No full time offers, seeking life advice?
Hi everyone,
I worked really hard recently to land a full time offer in PE or consulting, but I have been completely unsuccessful and am worried about what to do next. I'm hoping anyone can give me suggestions on types of jobs to look for if my long term goal is to work at a respectable MM or MF.
Background: senior at a target (H/W/Y/P), previous summer internship at GS/JPM/MS in investment banking + no offer, 3.5 GPA. Whenever asked if I got a return I say I didn't get one because I was looking not to work in NY. Looking to work in any major US city.
Are there any relevant jobs left? Should I delay graduation?
Sorry to hear things aren't working out right now. Some unorganized thoughts:
Don't delay graduation.
"Whenever asked if I got a return I say I didn't get one because I was looking not to work in NY."
I would stop saying this - it comes off as insincere and makes me wonder why you're hiding the ball, which in turn makes me wonder if you've actually learned anything from this ordeal. Try to pick something where you can craft a story and demonstrate that you're learning or actively addressing a weakness, or maybe talk about a mismatch in the role vs your expectations.
If your end goal is MM+ PE, then you really need to be ready for a longer, indirect route. Assuming all the top IB/consulting jobs are already gone, then you're going to need to get the next best thing (F500 FP&A or strategy, boutique consulting/IB, etc.) then from there to banking and ultimately to PE.
Not only is your revised answer still a horrible response and transparently insincere, but your reflection makes you come off as arrogant and devoid of any ability to admit humility or fault. Not once in your explanation did you mention yourself. Instead you blamed your location, family situation (I am sorry to hear about your parent), fellow interns, superiors, and colleagues who you didn't even work for.
Are you really not able to see what is wrong with your mindset? If not, I think you may have a larger issue.
Employers (and other humans in general) want to see that you are capable of admitting and fixing your mistakes. They want to know that you can reflect on your behavior and appropriately remedy the issue at hand when they give you feedback. What you should be talking about is the fact that you had a bad attitude. You don't believe there was an issue regarding your technical skillset or ability to get along with team members, but instead you went into the internship believing you were more valuable than you actually were and this entire experience has given you the ability to truly humble yourself and reflect on what you need to do differently.
Coming from someone who did not receive an offer, you will never get a job with how you currently think about your internship experience. Good luck man.
"I did not receive a return offer for my internship. In retrospect, although I was putting forth my best effort in my projects, it is clear that I made some mistakes - for one thing, I did not build strong interpersonal relationships with the analysts/associates I was staffed under." That's a start, then talk about what you've been doing to fix that and how you would handle the situation given a new chance at a diff FT role.
For future reference for you (as well as any future interns who may come across this thread), there's kind of an overarching issue with the way you're prioritizing different people and how you view your role during your internship:
"I think if you asked all the other interns, I was incredibly knowledgeable and willing to help other interns when certain tasks came up."
Your goal as an intern is not to wow the other interns or help them. For one thing, unless your group is known to offer 100%, then they are your competition. I'm not saying screw them over maliciously, but if they're asking for your time/effort at a time when you really can't afford to (say, when you've been tasked with that complex stuff you don't know how to do), they can go and get fucked. Your one goal is to get an offer, and interns have zero say in that, so focus on pleasing the decision makers.
That segways into the other thing, which is that getting a job or return offer really boils down to 2 things for most people: (1) do you seem competent and (2) do I like you. As an intern, when you leave the office before your analyst, that really doesn't do you any favors on both counts (over communicate if you need to - bankers love that shit). BTW, that analyst is highly irritable probably because she hates her life. The easiest way to get into their good graces is to make their life as easy as possible. At the end of the day, you need people to go to bat for you, and they're way more willing to do that if they like you already.
For purpose of this post I'm going to refer to IB/MC as "track" jobs. Meaning, they're unique for having clearly defined entry points and because they're generally pursued by people following some sort of a path/track (classic one being Target > IB > PE > MBA > Senior PE > Greatness).
Every year, many top school seniors wonder what are the impacts of falling off this track because they haven't landed a track job. And my answer to every one of them is the same: you can get back on track by landing the most challenging business job you can land. That could be anything that helps you add value to a business . . corp dev, fp&a, marketing, startup stuff, big 4, etc etc etc. There's too many opportunity types to list. In this market I have no doubt your career office is flooded with challenging opportunities that can build your resume.
Then, 1-3 years later, you hit the lateral market for IB/MC and get back on track. Seen it a million times and it has a very high success rate both in terms of success landing the track job, and success/happiness while there.
Its such a common and straightforward solution I'm surprised it doesnt have its own name. The Late Bloomer path or something like that.