Is recruiting in London especially difficult or is my profile just bad?

Yeah sorry, so to clarify I spent 2 years at my Big 4 firm and got halfway through the ACA, but got an opportunity to move to a Front office role at an asset manager a 1 year internship with two rotations (one rotation in public markets and one in private markets). It was around this time I enrolled in my masters program as my thought process was if I don’t have the ACA I need some type of higher education to make myself competitive. I would’ve stayed the course with the ACA but the firm I was at wasn’t willing to sponsor given it was somewhat irrelevant to what I was doing.

At the end of my internship at this asset manager they only offered to extend my contract by 6 months with a pay bump even though they wanted to give me a full time offer due to budget/headcount issues. Annoyingly, the head of my team really wanted me since I was doing virtually all the work on a pretty lean team (literally just me and an MD) but they told me after the extension was up there was again no guarantee that the fund I was at would extend me a full time offer. Happy I didn’t stay at said firm anyways, top PM’s were poached (due to distrust in upper management) and 3 of their names blew up so performance across funds has been pretty bad. Luckily I had hedged my bets anyway by applying throughout this internship and landed another internship in private credit on another 1 year FTC, so far it’s going well but my MD has said again that being converted will depend on budget and right now it’s tough to say (which isn’t promising for me).

So when I say 3.5 years it looks like this: 2 years at Big 4, 1 year at asset manager (Two 6 month rotations across public markets as a product manager & 6 months covering infrastructure in private markets) and am now a few months into an internship covering private credit.

I get that my CV looks quite weird but I’ve had virtually 0 traction for IB roles even though I’ve received offers from other industries where I had significantly more traction (FAANG/Tech in GTM/Biz Dev/B2B sales).

I’m also in the final stages for consulting at non MBB (think Strategy&/EY Parathenon), commodities trading internships (some no name shops but also some of the larger players BP/Shell and ABCD firms). Only reason I’ve cast my net so wide is to hedge my bets as there’s no guarantee I get made full time at the end of my internship and I’d rather have any job than be unemployed.

Thank you! I appreciate the words of encouragement - I’ve been doing this but referrals almost never lead to interviews except for much smaller firms. I’ve still found it useful especially when constructing my “Why IB/Why this Bank” answer but my problem has been landing interviews in the first place. I think the answer above is probably right that my CV looks messy.

Thank you man, I appreciate the advice - you’re actually on the nose about uni but won’t say which one since I don’t want to be doxxed. I applied for MS & GS but was ghosted after Online Assessment. Did you find MM’s to be easier than BB’s? I would’ve assumed that BB might’ve been slightly easier given larger cohorts (Since the trackers came out I assume MM’s also receive a similar amount of applications).

In regards to the structure of my career, I suppose I’ll write something out quickly for other people who may visit this forum and are considering a similar path. First off, I’d generally advise against doing an apprenticeship unless you’re absolutely sure that you want to work in that specific field, for instance if you know you want to be an accountant then great go for it but if not you’ll almost always be better off going to a target university. The exception is only there when your comparing non target to an apprenticeship in which case depending on the role I’d lean towards an apprenticeship. If you’re going into it hoping to break into high finance/consulting then honestly don’t bother it’s a non traditional path that will require you going back to school anyways since a bachelors at least is a requirement for these positions. Even then at 18 you have no idea what you really want to do so locking yourself in via an apprenticeship isn’t the best idea for most.

The only reason I took the job at 18 was because A) i had no clue what finance even was honestly I didn’t even know what audit was and had no one to tell me and B) My family was going through some financial hardship (my dad at the age of almost 60 had to withdraw his whole pension to pay back some debt related to funeral costs) so that £21k (first year apprentices now are making £27k) made a very material impact on me & my families ability to live a decent life.

Since then I’ve had to find loopholes whether that’s from an academic POV or to gain further experience, it’s honestly just a hassle and while it makes for a unique story, my experience has been that most places will still opt for traditional candidates where they know what they’re getting.