.

I don't think you are precluded from IB, but it's late in the season and it doesn't seem like you have gotten past first rounds. I would certainly aim your sights lower than BB/EB (think MM, regional firms, etc) and consider "IB adjacent" paths like corporate banking, valuation, credit risk, equity research, small IB/PE boutiques etc. You have a long career ahead and a year or two spent stepping stones back to IB is ultimately a total non-issue.

 

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