Why Are Junior Bankers More Unattractive Today Than They Were In The Golden Age?
I've noticed from anecdotal evidence my family members in finance have said that analyst classes at BBs and merchant banks used to be filled with tanned 6'3 lacrosse/rugby kids from WHYP + fratty selective schools like Dartmouth who came from Andover/Exeter/Deerfield and embodied the image of a polished banker in every respect, from attire to musculature to hair to their face.
Nowadays the junior bankers I interact with and see on LinkedIn tend to be glasses-wearing, short, acne-riddled lanky indian/asian/diversity kids with haircuts from Supercuts.
Is this even good for business on the sell-side? I get that buy-side is a lot more meritocratic, and who knows, these kids can very well be "smarter" due to their work ethic vs a frat star at UVA PIKE who spends his weekends doing bag and racking up kills, but on the sell-side, appearances matter. After all, it's a sales job, especially as you become an ASO/VP and client interaction is a big part of your day-to-day responsibilities. This means that only extroverted, good looking, charismatic kids of a certain background would thrive.
Or am I mistaken and these less visually fortunate specimens don't go A2A and tend to exit to more meritocratic buy-side gigs?
By Golden Age I don't necessarily mean as far back as the Gekko/Barbarians at the Gate Days (80s-90s), I just mean pre-GFC and pre-DEI
You're the one grasping at straws and tying two different things I said together to form your own conclusion, so I'd look into a mirror before calling someone racist and gay.
If the frat star doesn’t know what he’s doing I’ll kick him off the team within weeks as a client. But yes some social skills are required to be a successful senior MD. Director and below can often times just be total dorks. Even junior MD needs very little to no charisma. You only need so many senior MDs
Yeah, and the "data room" used to be a smoke-filled chamber where people pretended to poke around on documents and closed deals on a handshake. Maybe the less nerdy guys just aren't cut out for what the job takes now.
This is just a politically correct way of saying they’re no longer tall and white anymore but Asian and Indian.
So you think non-white people are ugly and that offends you.
Seriously?
Opinions like this are why diversity hiring exists. Seriously, someone should pin this post to the top of the Off Topic forum and link it every time we get another "I have a 4.0 and am in [insert third tier private university]'s finance club, how dare a bank give a job to a minority from a State school!" post.
Imagine being so stupid, so bigoted, and having so little awareness that you'd do what this OP did and actually complain that it is a problem that banks aren't hiring enough preppy white kids, solely because you think they're more pleasant to look at!
nah the white bankers look like fucking dweebs too
Every white guy in top groups I know is a loser + gamer
Is this straight up racist?
im short, indian and formerly acne-riddled (+ woman for diversity) but i really wanna make bank pls let me be
deleted
am not boi
.
I'd agree with you if this was for PE/HF/VC (anything on the buy-side that's more dependent on meritocracy and has no client interaction responsibilities) but when you're taking on kids for front office roles like IB/S&T/ER that's client-facing or public-facing, it doesn't make sense to hire the ugly ones.
Name checks out
This isn't IR or PWM
Nobody gives a shit about how bankers look, dude. Just run the numbers and arrange the boxes like you are told.
Lmao 100%. This and give us access to deal flow. Literally don't care about anything else.
OP the "financialization" of your client base is why what you're describing doesn't matter. Your client base is heavily indexed towards financial investors now who care only about returns -> deal flow access / intel. and not as much about kicking it w the boys
Oh no, our junior bankers aren’t “facey” enough. They’re going to lose us the bake off with their ugliness!
If you were the CFO of a F500 company looking for advisors for a $1bn+ divestiture, which group of bankers would you trust more? Which group of bankers look more competent? Which group of bankers do you think has deeper industry connections to strategic buyers and financial sponsors? Which group of bankers do you think are more polished and have better interpersonal, communication and sales skills?
The old guard of the likes of CVP/GS/PJT from the gilded halls of WHYP and raised in the timeless halls of Eton/Deerfield/Exeter/Andover or the other group?
I’d personally choose the group that looks like they have the most math Olympiad wins (and are named Yang)
I have to choose between some tech startup team and male models from Hugo Boss? Wtf?
This is an odd thread.
a lot of ugly guys telling on themselves ITT
All those guys became tech recruiter bros
Cause they are currently leading the banks or managing their own funds…
BUMP
Americans in general are less attractive. Our country has gotten fatter, gayer, and browner. So have the banking classes.
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