Struck out on MBA OCR
At an M7 and officially struck out. I felt pretty prepared, was receiving positive feedback throughout the process, had 9 first round interviews (BB and EB) and converted that to 6 superdays, mostly EB, but came up empty-handed. I was recruiting for the more competitive positions (M&A, Renewables, Tech don't want to say exactly which at BB, top Generalist programs). Does anyone have any experience in post-OCR or insights in the current landscape in MBA recruiting? Is IB effectively closed to me now? I'm in contact with the career office and club but would appreciate what others have to say.
Networking and follow school's career boards. A friend of mine got an off campus offer during winter break (didn't even recruit IB initially). I go to a T20-T25 school not known for IB.
How was your M7 vs. last year? Were offers down?
It's not over yet.
Keep in close contact with the banks you interviewed with, particularly where you had superdays. Also talk to you career services team as soon as possible. There will be more spots that open up as people turn down offers and banks have to scramble to fill their class. If you had a superday with a bank, you should be pretty close to the top of the list of backups.
At my program, career services put together a resume book for students still looking a week or 2 post offers, and sent it to every bank still hiring. Lots of people who initially struck out got offers through that.
Do your best to figure out what you're doing wrong. Typically, like 50+% of people who are given superdays will get an offer, sometimes even more. If you had 9 first rounds and 6 superdays and ended up with nothing, something had to go seriously wrong at your superdays. Find people you were close to during the recruiting process and see if you can get unofficial feedback.
It's harder at this point but cast a wide net. It's a red flag that you didn't have first rounds at most of the bulge brackets and that will obviously have hurt you if it came out in interviews.
Separately, I think it's just an example you're using of competitive groups, but if you're really recruiting for tech at one bank, M&A at another and renewables at a third, that's a huge red flag that you're not a serious candidate and would be the most obvious explanation as to why everyone dinged you.
Wait, a bank knows which groups you're up for at other banks?
We talk
100% true for MBA recruiting. Alumni also talk amongst each other about how they feel about certain candidates too (sometimes 2nd years know through alumni who are the 'highly targeted' candidates).
Are you a 1st or 2nd yr mba student? Probably need to target boutiques and lower MMS given the late recruitment timeline. Still doable imo given m7
Any specific banks you have in mind that have formal MBA recruiting pipelines?
Bump - in a similar situation
Also re: comments above, very interested to hear about how much candidates are discussed across banks (and in what context)
Candidates are very much discussed across banks, especially within the most recent graduating class (i.e. stub ASOs). These discussions also happen in older graduating classes as well. Usually, the cream of the crop in the class will be discussed and maybe sometimes the bottom of the class too.
Most definitely, if you do something stupid/egregious/rude (e.g. drunk at an event) that story will make its way across stub ASOs in addition to your actual recruiting class.
It’s never over and life isn’t always a straight road.
But 6 super days and no offers? That doesn’t make much sense given the hard part is getting to the super day, and once you get a super it should be a high conversion rate, especially since you had 6 bites at the apple.
Any way you can get some feedback on your interview performance? Likely you’re doing something off putting to the interviewers and don’t realize it.
Have friend at an M7 who also had like 5-7 superdays at over 5 banks (including top BB and EB) zero offers. It’s a weird year.
I would give it a couple weeks before thinking you totally struck out. Offers are just coming out this weekend at some schools, decisions will be made by candidates across all schools recruiting and there will end being gaps across the banks that they need to fill.
I was in your position 4 years ago. Ended up getting an offer at an industry-specific boutique that wasn’t on campus after the person they initially gave an offer to declined.
I’d suggest tapping your undergrad network, non-MBA friends, etc. to find opportunities outside of the MBA on-campus process. My career services was useless when I asked for advice at the stage you’re at, so assume that you’ll need to be a lot more proactive / scrappy relative to the OCR process. Some banks that were on campus may come back to fill a few more spots but I’d operate assuming that won’t happen.
