What Next?
Curious to hear others' input—especially given the current economic outlook and the lateral hiring market.
Some Career Background:
I am a Spring '24 grad - I came from a non-target school but managed to land a Summer Analyst role at a small, boutique M&A firm. It was essentially a few older guys handling micro-cap, sell-side M&A deals. I stayed on during the winter term and, after graduation, started working "full-time," though it was only around 30 hours a week. It was hardly a real job, but I figured it was good hands-on experience while I continued applying for other roles. However, their deal flow dried up, and they couldn’t pay me. I debated working for free, but I decided it was best to leave during this past summer and focus fully on recruiting, given that I now had two M&A internships and a few months of full-time work, with sell-side deals I could speak to, and some actual modelling reps.
Now, several months later - It's into December, and I'm looking at 2025 recruiting, but I still have no prospects. I've networked like it's my full-time job, studied technicals, and done everything "right" from a recruiting standpoint, but without any results.
I don’t want to sound like the "giveadvicepls" guy—obviously, complaining online rarely yields results. But I’m curious: does pursuing an MBA at this point make sense? I have also looked to Corp Dev, Strat Fin, and a few others, but there just seems to be little-to-no traction for me right now given the fact that I am not considered new grad anymore, but not really an experienced hire (1-2 Years of FT work).
So.. Stick it out & Keep recruiting and let the employment gap on my CV grow, or; hit an MBA and escape the corporate world once again? Or just any general advice too would be sick.
bump
Obviously there is no one right answer in these scenarios but my two cents on this are:
You have a background that should at least get your foot in the door somewhere for an interview. Are you not making it past first rounds or are you entirely unable to get first rounds? Case number 1 likely means there is something going on behaviorally (assuming you know your technicals), case number 2 likely indicates there is something wrong with your resume/you aren't applying to a wide enough breadth of firms (doesn't sound like that is the case).
The longer that you are unemployed, the more unlikely it is you are going to get a job, so I would advise against trying to stick it out for another 6 months - a year with no backup plan. Could continue applying and start studying for GMAT/applying to B school in the interim, if you don't find something than hopefully you will have a B school acceptance as a backup plan.
Final point surrounding the market as a whole right now, M&A sentiment is pretty positive and banks are starting to open up hiring more, however, there are still a great deal of people who were already in IB full time or who are trying to lateral upstream who will likely get preference over you in a hiring process. Recruiting without an "in" from someone you know, a target background, or full time experience will put you at a disadvantage. Yet, there have been many cases of people coming from similar backgrounds and still making it so as cliche as it may sound, keep doing what you are doing and hopefully something will land. Best of luck.
I really appreciate the response.
To address some of your points:
Point 1: I’ve had five interviews with both larger and middle-market banks. In almost all of them, I received similar feedback—something along the lines of, “They really liked me, my behaviorals were great, technicals were good, but due to the competitive nature of the process, they decided to go with a '22 or '23 grad who had more deals and experience.” -- Obviously that means I could have been better lol
Point 2: Geographical context is key in responding to your point about applying to a wide range of jobs. I’m based in Canada, where, compared to the U.S., the number of openings is much lower. I think that’s contributed to the competitiveness I mentioned in Point 1 as well.
But thank you for your reply—I really appreciate the two cents. It’s encouraging to hear that there’s some optimism surrounding upcoming hiring.
I'm a spring '24 MBA grad (top 25 US program). I feel you OP, I've had 8 formal interview processes (4 of which made it to late / final rounds, oddly enough 3 out of my last 4 didn't make it past the first round with another rejection today). Only 1 of these interviews came through referrals, rest were cold applications.
I was getting interview invites weekly this past Fall but it died off by late October.
My advice is to aggressively network. I did that in late Oct to Thanksgiving and ended up getting a few hiring leads for Q1 '25 (very few companies are actively hiring at this point of the year). I have ~5-7 years of experience.
*Ditto on the MSF idea that another poster had, if you can afford it OP - that isn't a bad option.
Do they expect to see an uptick in Q1?
They do. One of them was at an investment fund so I imagine they're seeing tailwinds at the macro level (generalist investor so not industry specific).
An MBA won't due you any good with this little of experience so wait on that.
due?
I think MBA is a tough sell, but a better idea would probably be a Masters in finance / accounting. NYU has a pretty good 1 year accounting masters and you can be in NYC so you can recruit in person which makes all the difference.
Do you have your licenses? At least the ones you can get without sponsorship (SIE,63) I would consider getting those out of the way. Saves banks a good amount of time if you’re looking to go on as an A1 offcycle.
Actually haven't thought of that. Pretty good idea tbh. - Thanks
Never entertained that idea of moving to the US (Canada doesn't require those). But I guess if the US is where all the action is, it probably couldn't hurt to bolster my CV & tailor it to American firms.
Curious as well.
Similar situation. I graduate spring 24 and working at a very small ib less that 10 ppl and working directly with the MD. And even more similar situation which is they wanna use more interns instead of ft. So I was unpaid after three months. I'm have a background in Finance and life science, and focus in life science deals. To be honest our firm don't have too much deal in life science and I need to cold emails and cold calls and lead the interns. But anyway I feel like the experience its rly hard for me to get on board with a top tier MBA. Need to still recruiting to get into a bigger firm that can learn more.
Also wanna know the off cycle recruiting in US
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