IB Fall Recruitment During Social Distancing

I’m currently an incoming MBA student and was planning to recruit for summer 2021 MBA Associate positions.

Now that COVID has most schools partially shut down and most bankers working from home, how will traditional recruitment be affected?

Will bankers still be willing to meet for in person informational interviews? Or will this all be transitioned to Zoom/phone interviews?

How can a candidate standout when you can no longer leverage in person networking?

Thanks!

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Based on the various timelines for returning to the office, I would it’s it’s almost very certain that most of recruiting this cycle will take place virtually. Format will largely depend on the type of school you go to. For a target school, where the process is pretty structured, the only major change will be the lack of in-person events (office visits, on-site informationals, etc.) OCR will probably provide points of contact within the bank (usually an alum) and you’ll be limited to those people since they don’t want 100 CBS/Wharton kids spamming 100 bankers. For non-target schools, I would say covid will make recruiting more challenging as you can’t show you “hustle” by making frequent commutes to the city and scheduling several coffee chats with bankers. In-person informational interviews can still happen but really up to the person you reach out to as it won’t be as easy and going down to the lobby of their building.

In terms of standing out, this is where preparation comes into play. Have a solid and polished story as to what you did before the MBA made you want to attend your school and why banking. Do your research on the banks and specific things about why you wanna work there. At the MBA level, technicals are not the emphasis but rather cultural fit as they see you more of a longer term investment than an analyst.

 

Thanks for the insight. As a follow-up question.

Have you heard anything about banks reducing the number of MBA Associates for Summer 2021? And would you think it better to cast a wider net during these times, or focus efforts on meeting many people from a handful of banks to make a better impression?

Thanks!

 

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