Sometimes it's simply shitty luck. You recruited at competitive groups, someone liked you but loved another candidate etc. Assuming you have a 50/50 shot of getting the offer across 6 super days that leads to a ~2% chance of getting no offer. While unfortunate, sometimes you're in the wrong 2%. Network network network. Apply to anything tangentially related to banking via OCR, see if banks have non-M&A roles that you could do for a summer (capital markets advisory etc.) and keep on grinding until you lock something up. Agree that your career services center will be useless at this stage and you'll have to leverage your personal and MBA network. Given banks might be underhiring for the summer there may be more FT slots at the places you want to work at, you just need to something this summer that will give a shot at those FT interviews.
Are there banks that hire for capital markets associates (either as part of the typical MBA process or separately)? I've always heard they they don't.
They mean capital markets advisory at an EB, not the capital markets role at a BB.
Lazard, PJT, FTP, etc., can't act as underwriters so they've created this role to try to stay relevant for clients doing an IPO. In theory they give advice on running the IPO process (e.g., how many underwriters to hire, what economics to give each, they'll put together info packets for RFPs, coordinate logistics for roadshows, send out zoom invites, screenshare, etc.,).
You still have a lot of time. It's not over until your second year is done.
I'm also at a M7. I personally know people who received no banking internship offers last year. One guy managed to land an unpaid internship at a PE shop, then recruited into a full-time role at GS/MS/JPM TMT group. So, keep your chin up and ears open. It's not over yet.
Also, consider reaching out to banks that do not recruit at your school. For instance, UBS did not have OCR at my MBA so no one applied to them. This could open upon more opportunities for you.
All of the above is helpful advice. I’d definitely make sure you have something lined up for the summer that’s related enough to IBD that you can spin it into a story for FT recruiting. Your story really matters here so make sure it’s tight.
After you lock down your internship, reach out to the networking contacts at each bank you were in touch with (especially where you had your superdays) to update them on what you’re doing and reiterate interest. Do the same at the end of the summer. A lot of full time recruiting (maybe the majority) is run through back channels so important to get in the mix vs. waiting for jobs to pop up on your career center site.
Others have said it, but it's not close to over. In my class at an M7 alone a few years ago, I can think of a bunch of people who landed nothing in January but got great FT roles. What they all had in common: they did something relevant for the summer, and hustled in February for anything in IB at all they could do for the summer. If you saw their resume or LinkedIn now and they left off their internship, you'd think they crushed recruiting, but they were in the same exact position as you at one point. Some examples that come to mind:
I had almost exactly your experience. I was at an M7, and got on the "closed list" for almost every bank. Converted to superday on most of them, and then struck out. I did manage to land a role at a MM well into week 3 of the interview cycle. But I know the feeling you have right now.
Furthermore, a good handful of my classmates were really strong in recruiting and didn't land internships. It was a tough year.
Good news is, all of us ended up in IB out of MBA. My friends who missed out on IB internships mostly did small/micro PE internships over the summer, I think unpaid in all cases. When the banks came back to campus for FT, my friends all crushed the interviews and got good FT offers. I traded up my MM offer and went to a BB.
So you got this. Here's a few specific things you should do:
1. Stay tight socially with your classmates, both 1st & 2nd year, who are going to banks this summer. When FT recruiting comes around, they will have a lot of sway to get you interviews.
2. Keep up a bit with the bankers you met in recruiting. Not as important as your classmates, but if a natural opportunity comes up (say you're in NYC and offer to get coffee w/ someone you connected with or whatever). Maybe start with emails in January thanking them for their help in the process, and then another reminder mid-summer that you're gearing up to interview with them again.
3. Get any summer internship that gives you experience you can talk about. Pay doesn't matter.
4. If your summer internship is lacking in quality experience, then use your free time to invent fake deals/projects and come up with interview talking points on those.
5. Reflect on why superday didn't work out. In my case, it was what I call "qualitative technicals". Like instead of straight up asking me a technical, the senior bankers wanted more thoughtful stuff . . a question I remember was "a family owned business is in distress, what do you tell the family, walk me through your thinking." Obvi no right answer there, but someone who has done more reading & thinking about deals will have more to say.
You are still in the early stages of a 2-year process. Keep at it and you'll be fine.
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