Less competitive positions
Hey everyone,
In a few months, I'm gonna go through summer analyst recruiting for 2021 internships. However, I'm stuck on what roles to apply to. I'm most interested in IB; however, I also have some interest in corporate banking, AM, and capital markets as well. If given each of these roles, I would undoubtedly choose IB but I'm not a very competitive applicant for IB (3.5 at target school), which is why I'm considering other roles as well.
My question is: Are corporate banking, AM, and Cap Markets positions easier to obtain compared to IB or are they similar in competitiveness?
Thanks in advance!
as long as you're well-prepared for the application/interview process, you have a fighting chance for IB. make sure you really understand financial theory fluently - read the vault guide to IB interviews, and (if you have time would strongly recommend reading) Rosenbaum's Investment Banking textbook. the latter might be more of a summer project, but you will for sure smash any technical questions if you spend the time on the material.
if you're a yank, which i assume you are, then i can't help you with the networking aspect. not in my wheelhouse.
but yeah, 3.5 from a target doesn't sound terrible to me. have some self esteem. cunt.
Commercial banking and AM are less competitive. Capital markets a tiny bit less competitive but starting to split hairs a bit there. FP&A at a F500, if they recruit undergrads, could be a good Plan B for someone who wants IB. Be careful with AM, there are a lot of roles that don’t teach anything in the way of valuation and business analysis
Actual AM (i.e. investing roles) is way more competitive than banking. For reference, I got to the first round at BlackRock for both their internship and grad in equities and the guys there told me only ~30 people make it to the first round and only 6 people get offers out of ~6000 applicants for the intern program. Even fewer first rounds and offers for grad. Fidelity has even fewer people. Ditto all the other firms that recruit undergrads.
I think any decent FO/high finance job out of undergrad is reasonably competitive in terms of applicant quality, interview difficulty and the funnel to get an offer.
Cap markets is still IB. Commercial banking and corporate roles are probably easier at least on those first two metrics. Corporate banking is only a slight step down vs IB. PWM/PB, commercial insurance/re-insurance, IDB, CRAs etc are also backups to consider.
Yeah real investing roles are competitive. I rarely if ever hear them described as asset management. Technically they meet the definition but in more common parlance, asset management is working at Vanguard or Cambridge or one of those places. Or working at a place like BlackRock but in the roles where the job function isn't doing fundamental analysis, which is the vast majority of people employed at BlackRock.
I've never heard "AM" being described as investment consultants or passive funds. Always taken it to mean investing roles at active traditional managers (I think you guys in the states call them "mutual funds" or "long-onlys"). It's akin to calling FDD or TAS at the big4 "IB" ; just don't quite see the parallels.
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