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First question - "So, you go to (non-target school) and interned for (global asset manager). Please tell me why the fuck your sitting in front of me."
Not from an individual but from a firm (I won't mention who). This firm had us in for an assessment day and you had exercises in the morning and afternoon but the afternoon ones were only for those who passed the morning ones. We all do the morning ones and then they bring us some lunch. After lunch a guy comes in with a small piece of paper and say in front of everyone "guy 1, guy 2, guy 3 and guy 4 please go to the lifts. Everyone else can go home. Thank you for coming". Pretty cold and unprofessional to do it in front of everyone.
“Hi this is MarthaStewartsAFelon”
“Hi, did we have a call scheduled?”
“Yeah, we set it up on Thursday afternoon last week”
“[sounding very annoyed] ...and what was it supposed to be for exactly?”
“My summer analyst interview”
“Oh FUCK”
He is not a bad guy... he is the reality of doing business.
Every single client you come across is going to be skeptical, antsy, nervous, distrusting and a whole other heap of seemingly negative characteristics. If you are going to be in a billion dollar business you better get used to it and stop passing the blame.
His job is to weed out the weak...whether it's candidates, clients, pitches...whatever.
Be prepared, be courteous and most of all don't associate someone not being nice to you with them being bad.
It's a surefire way to fail at interviews, jobs and life as a whole.
First ever job interview. Lifeguarding. 14 years-old.
Interviewer: "Have a seat. How old are you?" Me: "14." Him: "Have you ever had sex?" Me: "No." Him: "Hmm. Ever touched a boob?" Me: "Yes." Him: "You're hired."
During the fall of 2001 (the tech crash) I went to a final round in Chicago at one of Blair/Baird. We get to the cocktail hour the night before a Saturday super day. I know a couple of the guys who were analysts from my school. We proceed to get drunk and go out in Chicago after the official happy hour. They proceed to tell me that of the 50 kids brought in for the super day that they are probably going to make one offer. I was the only person from my school that made it out of the 30 on-campus interviews they did. So the next day I crushed my interviews...best I've ever done. They end up hiring the little brother of one of the associates. That's how life tends to work though...
They brought 50 kids to a final round for 1 spot and then just hired the brother of an employee.
I gave you an SB out of sheer pity.
After being recommended for an interview by an MD:
Interviewer: what groups are you interested in?
Me: answers
Interviewer: pauses, chuckles to herself okay school, but not great, low gpa...if X hadn’t asked my boss to look at your resume, I would’ve thrown it straight in the trash. That’s just not gonna happen.
To be fair to her, I wasn’t the traditional summa from Wharton candidate. But to be fair to me, I had excelled in my choice of field for a first job out of college (I was trying to lateral in at the time), I had the chops for the job and the MD that recommended me knew it and said so, I was over their gpa threshold, and they weren’t a top-tier bank by any means. I know for a fact that they have and do make “subpar” hires all the time.
Pick yourself up and dust yourself off, guys. It was a little painful to be smacked in the face like that over the phone, but it only motivated me more.
I can't speak for others, though I suspect to some extent it is common. As to your other question...
I knew she was right. I appreciated her candor in telling me something I knew deep down to be true, but was uncomfortable hearing - that some people in this industry will always see me as a leper because I only got decent grades from a good school and not summa from Wharton. In a way, being told this truth in such a vicious way was refreshing - after that point I couldn't be made to feel any lower than I did, and that felt empowering.
But I also knew she was wrong. I had excelled in my previous work, and I knew I could again if given the opportunity. Someone much more senior, and with more business acumen than her (from her own institution, nonetheless) knew it as well. Ultimately, I chose to view the experience as a loss for her and her bank to ding me the way they did - for even though I understood their reasoning, I knew that I would have made them proud had they brought me on board.
At the end of the day, you have only one life. Are you going to set your ambitions aside and convince yourself that you are destined to be less than others just because some hack in HR and the narrow minded MD they're working for say so?
Prior to finance, I interviewed for a sales position at a fortune 500 tech conglomerate:
The sales manager walks in 10 minutes late, and I shit you not this dude fires off a finger pistol across the table (auto ding #1). As the finger pistol is discharging he opens with "Heeeeeyyyyy.... [pauses to look my resume]... Keyser!!" (auto ding #2). He offers no handshake and sits down (auto ding #3).
He then cracks some grease ball joke about our cross-town college rivalry. I asked him what university he went to and he wasn't associated with either school... (auto ding #4)
Keep in mind we're only 2min into the interview.
