How is group / team selection actually determined for analysts and/or interns?
Always been curious about this, and I've never really found out.
Most places often ask you to state preferences after accepting an offer, but I've seen countless times in many different places that people get allocated to another seemingly random group.
In the US, it seems very dependent on how you networked. However, in the UK and Europe, this is not really a factor in most cases.
So is it really HR playing a lottery, or perhaps the heads of each team skim the the pool and state who they would like?
Insights would be appreciated - I know many would like to know!
Interested too!
It would also be interesting to hear how group selection works for rotations.
I heard from friends in IBD that their colleagues got placed into groups/geographical industry teams in London (think FIG Italy, etc.) that they have no connection with (e.g. No Italian background, or similar).
I'm quite confused by that
Bump
Noticed your question was for Analysts, mine was as an Associate, but I think they do it the same way.
At both Barclays and JPM, HR wasn't involved in assigning me to a team. They really just helped coordinate everything. It was really up to the group to 'choose' me.
When I was at Barclays, we had a 'sell day'. We picked several groups we were interested in beforehand and then met with 3-4 teams all in one day. At the end of the day, I submitted my preferred teams and the teams did the same. I got matched with Consumer & Retail, which was my first pick.
At JPM, my experience was they did group specific recruiting. I recruited for the Consumer & Retail team and was given an offer directly onto that team.
However, I do think certain programs like Winning Women at JPM or the equivalent at Barclays, give out generalist offers BUT you have a chance to choose your group. I knew a couple of women who were automatically placed into the group of their choice. Now it is another topic about whether the groups liked that or not!
Very intersting - thank you for this insight.
But based on this experience and username, I would imagine this would have been for NYC / US right?
I feel as though in the UK, we are a lot less rigorous in that department!
Sorry, you are totally right! My experience was NYC/US. Missed that you were asking about UK.
My husband worked at JPM UK in IB C&R. This was in 2011, so I'm sure things may be a little different now. But pretty sure he got to preference / pick his team. During recruiting, he got along with the C&R team more because he met a senior guy there who was also German.
Correct. Some groups at JPM recruit group specifically. Others can be put into a generalist recruiting pool, where the placement is a function of your preference decision and manager's "ranking" of analysts.
For example if group A is your top pick and you are group A's top pick, odds are you'll be placed there.
I can shed some light into how intern group placement works at the BB I'll be interning at.
We were given a total of 3 weeks to look through some small decks that each team put together to highlight league tables, the team's culture, clients, select transactions, and give general info on the team (how many bankers the team had, how many of them were MDs, etc.) and then reach out to the key contacts at the end of each deck to learn about the team, ask them questions, see if they could refer you to other bankers, build connections sell yourself for why you want to be on the team, and what have you. At the end of those 3 weeks you were to submit your ranking of the top 10 teams you would like to be placed in. You had to pick a certain amount of coverage teams and a certain amount of product teams. The teams would also submit a list of interns that were their top choices to be on the team.
Now the dirty little not-so-secret secret of this placement process is that the team's decisions happen very very very much in advance, especially for the most competitive teams at the bank. You had to reach out to exhaust your alumni network (or, if you're from a non-target, spend hours on LinkedIn and cold-emailing) and schedule as many phone calls/coffee chats as possible. If you're from outside of NYC then you're encouraged to take a flight up to NYC and coordinate an office visit with the team(s) you are interested in.
There were teams during the placement process that had already wrapped up their recruiting by the end of the first week of what is supposed to be a 3-week process. Other teams won't even reply to your emails if you email them for the first time at the start of the placement process.
Other banks actually fly all of their interns out to a "placement day" or "sell day" where they meet with all of the teams in groups and then the interns and teams respectively rank their top choices for groups/candidates.
I would imagine that the same "decisions are made way before the fact" mentality still applies to this as well.
For connivence, I'm going to re-use what I responded to above!
"Very intersting - thank you for this insight.
But based on this experience and username, I would imagine this would have been for NYC / US right?
I feel as though in the UK, we are a lot less rigorous in that department!"
I do however agree and get the feeling of decisions being made much earlier in advance of time frames given by HR, usually done in some some of arbitrary manner!
Yes this was in the US
Must admit, misread this post on first reading and didn't realise it was IBD focused. Either way, I'll add my two cents for S&T for whatever it's worth.
When I did my summer at CS (London), several weeks in advance of the start date all SAs were invited to the office and given what amounted to a series of pitches by the different trading desks. This more or less consisted of a junior trader (Analyst / Associate) and a senior trader (Director / MD) both talking about their experiences (namely, backgrounds), what it is their desk does on a daily basis, what skills are necessary for that given desk, and what the culture on that desk is like (can attest that it varies considerably). At the end, HR handed out a pamphlet to each intern asking them to rank their top five preferences. I can't remember exactly, but, scheduling permitted, I think we were each guaranteed one preferred option for one of our three, three-week rotations. Other than that, there didn't seem to be much else to things: end-of-summer headcount was certainly not taken into consideration - a number of interns spent time of desks that, come decision time, were not given any capital for new hires by the powers up top.
I did the internship with two mates from uni and we were all enamoured (for whatever reason) by the cash equities trader - I think he simply gave the best pitch and seemed most enthusiastic about his job. Either way, we were also encouraged to reach out to desks ourselves (think we were given the contact details of the speakers by HR) to express an interest. Goes without saying that if the desk wants to have you for a rotation, HR's preferences are superseded. All said and done, I got one-of-three preferences (FX). Although I was initially disappointed with my other two desks, I actually ended up enjoying them all and have actually kept in contact with the VP of one several years later as friends.
As long as you keep an open mind on the S&T side of things, I don't think desk allocation really matters that much - you'll likely enjoy whatever desk it is you're put on. My one piece of advice - the same that HR gave us - was to not fall in love with your first desk. This will sour your experience on subsequent desks and potentially inhibit you getting the full-time offer! Remain open minded.
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