With MBA Investment Banking Summer Associate in full swing I wanted to create this thread to answer any questions. Went through the process myself a few years ago at a target and know it can be quite daunting given the black box of who gets coffee chats, invite only’s and so on. There’s much less info on MBA recruiting on this forum in general so though a dedicated thread could be helpful. Recruiting, comp, culture, group selection ask away!
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Do I have any chance of getting interview invites with banks that I haven't networked with?
Yes. Have seen this at my school. Usually they have a strong alumni base.
Throw MS but I personally have a classmate who told me he got invited for an interview for a bank he applied to but never networked with. Big alumni base in their regional office.
Having 1 example out of the hundreds that recruit every year means that it is not the norm and should not be relied on. It also looks like you're a prospect so just let OP answer the question if you don't have first hand experience.
I've gone through MBA recruiting and now am part of the process. My group will not interview anyone who hasn't networked regardless of what school they go to.
Almost impossible for regional offices, I have never heard of it in LA.
Highly unlikely
By networking you mean doing coffee chats? Performance in those typically informs the invite only list which whittles down further for interviews
Not sure. Never networked with anyone from Truist. But I did land a superday with them for FT MBA Associate.
What does the timeline look like for recruiting in terms of when companies start doing OCR, coffee chats and super days in the first semester? Also I’ve read that companies have to adhere to whatever the school’s offer policy is, so you can accumulate offers from several banks and then decide, do the banks stick to that?
At most targets the IB clubs start prepping you the first week of school in September. Banks officially do their presentations in early October which kicks things off. Then it’s coffee chats through Mid. November, invite only events, more coffee chats, interview invites go out first half of December with, interviews and offers taking place in the ~second week of Jan.
^ this is for Wharton, CBS, Stern and Booth which all interview the same week and have the same offer extension policy. Other schools banks do what they want. For example, Guggenheim always goes out to Cornell kids with offers in November and December to lock kids in
Del --
For people who have done IBD for 4-5 years pre-MBA in Asia / Latam / Middle East at a BB / decent MM (RBC/BNP/HSBC/etc.) do they still recruit into associate 1? Do they stand lower chance because of being overqualified?
Yes - haven’t seen any exceptions to this in the few classes I know
Only seen people come in as A3s/VP1s if they were 'regional-level' bankers in the states and were A2As pre-MBA. Fairly uncommon situation.
Anyone whose thrown MS: Just look around LinkedIn (Johnson has a few people who pulled this off in recent years).
Thanks a lot.
Just curious, when it comes to resume screening, is pre-mba ibd experience valued? Or do you guys see these people applying ibd only as backups and tend to prioritize the non-ibd guys
How were the interview difficulty for summer associate positions? Obviously it varies by bank but would like to get a sense.
First rounds at many EBs were pure technical screens, fairly challenging. Medium/ hard questions in the BIWS guides prep you well
Most BBs, except for GS, we’re very check the box type technicals, walk through dcf, write down through the 3 statements
Important caveat is that for BBs, spots are largely decided long before you get into the interview and the interviews are more check the box than anything.
Varies by group, but late stage coffee chats with people in the group are generally much more technical than final actual interviews.
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Outside of M7, what are the target programmes? And how different is recruiting there compared to M7, I wanted to know about BB/EB specifically since international students can't recruit at MM Banks.
Well you mentioned comp specifically. So what comp intel do you have for us?
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