Pivoting into IB for full-time without doing Summer Analyst program?? (FT 2022)
Just out of curiosity, how usual/typical is it for someone who didn't do an IB summer analyst gig to break into IB for full-time? I'm currently a rising senior at a target public university (Berkeley/Michigan/UVA) who's interested in recruiting full-time for IB. It seems like a lot of the people here who are planning to re-recruit for full-time already have SA gigs under their belt. I'm just doing a corporate finance internship right now at a decent Fortune 50 telecom/tech company (so definitely not IB) but wondering if IB is something I can pull off.
If there's anyone on here who's successfully went into IB full-time without doing an IB summer analyst program beforehand, I'd love to hear your opinions/tips on this. Thanks.
Doable if you are otherwise a good candidate (target, very high GPA, relevant summer, finance interest/experience) and just skipped IB SA, not one who already went through and struck out everywhere. Be prepared for questions as to why you want to do IB now/why didn't you recruit for SA. With a TMT internship you should target those groups, including the boutiques/EBs that do tech. Don't be scared of MM banks, it's very easy to lateral after one year.
Unfortunately the timing is really against you since the current SAs are already almost done with their internship. You need to network like crazy, starting literally right now, 50 emails out on Monday, and be ready for interviews around the week of August 1. Typically they'll start reaching out with first rounds once intern offers are decided, and then superdays in early-mid August when interns accept or decline their spots. Personal opinion is accept your corp fin gig, forget the prestige of IB and don't look back because IB sucks, but can certainly understand the pull as a college kid.
I go to a target but my GPA is okay not great (~3.6). As for top BB/EB recruiting I'm not expecting too much since they're extremely competitive and EB's have historically only taken 3.8+ gpa kids from my school. I'm actually most likely going to go for MM, the lower tier BBs, and lesser known boutiques since they're a little more within reach. I did apply to IB SA positions last year, but that was back when I didn't really know what I wanted to do so I also applied to consulting, asset management, and corp fin positions. Got interviews at a few places but my corp fin offer came earlier on so I just accepted. Now I'm pretty set on doing IB though, so I'm planning to go all out on it.
I also don't really think I want accept my corp fin gig at the moment. It's a solid company and I like my group, but the job itself isn't as interesting as other jobs in finance. Also, corp fin pretty much does recruiting year round so I could always go back so I'm not too worried about it.
As for the recruitment timing being against me as you mentioned, that comes as a surprise to me. I know that IB firms move quickly, but I assumed a lot of places were going to continue doing recruiting throughout the fall? Only a handful of firms have even posted their FT openings yet (only GS, JPM, Perella Weinberg, Guggenheim), so I don't know how they're going to do first rounds in 2 weeks if applications aren't even out yet. Is it one of those things where they'll personally reach out to previous candidates that they're interested in? Any info on this would really be appreciated, thanks man.
FT spots are often filled through a very fast, networking only process, it's not something where they have the applications out for a while and then slowly bring candidates in later in the fall. Most of the candidates have offers from internships (IB or otherwise) that will explode at some point - typically IB intern offers explode after 2 weeks. This is why you have to network so much for FT, a lot of these applications will never really be posted.
That said, there are a few firms that will continue to add FTs in the fall (often situations where they're expanding their FT class or gave interns very long offer dates), but it's a minority of spots, and 80% of FT recruiting is wrapped by first week of September.
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