You're not polished enough
I made all the way to superday at a BB. Making it past resume screening was a big deal to me because I go to a non-target with very few alumni in the industry.I made it past 5 rounds of interview, got to superday, then I was told I was a back up candidate. I called to follow up and the recruiter said all the people who received their offers accepted.
I asked for feedback on what I could have done better and all he told me was "you're not polished enough." I was very heartbroken and frustrated at the moment so I just said thank you and got off the phone. I have been pondering on what that means for a while now and was wondering if anyone could give me more color as to what that means.
it's nice they gave you an answer at all, I've never been told why; but i know the feeling. I know it can be discouraging but all you can do is keep trying.
If you made it that far you did damn well, who knows if that's even the real reason.
I really want to know who the hell would ever provide that kind of feedback to a back up candidate, let alone a college student. Not polished enough? What a complete dick.
Interviewer didn't volunteer it. OP asked for feedback. I personally would have couched it a bit more gently by saying that "something tells me that in a couple of years you'll be at the level we need you to be at" but the interviewer told him where he was lacking after being asked for it.
That's not being a dick; that's being helpful.
If I ask WSO for all of the ways IlliniProgrammer is a douche, and I (perhaps rightly) get an earful, I may not like what I hear but you guys would be acting in a way that is honest and helpful and responsive to my request, not mean.
OP was brave and very adult in asking for feedback. And he got it and if he can address it it will help him in the long run.
What a subjective load of bull. I suppose good on the recruiter for letting you know, although.
Are you bald?
It's because you go to a non-target and didn't amaze them.
I think the majority of posters here are simply dead wrong. First off, the recruiter did you a huge solid by actually giving you feedback. Very, very few recruiters will ever do this. Second off, the recruiter's feedback was real feedback. It's just that you and the majority of people here don't understand it, and that's understandable because neither did I when I was in undergrad.
When I think of an unpolished candidate, I think of one who rambles (maybe this is just projection judging by the length of my post lol), cannot properly walk me through a transaction on his/her resume, cannot give me a succinct answer to an easy question, cannot form a simple opinion on a complex issue, cannot answer my off-the-wall behavioral questions, etc. Frankly, the vast alumni network, IB-related clubs, and just overall environment at most targets do a much better job than their counterparts at non-targets polishing the students.
Since you got this far in the process, you can rule out your experience as the issue. What you need to work on is your delivery (i.e. how you answer questions). A starting point would be running through a mock interview with either an alumnus or the WSO Wall St. Mentors program. That should give you a clue as to where your weaknesses lie. I would then spend some time pouring through WSO as everything from how to walk someone through a transaction to how to answer an off-the-wall behavioral question (I actually posted about that yesterday) has been asked and answered here before.
I hope that helps and makes sense. This is understandably frustrating as the solution to this issue is not as linear as just studying technicals more.
This is very accurate. The only thing I would add is that I would also use "not polished" if a candidate didn't use good grammar, didn't demonstrate a broad vocabulary, or regularly said "uhhh" or "ummm." My biggest personal pet peeve is when someone uses a word for something that it doesn't mean.
A great recent example is that I interviewed a sales candidate, and twice in the interview she used "ventricle" in place of "vertical." I could have forgiven it once as a slip-up since we're in healthcare, but twice was painful. She won't be getting an offer.
This.
This is really good, helpful advice. Don't take it too hard, and don't take it too personally.
"Not polished enough" does not mean "never"; it just means "not today".
If it helps, I'm exactly 10 years ahead of you in this cycle. I look back at the stuff I was saying and doing in interviews 10 years ago and part of me feels really embarassed. But part of me also knows that I was just a kid, and those mistakes were totally forgiveable and expected for a 21 year old-- but they just meant that I wasn't quite cut out for the FO in that interview.
My toughest interviewers were the ones that helped me improve the most in the long run.
If your biggest issue is polish, you're going to pull this off eventually. Especially if you're coming from a school that doesn't typically place a lot of people into banking. You might not pull this off at 21 or 22 (I'm calling the odds 50/50), but you'll pull it off by 24, especially if you spend 18 months in a white-collar job.
If it helps, my first job put me in a group similar to GS or MS Strats at Lehman Brothers-- I was an excellent programmer, but I lacked the polish for a true FO role. Today I am a quantitative researcher developing alphas on the buyside, and the mistakes I made and the tough interviews I survived at 21 and 22 helped me pull off a really polished interview at 29 that got me the job I have now.
Keep at it, you'll pull this off.
@mmmm123" as an honest assessment of yourself did you catch yourself rambling or speaking more than you needed to? Did you answer questions as if you were reading from a textbook?
If not, like others have mentioned its because you were a non-target (I think this is BS but there are countless threads on debating this).
I see one of two options:
1.) Next time you have an interview be ballsy and ask the interviewer, "If my resume said Harvard, UPenn, or some other target school instead of Generic State U would this change your opinion on me as a suitable candidate for full-time role?"
2.) Move onto something else. Look at alternatives like Corporate Banking and see if you can use the skills you learn there to lateral into IB.
Unfortunately for any job you can be rejected for the dumbest things. Someone didn't like your face, your hair, your suit, the fact that you may be Asian or black, you were a woman but not as attractive as Katie...who the hell knows.
Truth be told its much better to be at a place that wants you rather than one that doesn't or is on the fence about you. You made it this far as a non-target and although there is no consolation prize you have what it takes to get into the room so maybe reach out to people who know you such as friends in the industry or career advisers and get their feedback on your interviewing skills (i.e. not necessarily technical but behavioral and body language wise).
Our firm tends to pick the guy who gives the best technical interview. Incidentally about 60% of us have some sort of state school on our resumes; 40% exclusively. (mind you these are often flagship schools like Berkeley or UNC Chapel Hill or UMich, but in a field like finance, the guy from Berkeley identifies more with UC Irvine than he does Stanford) We do get a boatload of applicants from HYP, but Berkeley, Ga Tech, UMich, UT Austin, and UIUC often produce higher quality developers, and there's just a better cultural fit. So if anything, being from a state school can be an advantage at some firms.
For the positions where competence matters, where you go to school gets you the interview to be sure, but in the interview, it's all you and what you can bring to the table.
It's not cynicism, just a recognition of the realities that you have to work around. And sometimes the truth is harsh, but at least by knowing it, you can see how you might be able to circumvent or address those concerns to solid material effect. And you're right, brazen optimism is what changes the system, but a college sophomore/junior is realistically not going to change in the system. Therefore, a strong understanding of the system itself is going to serve OP better in navigating it.
Also, I'm not questioning that some firms could have preference for state-school kids for cultural dimensions, but BB IB, and then PE/HF recruiting after at the better firms typically do evaluate based on target school. All else being equal at a good PE firm, they will choose the candidate who went to the target over the nontarget, and same with BB IB. It's just a matter of risk and supporting the alma mater