Loren Ipso

Hardly fucked but you'll have to continue working your ass off... Even if you mess up this cycle keep in mind the big picture is you have a very sought after internship that will people not only like, but LOVE to see in a candidate. You also apparently have great stats, all of which help. It's actually really silly of you to even think you're fucked as most people have to go through an MBA just for a shot at MM IB positions.

Tons of target school kids are brats who never have to go through the hell of FT recruiting, but honestly, SA return offers are a priviledge that over inflates your ego. Finding a job is never easy and even if you dont make it in this year, as long as you learn to properly handle recruiting, despite the randomness, you are building the MOST important skills, networking and humility.

I've been in a similar but shittier situation than you, where I was basically the first of many to get fired for office politics unrelated to me. Get creative and spin it. Make sure your story isn't read off of some forum, make it genuine and humble, people will respect you for your professionalism at the very least.

Tyler,

1 chill out 2 build a good story, what you explained kinda sucks 3 don't get cocky, everyone struggles for an IB job

I have to say, why would you think asking to switch groups like that would be a good idea? I actually know someone who did that successfully BEFORE the internship started, but making it known yo u don't want to be in a group early seems like a really easy way to make people dislike you...and unfortunately, rule 1 of SA = make them like you. An IB internship is a privilege (I believe this, regardless of what others may think) and coming across an ungrateful can't have gone down well.

Unfortunate that you didn't get along with your group. I wouldn't say you're fucked, especially if you have a good network of contacts who like you and could go to bat for you. As above, in interviews you'll need to find a better way of explaining what happened - unfortunately even if all you say is true, you don't want to come across in interviews as a victim who won't shoulder any blame etc.

Pretty unlikely a firm/interviewer will call your group to ask for feedback unless they happen to know someone there personally. All they will do is verify employment. Keep your head up, spin the story/experience positively and just keep interviewing places.

Bump anyone else have any ideas or anecdotal advice? I have been extremely self-reflective and have consistently second doubted myself, but nothing short of pure sabotage can explain many events. Would love to hear @"IlliniProgrammer" 's opinion, as he has offered incredible insights in the past. I'm more considering AM/ER after this encounter with banking and am thinking I am going to be screwed regardless.....

Well, if it were me, this experience would make me want IBD less.

I'd leave it on your resume. I'd aim for ER or S&T or maybe consulting. If people ask just say that you didn't enjoy IBD. Hell, it's the truth. If they press you on whether you didn't get an offer or not, say that they didn't think you put in enough hours and face time (also true). Maybe add that they expected you to put in a little more than 100 hours/week during the summer and that became difficult for you. Hopefully the guy on the other side of the interview table will laugh. But don't whine, blame, or complain. Grit your teeth and accept responsibility and resolve to work as hard and put in as much time as your new team needs from you.

Part of being an adult is gritting your teeth and saying nothing when you desperately want to say something. You do it because it's the pragmatic thing to do. And in order to get another job at the level of IBD, you will have to be an adult in the job search. You will have to accept responsibility for something that may very well not be your fault and that you are also probably very angry about. It's not fair, but then again it's not fair for a 22 year old kid to earn more than five figures.

If you don't like this whole political bs, you can always go into tech, quant work, or maybe trading. Assuming you know what you're doing.

Haha I'm a quant. I work 55 hours/week. I could be a banker for two months and then I would die from exhaustion. So I would not judge you on this and many people in finance outside of IBD would not either.

If some 22 year old kid told me with total earnesty that he missed a job offer because he could not keep up with 100 hour weeks, that he felt bad about it, that he resolved to work harder at his next job, I would probably smile and laugh about the whole situation and let the lack of a job offer from IBD go. Then I'd hit you with technical questions and see where we got. If you're a bad fit for IBD, you're probably a great cultural fit for tech or quant roles, but cultural fit is only 20% while competence is 80%.

This strategy won't work for other IBD roles, but it'll sure as hell work in S&T and QA roles. It will probably work in many areas of research, but not all (they may be worried about how you will fare during earnings season.) It may not work at GS- I know a few S&T people there with some pretty crazy hours.

Look, it sucks. But missing an offer in IBD because you couldn't take the hours is kind of like leaving Antarctica because the winter was a little too cold for you.

When one door slams in your face, another door opens. Many, perhaps most, traders and quants think that IBD is filled with political hacks and low competence to douchiness ratios. (NOTE: I never said I believe that myself and I never said anyone thinks EVERYONE in IBD is incompetent.) So your reasons for leaving could either be the hours or "it wasn't a good cultural fit" if you decide to go to S&T. Both would be true.

