I'm at a mid BB.
My entire group (analyst through MD) has been discussing how all the current group of MBA associates interviewing/receiving offers are worse in quality than any previous year.
-Very few have work experience in the USA
-All seemed sort of awkward, and "rehearsed", like they memorized "how to" interview guides
-Low enthusiasm
-General misunderstanding of what Investment Banking is
-Low GMAT/GPAs
Getting the feeling after all the negative press banking got during COVID (leaked GS ppt presentation etc.), biz school students REALLY don't want to do banking now, and if they do, they are focusing on top boutiques (if at all).
Consistent with what I've been seeing in the last year of recruiting or so.
A lot of people don't want to do banking anymore, lots of really bad press over the last two years. Comp is still high but people want some WLB and alternatives offer that. Tech offers good comp and some semblance of WLB, better hours and/or WFH. Plus maybe equity upside.
So what we have left are hardos and candidates that are below par.
Yes - MBA candidates are dropping their business courses in favor of google coding bootcamps. The code has been cracked. It couldn't possibly be the rise of other attractive post-MBA positions. Must be tech. /s
attractive post-MBA positions that aren't 100 hour weeks? Weak. Millenials these days are so soft /s :)
From the exact opposite viewpoint (current MBA who recruited banking but isn’t going back full time), I definitely agree that anyone who can get a top boutique would prefer that to a mid BB. Evercore was by far the most sought after at my program.
Why are people unenthused?
-no one wants to work 100 hours a week and have no weekends
-people are focused on exit opps. Finance is the least desired corporate function in my opinion. everyone is familiar with the fact that PE/HF are not generally options for post-MBA IBers
The “least desired corporate function.” Come on lol…
I don’t know what you want me to tell you. People recruiting for corporate jobs at MBA largely avoid finance roles, in favor of strategy, product management, marketing, operations.
Given the two reasons you provided, why are top boutiques better than mid BBs? I would have thought that hours are worse at boutiques and BBs give better name recognition for exit opps.
Deferred/stock comp and declining share prices (CS, DB, UBS, etc.)
I graduated from a "top" MBA and my class was entirely underwhelming across the board. The banking cohort seemed to be the most sharp overall but my sample size is obviously small. You should see the people headed into other fields, it's not pretty. Anecdotally, I found the most recent cycle to be better than the previous.
Could you expand further on the demographics of your MBA classmates. In what sense was your perception of them "not pretty" ?
They haven't acquired any tangible skills in b school because they spent all of their time in nonsensical classes. Most of them are blowhards who are going to make their juniors' lives miserable. They're a waste of space in corporations.
I don’t think it’s just people not wanting to do banking. Schools were begging people to attend during covid. There were too 10 schools waiving application fees and entrance exams.
Strong candidates are top BB
Agree that the overall quality of students across the board was terrible during Covid. My “top program” had a very very long tail of students accepted.
It seems breaking into IB post MBA isn't that difficult and far easier than undergrad recruiting based on the comments above. Is that true?
I didn't recruit banking but am at a m7 and I can attest to there being a lot people I know in my program who despite not seeming to understand basic finance concepts and having seemingly no social skills managed to land offers at mid-BBs.
The ones I know going to EBs and GS/MS/JPM all are sharp, though. You could have guessed ahead of time who would land where to be honest.
Aside from a few outliers, the "highest quality" people in my program are recruiting for strategy/tech and PE/HF/LO, not IB or consulting.
Is recruiting for mid tier BB that easy? For undergrad analyst recruiting, they are still super competitive.
Recruiting at any reputable investment bank isn’t as easy as people make it out to be at the associate level. On average class sizes are probably ~30 seats if I had to guess. Are the interviews hard? No, and BBs are particularly easy, but getting the offer isn’t easy statistically.
Actually thought the opposite this year.
Despite larger associate class size, the quality and competition was the strongest in years.
might be that the top boutiques and BBs took 1.5x-2x the number of people this year and the overall number of candidates was similar so the people that trickled down ended up much worse.
Also, recruiting ended > 2 months ago, odd you’re discussing this now
Curious if your BBs interview process directly asks for GMAT scores/GPA? Recruited at an M7 and didn't hear of these scores being asked of anyone by any bank. The GPA piece may be due to grade nondisclosure though.
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