Bounced back after being fired from IBD. How to survive new gig?

Hello Monkeys,

Here is my story. I am from an ultra-non target state school, graduated with a business degree with a 3.0 GPA. I successfully landed an IBD job at an LA based lower MM ECM shop a few months after graduation. I was fired after 3 months for poor performance - I was the sole analyst at my bank with zero horizontal support or training, and it was one of the hardest emotional times of my life. That does not excuse my performance issues, but may provide more color onto why I had difficulty performing on the job.

Needless to say, my story was difficult to tell, but my staffer assured me given the short tenure, they would call it a "reduction in force." I studied my technicals and modeling hard, and began my search for a lateral position. Went through a dozen interviews to no avail, until I got an offer letter and signed it yesterday.

I am happy to say I have accepted an IBD offer from a MM M&A firm in the city - they are taking me on for a trial period to gauge my effectiveness. I start in 2 days and I would appreciate any advice anybody may have to surviving and excelling in this new role.

 
Best Response

First off, huge congrats on bouncing back in one of the most brutally competitive industries around. That's a massive accomplishment in itself.

As far as what you can do to make this run go better, given that it's explicitly a trial period, number ONE is that you're going to have to work your a** off. Your own work ethic or productive stamina can never be the reason why something does not get done. This might end up creating some brutal nights or weekends, but given that you have no guarantee of long-term employment and that the decision to give you that is dependent on your performance, it needs to be true.

Next, can you think of any interpersonal or "soft" reasons that the old gig didn't work out? Did you get along great with your superiors, or did there exist underlying tensions or difficulties in your relationships? I'm sure you've been through the personal ringer on this stuff, but going back to see where you could have done things better on a "people" level is just as if not more important than your technical or "hard" performance. This doesn't mean you need to change your personality in an artificial way, but in banking there is a way to softly engineer relationship dynamics in a favorable way as an analyst with direct superiors.

 

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