Calling an MD

So I came across a listing for a summer internship at Duff & Phelps...really interested me. Submitted my resume and still no response over 1.5+ weeks. I am going to call the MD tomorrow directly, but am not sure what to say/ask. I doubt he is in charge of the recruiting. But is this generally a good idea? Or will the guy think, "Who is this fucktard?"

Should I call HR instead? What should I ask?

Furthermore, if by some miracle I land this, should I reneg an offer from Top 5 (well, maybe not so much anymore) BB Finance Internship?

Thanks for any input and advice.

 

I actually spoke with one of the MDs at Duff & Phelps and as smooth as I was, which is pretty damn smooth, never got past the "I will get back to you." I was referred to him by another MD in the area and DP was going through there IPO and a lot of things were shakin...yet no offer no nothing.

Now that I am working, and I see the potential monkeys reaching out to the MDs here and the way they view cold calls and cold emails I would recommend trying to get an analyst or someone below the MD level to get your voice heard.

Last week, one of the MD's had a MBA student email him saying he will be calling him at 11:30 for a chit chat session. He was telling the MD that "he" would be calling him on his terms. As a monkey who did everthing except S the D for a job during this downtime, I don't think calling the MD will get you much further. Reach out to the junior level first...Good luck.

 
Best Response

I had a significant amount of success (directly helped to land several interviews) reaching out to MDs by both email and cold-calling. Be courteous and grateful for their time, but at the same time be persistent and personable. In your email / voicemail don't ask them to call you back, b/c rest assured: they won't. Let them know you'll reach out to them again the following week, and do it. When you're trying to get your foot in the door, especially coming from a non-target, you've got to do whatever it takes. Fuck your ego - if they hang up on you or get pissed at you for bothering them, so what? Stop reaching out to him and pick up the phone to call someone else. The MDs not going to run your name down to HR to blackball you.

It's really up to you. Plenty of people will tell you not to do this or not to do that, but most of these people got in through targets and had stellar GPAs.

 

I second Nystateofmind.

I'm from a non-target - spent weeks trying to get a Goldman MD on the phone. 4 weeks later - I spoke with the guy for 30 min, and had an IBD interview the next day. Guy was nice, and more importantly, appreciative of my persistence. Those 4 weeks involved becoming best friends with his assistant, who essentially made it possible.

There is a fine line between pissing someone off, and being persistent, though. I would not call every 30 min or something, as you will piss off their assistant.

I spent a week calling a group head at Laz/Greenhill/Evercore - never got through, but the guy finally sent me a nice email and whatnot. Considering this guy reported to their CEO, I'm surprised he even took the time to write an email, but he was really nice and left the door open for FT recruiting.

Like NYstate said - it's up to you. From a non-target, you don't have much to lose, unless you really piss someone off.

 

Nice job Walter. Did you end up getting the GS position?

I just got an email from someone i cold-called last week who works in my ideal city (which Ive been told is hard to break into without a contact), very surprised he actually replied politely.

 

Have no shame. You cannot have shame or be shy if you want to break into banking/finance, especially coming from a non-target.

Honestly, calling people is also the best way to get results in general... email is very easy to ignore, phone calls less so.

What do you have to lose? At the very least, they'll admire your persistence a la Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox, and at the very worst you won't get through to them.

Personally I would be impressed if someone kept calling me and did everything possible to get my attention. Although I'm not an MD so take this with a grain of salt. :) \

 

i agree, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. the worst that will happen is he will hang up on you and/or never call you back

 

I dont think you can get through to an MD unless it is a warm lead. If you are going to call MDs its a shot in the dark as to whether or not they are going to think you are an idiot. Its important to realize that everyone is different and if you are going to try a strategy like cold calling (which has a low success rate) then you are going to have to do it with tons of MDs and not just one if you want to maximize your success rate. I never cold called but i sent out resume/cover letter portfolios to 100+ MDs and dept. heads at various firms and got maybe 3 call backs from that. My buddy knows this guy who drew and outline of his foot and wrote 'thanks for helping me get my foot in the door' on it and sent it to an MD at GS with his resume and cover letter and got a call back. I though that sounded pretty ballsy but point is you never know how people will react.

 

I really do not see what the big deal of calling an MD is. Some of the above posts have refered to "MD" as like a god or something. I know from personal experience that cold calling works, especially in the cut-throat ib world.

Think about it this way...say you have a 5%chance of getting hired based on calling an MD. If you call 20 of them chances are you'll get something. Even if the odds were 1%, call 100 MD's or VP's or Analysts... The best person to call is the Talent Acquisition Department. Granted I come from a 'target' school (not ivey-like though), cold calling helped alot!

 
giocatoredoro:
Think about it this way...say you have a 5%chance of getting hired based on calling an MD. If you call 20 of them chances are you'll get something. Even if the odds were 1%, call 100 MD's or VP's or Analysts...

You obviously don't know how probability works...

 

by b2 (Monkey, 57 Banana Points Points) on 4/8/08 at 4:36pm giocatoredoro wrote:

Think about it this way...say you have a 5%chance of getting hired based on calling an MD. If you call 20 of them chances are you'll get something. Even if the odds were 1%, call 100 MD's or VP's or Analysts...

You obviously don't know how probability works...

he was just making a point...

 

After getting dinged from a bunch of first round on-campus interviews for several BB's main SA programs, I decided to start making some cold calls directly to the groups I wanted to work with. Actually found the majority of these numbers buried a bit on their websites.

Most were dead leads from the start; the first response from another was that they had just finished interviewing interns the previous week. I insisted that I just send my resume anyway, though of course HR made no garauntees. Shockingly, no more than 2 hours later I got a call back. One of the things they liked most was the initiative to find and express interest in their group specifically.

Long story short, I've now got a SA position with a BB that I never would have had otherwise. BTW, I'm from a semi-target.

 

um...i agree that b2 didn't need to bring it up and is generally an asshole, but seriously giocatoredoro, don't start being condescending. because b2 was right, you have no idea what you're talking about, and you're just making yourself look stupid.

100/20 may equal 5, but that has jack shit to do with probability.

it's more like a 65% chance with 20 shots on 5% each.

 

xqtrack, explain the 65% to me..? If you use excel's random number generator and put in values 1-20 and you run 1000 trials... most number will occur 50 times, of course some will have occured 45 or 55 times, but most will converge to 50.

In my original post I stated that if we assume a 5% 'hit' then by contacting 20 MD's you might have a job (it may take 15 calls or it may take 25, however by probability alone it will most likely take about 20 calls).

Perhaps this is clear?

 

giocatoredoro - that's not how probability works. You have to assume that each case is not dependent on prior cases. This is why even though a coin flip has a 50% probability of being "heads", you can't guarantee that flipping twice will yield at least 1 instance of "heads." Similarly, if each MD has a 5% chance of giving you a job, there is no guarantee that asking 20 MDs will guarantee one job offer.

I must admit, my statistics abilities are pretty rusty, so I don't really remember the exact way to do this. 1-((1-.05)^20) gets you to about 65%, though I can't explain why that works. Hopefully xqtrack can explain it better than me.

 

the probability doesn't matter. start calling! the more peopel you call, the better your chances of at least getting an interview will be. i go to a non-target for sure and have been cold calling md, vp, assoc., anyone i feel i can talk to about a related subject. i have 3 interviews at decent boutiques in nyc coming up in the next 2 weeks and still waiting to here back from a couple more. start calling and good luck!

 

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