Lost and Depressed: What Do I Do?
Hi all -
First of all, thanks for reading this. Fair warning, I will ramble because there’s a shit load of stuff on my mind right now. I’m a senior at a target undergrad still recruiting for FT24, initially just IB but now looking for anything (didn’t get a SA at a bank so that plan fell through). I’ve got a 3.6 GPA and did some corporate finance internships so my resume isn’t blank, but obviously not going to break into the roles I want anytime this year. To top it all off, I just found out my dad got laid off today, so my parents have got no stable source of income for the time being (I don’t know their savings situation exactly but I think it’s enough for the time being + mom is disabled so we’ve got some money coming in there, but she can’t work). I quite literally owe them my life, they sacrificed so much for me to be where I am now, and my dream growing up was to get a nice-paying job after graduating and pay off their mortgage/car loan/living expenses/etc. Don’t tell them I said that, it’ll ruin the surprise :)
I graduate next semester, and I’m networking as much as I can, but I’m sure all of you know the current state of the industry is completely fucked. A bit of a tangent: I spoke to someone from my school’s career center after asking for advice, and she said “Yeah, it’s bad but it’s not as bad as people say it is.” Please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most banks still under a hiring freeze? Isn’t FT recruiting almost nonexistent? Anyways, back to the point - I’m doing my best to network and just get anything and everything at this point, whether that be BO doing FP&A or being an investment analyst at an endowment, whatever. My thought process is if my dad isn’t able to find a job between now and when I graduate, I’ll need to support them financially somehow until they can get back on their feet, and that means working. I botched 3 of my past interviews, so I’m also working on nailing down behaviorals and technicals. The school’s got a pretty decent mock interview system, and I’ve been taking advantage of that whenever I can.
My question to you all is this: what do I do if I don’t get anything? I’ve always been a huge planner, so this situation I’m in is very new and I’ve got no idea how to navigate it (obviously, I didn’t plan for this shit). What if my dad doesn’t land on his feet and shit hits the fan financially? I wonder if any of you have been in a similar situation and can offer some words of advice.
It’s tough. These past few months have been hands down the hardest period of my life. Seeing my classmates post their FT offers on Linkedin doesn’t help either, though I think I’m not the only one still recruiting (I hope so). I thought about just quitting entirely on more than one occasion, but I realized I wouldn’t want my parents to bury their child. What the fuck do I do? Where do I go from here?
Thanks all for reading. Hope all the best for you, and stay safe.
The first thing to understand and hold in your head is that things aren’t as bad as they seem. The whole world has become a giant comparison with people posting their jobs and great lives etc etc online and people are losing perspective.
You are in a tough situation, and obviously the additional stress of your parents financial situation makes things harder.
Worrying about your parents won’t help. The added stress won’t help. And there isn’t a clear path to making tons of money quickly. The important thing is to land a job, something that supports you and can hopefully provide support for your family if they need it, but not being able to have an amazing career off the bat isn’t a failure. I definitely wouldn’t give up, the world isn’t as neat and linear as people make it out to be.
You need to make sure you don’t lose perspective, put in the hard work, and when you get an opportunity you work like hell to make sure you are always learning and being the absolutely best in that job, even if it’s a simple job.
I was at a target school and struggled. Landed a pretty “non prestigious” job out of undergrad, I was making $40k a year. But I worked my a** off, and made sure I took every opportunity I could. Eventually got into finance and last year made over 100x my first salary out of school. It’s possible, but you need to make sure you don’t pressure yourself but rather make sure you are focused on being the best employee wherever you end up and create opportunities for yourself.
Thank you very much, really. To your point, I do think it's in my nature to worry and self-criticize in order to be the best version of myself possible, and lately that's really taken a toll on my mental well-being. Lots of thinking I'm a failure, etc, but I'm confident I'll end up working somewhere, just may not be the sexiest job I had imagined.
Those “sexy” jobs aren’t necessarily good jobs. It’s just been drilled into your head (here, school, etc) that success only looks like 2-3 paths and even better if within a few firms. The reality is that life doesn’t work that way, and that success can be found through many different paths (and even how you define success matters and will change as you grow up). If you care about money, there are many paths that lead to a great life. Do you know why you want to do IB? Again, it is a fine path, but so are many others. I’d focus on learning about industries, firms, etc and connecting with people. Try to understand what you want to do and where you’ll have the best opportunity to do that (and where you like the people, culture, etc). Financial success will come, but it’s much easier if you find things you are passionate about.
This world of everyone bragging about an amazing life/offer/etc that represents 5% of the reality of their own life, let alone what the average person is like, makes people have warped views of what is actually out there.
Find things you enjoy doing and you’ll be fine, don’t worry about your “buddy” at GS, be happy for them. If people judge you because of some weird perceived “prestige” then not really someone you should hang out with. You’ll be fine.
Just try not to take things too personally. I understand it’s difficult to do in practice but just realize it’s not you, places just aren’t hiring as much these days and tons of people are in a similar spot despite being a strong candidate and very talented. This makes things difficult but just try your best to show your abilities and transferable skills when you’re speaking with people in interviews and keep an open mind even for other geographies. I didn’t get a return offer in my junior summer and had to go into 2020 for FT recruiting and didn’t have a job until 6 months after graduating and ended up joining a boutique bank in sf. Was able to lateral to ny after a year to a solid mm group after though.
If you still want IB, pivot on recruiting at regional boutiques instead of trying to land some miracle since 99% of banks already hired their FT workforce / market isn't as hot as it used to be. You'll also most likely need to broaden your recruiting category to outside of IB. A buddy of mine just couldn't break into it so he recruited for S&T and now does pretty well for himself and only works ~50 hours a week. I'd look at S&T, PWM, strategy & consulting, or transaction advisory fields to start with
Keep your head up. Respects to you for having a good head and intentions on your shoulders this young. This inner drive will take you far in life once you find something (and you will, trust me). Try your best to look at the silver lining of everything/don't get depressed because then it just makes everything seem much worse than it is.
Spend your time wisely with networking for dream job/applying and interviewing for attainable jobs (better to have a job that can bring in some cash than to waste time and all efforts on breaking into FO/IB/whatever), seek a therapist to keep your mindset on check every other month or so, also keep in touch with your parents.
Believe me, I'm keeping in touch with my parents :) And thank you for your kind words - I'm already scheduled to see a therapist this Friday actually. Won't be my first time in therapy and definitely won't be my last. I'm networking like crazy, but even after broadening my net to include the EBs / corp dev / PWM / literally anything at all, I still haven't gotten any first round interviews. Thankfully I reached out to two of my connections (for two different roles) who offered to push my resume and make intros with hiring managers, so I'm really hoping something will happen with that.
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