I ask him about growth potential at the company; he tells me there are two tracks: "Field sales and marketing... but marketing is for p#ussies, so let's be honest you'll go into field sales." (auto ding #5)
He clears his throat and tells me how much money he made last year (auto ding #6), it was to the tune of $150k+ (auto ding #7). He then says verbatim, "You seem like a go-getter, I could see you making twice that much when you're in my position." (auto ding #8).
He then proceeded to lie about the position, the salary, the responsibilities, his position, and went full Glengarry Glen Ross with some diatribe about "Closers, Hard-Hitters, and Deal Makers."
After leaving the interview, I emailed the recruiter and told them our interests were misaligned.
I had a headhunter here on this forum tell me I couldn't be a trader. I didn't have the skillset, two months later I got the trader role.
I had a headhunter tell me like 9 months ago there was just “no way” I could transition from Big 4 into IB, dude kept sending me like fund accounting roles. I basically told the guy to f*ck off, and now I start my job in IB in two days.
Honestly, most recruiters don't know jack shit about their openings, especially internal ones
Honestly, most recruiters don't know jack shit about their openings, especially internal ones
Going through a headhunter and interviewing with a PE firm for an associate position. Several phone screens, a weekend case study, super day, then a video interview with the head partner of the fund. By all indications from HH and group director, I was the guy. A couple weeks of radio silence go by and then I get a call saying they meant to look for a VP level position, not an associate. I was floored.
Ended up getting contacted by said HH again for the same role and politely declined.
Another gem was a MD at a BB telling me to my face that my undergrad school was "a fucking joke."
Approx 2004 had an interview with Citadel for Operations. I didn't want to be in Operations but I DID want to be at Citadel. I was interviewing with one of the managers and the senior manager (might have been Head of Operations) poked his head in the door, made eye contact with me for 3 seconds, silently shook his head 'no' and walked away.
Had a phone interview with a very young, lean PWM firm (5 years old).
The interviewer had to reschedule two different times that day due to longer than expected sales calls and other phone interviews he was facilitating that were running late.
We ended up settling for 8:00 PM (weird, I know) on a Thursday night since we were both pretty busy that day.
The interview was going pretty well besides the fact that he was riding in a car with at least two other guys that really enjoy listening to "Slippery" by Migos. I swear I heard the song play at least three times during the interview. When the interview was winding down and I was beginning to ask my closing questions about the firm, the interviewer cuts me off mid question and says: "Oh shit, I'm gonna have to call you back were getting pulled over. Sorry dude."
One time an MD for a valuation shop asked if I had any questions. I asked what his favorite part of his job was. He looked me dead in the eyes and said “the money”.
Another time I was at a recruiting event that a private equity consultant company was presenting at. I think it was Marsh. The speaker (who wasn’t actually in PE) was talking down to everyone saying how you had to have an Ivy League background and do IB first to break into PE. Someone asks how to break into IB and he starts talking shit about IB and how terrible it is. He then recommended reading monkey business, and says reading it is the equivliant of “seeing that hot girl at the bar take a shit”. Unreal situation to drop that analogy but I cant really disagree
Interview for summer internship after Junior year:
"So why have you only had 2 internships through your junior year of college? Before I began my Junior year internship I had completed 9 internships already."
...
Also, this exact interview was during September 2017. He asked me to pitch a stock and I pitched bitcoin saying it should see growth over the next few months. I said how the finite supply gives opportunity for demand to get a piece of it to skyrocket and that increased awareness and availability of resources for cryptos has grown. I know it's not a great stock to pitch but I wanted to be outside of the box and found it interesting. The dude scoffed at the idea and cut me off mid pitch. I think it was priced at like $4,000 at the time and we all know it peaked at $19k eventually. smh
What do you mean I didn't give him a stock pitch? My single sentence I wrote wasn't everything I said lol. And yeah I guess most serious investors consider it a scam but the price quadrupled.
Anyways my point was that he asked me for a stock that I think there is an opportunity of growth or to make money in, I chose bitcoin and told him why and he basically cut me short and disagreed with me.
The first company I went to after college sent my offer to the wrong address (HR error) and I reached out to the company and they said they had sent the offer. I was like I didn't get anything in snail mail or email. I was like, ok well what is in the package - what are you offering? They said they couldn't tell me, it was in the offer package.
So I wait a few days, nothing. I reach out again. They said they sent another copy. Finally, some random dude messages me on Facebook and says that this company that he also applied to keeps sending him offers with my name on it.
I was like what? Are they good offers? He was like 'yeah, and I am waiting on one too, but keep getting yours.' HR swapped his name and my name somehow. We got it all sorted out in the end and he finally got an offer too (in his name).
What a joke. I even contacted HR and they didn't fix the problem! It took some rando on Facebook. Major company as well.