Be careful and have a well planned explanation on the "cultural fit" front though. Traders can be a little tricky in interviews and may try to get you to go into detail and try to trip you up. Don't say anything negative about that analyst and don't say anything negative about your team.

Not at all. Stop the negativity, it just leads to poor optics. If you were interested/applying in/to a different group and you had walked away from this internship with a great experience how would you spin that story going forward? Sounds like your first experience with office politics and being on the wrong end of perception. Let's be honest, what are you going to do: "Well I had a bad experience so I'm going to bring that up and shoot myself in the foot for future recruiting or just not try at all?" C'mon son, take a breath, pour a drink, get proactive and grow a pair. Comb through these threads on how to spin your work experience and write up your resume. I'm sure there are people higher up in IB on this site that would gladly give you their two cents on how to spin your hands on work experience (and I don't mean bring up the shitty situation you were in). I would but I'm not in IB so it wouldn't help. Wish you all the best, from my perspective this sounds like a tempest in a teapot.

You make some good points on not being negative, but my claim is that the positive message to take from all of this is that you don't have to deal with all of the political BS in other parts of finance. (To be clear you do have to be a nice person to make it in most parts of this industry, and politics is important everywhere, but it's less vital elsewhere)

I hate to sound like Dr. Phil here, but doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result isn't the best way to go through life. If you did a summer of IBD and hated it, what makes you think you'll enjoy two, three, maybe twenty years of it? A miserable summer job is actually a huge gift because those two months can save you several years of full time misery (with 3 weeks of vacation instead of 16 like in college).

OP needs to make a decision. If he really wants to work in IBD, he needs to grow a pair and figure out a really really good way to spin this. If he doesn't want to work in IBD, he just needs to find an OK way to spin this, perhaps leveraging traders' stereotypes of banking (ridiculous hours, low competence/arrogance ratios, political circuses).

A few will, but it's not that likely. Likelihood probably gets a little bit higher outside of NYC (EG Chicago or the South) and a lot higher if they know your old manager or know someone in your group (regardless of where).

If it makes you feel better most firms have a policy of not providing references. This doesn't necessarily stop the flow of information, but people will tend to get a little bit nervous if they get a call from someone a whole lot senior to them or someone they don't know very well (the last thing they want is to get an angry call from legal or HR). Senior managers will also be concerned about legal liability to them and the firm if they give a negative reference (slander) or give a positive reference (legal liability if you're a fuckup.) Most people are aware of this dynamic, so the lack of a strong signal isn't really a negative or a positive. This is good news for you; bad news for the kid with an offer from GS and interviewing at Blackstone.

Bottom line, if the average interviewer has a bro in your old group, he may get the full story. The story is probably only half as negative as you think it will be. If he doesn't have a bro in your old group, he'll get HR's employment confirmation hotline where they will confirm you were a summer analyst from May to August, and, with your permission, what your pay was.

With that said, it may have just been that place/group.

I was an SA last year in a trading desk that I hated. The people were boring, hardly interacted, very dull and crap culture. Now I'm doing another summer internship and the team is amazing. We make jokes, small talk; just good people who work hard but also know how to have fun and be positive.

If I had thought trading was like the first internship I'd have been very wrong. So I wouldn't be quick to think it's a case of insanity (doing same thing over, expecting different result).

Sure but all else being equal, compared to having an average summer, this provides more of a signal that OP may be unhappy in IBD in general.

And yeah, you have a lot of overfit risk by making a decision off of one event. But you only get one life and one way to spend age 22-24. Why not use the one piece of information you have rather than going off of zero information? Even if there's an 80% chance it's random noise, there's a 20% chance it's a signal, and most people would prefer to make a bet that comes out right 60% of the time than 40%.

Remember that OP is pursuing full-time offers, not part-time. And working in IBD, he may not have time to recruit for another job like one might in trading. So it's not like doing one trading internship, hating it, doing another, and enjoying it. The cost of gathering further information has just gone up and it may not be worth two years to be certain you don't like IBD.

Any senior IBD people want to chime in? I'm pretty certain I'll get fucked ...

Hi everyone. I just wanted to make sure everyone can benefit from OP's post here and the work that other WSO users have put into it. OP interned in IBD for a BB where he claimed he got screwed over by the analyst he worked for due to political reasons- because he tried to switch groups.

He didn't get an offer and is now recruiting for FT roles at other firms. He wanted to know if he should keep pursuing IBD or if he was "fucked".