I AM ONE STEP CLOSER

Hey fellow monkeys, 

first of all sorry for the long post, Second of all I AM ALMOST THERE, I GOT A FIRST ROUND INTERVIEW AT A BB, THANKS TO YOUR HELP, AND TO THE WSO TEAM FOR THEIR AMAZING PRODUCTS. for context, I got to a semi-target for Canadian banks, but for American banks I am nowhere near a semi-target. I networked by butt off, kept a decent GPA and practiced both my modelling skills (I bought the WSO guide) and my interview questions. hopefully this will help you, but here is the recipe to getting an interview, you will need: A goal, A time Target, A SHIT TON of willpower, a SHIT TON of DETERMINATION, A SHIT TON OF CONFIDENCE, A SHIT TON of PATIENCE and a SHIT TON OF CONVECTION.

When I first started networking, I used LinkedIn which was a pivotal stepping stone, I remember networking with an Alumni who is an associate at JPM, and man was I bad, I was stuttering, I was asking the most basic vanilla bs like "what is a day to day activity of an investment banker?" "how did you get into banking" even though it was directly on his LinkedIn profile. To say I was a mess is an understatement. eventually I started learning ropes and this is what I did to learn the ropes: watch YouTube vids, read anything finance, economics, or business related (by reading these you will learn more about different types of deals) good places to read news are yahoo finance, and BNN, sub to news letters (exec sum, Morning Brew, and Short Squeeze are my favourite) get into investing and the stock market more (if you are scared of investing Investopedia has free investment simulators, use them, and use them as an opportunity to use your modelling and valuation skills on investments), immerse yourself into the culture more by watching movies and documentaries (good movies to watch are Margin call, Inside job, and the big shirt [a classic]) follow meme pages you will surprisingly learn A LOT (just don't be stupid and believe everything they are posting). Run for president or VP at your School's finance/investing/investment banking club. [as a heads up since you are coming from a non-target more than likely your club will most likely be run down, barely any members or might not even be advertised at your school. Find a great running mate with ambitious goals as you and run together, once you take office, start recruiting to the club, target the freshmen they will be the easiest to get to join the club, (this will help you place a number on your resume. for Ex: increased member base by 400%), reach out to local firms, even if they are asset managers, wealth managers, or a local Boutique, raise sponsorship money (another number to add on your resume). lastly join modelling and valuation competitions and case comps these are great to have on your resume, (in Canada the CFA valuations competition is one of the most prestigious and usually has a good amount of recruiters), case comps wont give you a BB or EB offer but you can leverage your experience, to land a MM internship, or use it land a credit analyst, AM, or even get a Financial analyst internship at a normal company.

Great so after I told you what I did to learn the ropes I will get back to my networking journey, my networking was so bad but I persevered, I then networked with an extremely honest banker, and to be honest with you, I have never been thankful for anyone in my life, he pretty much told me told me that I was awful at networking, but he was kind enough to help me and provide guidance. I took his advice (some of the points in the above paragraph is what he provided as guidance), put my head down and focused on figuring out how I can be better at networking. this was all between august 2021-december 2021. fast forward to January 2022, I decided to grow some balls and started learning the art of cold emailing. Cold emailing is one of those things that need to be done right. When I started cold emailing I was awful, I was so bad, I emailed an alumni who works for a boutique Canada saying that I found him through the alumni directory and I was interested banking then asked him if he would be receptive to a phone call and I shit you not he replied with "investment banking is a great career path." I then decided to buy the Investment banking interview guide from WSO and it is a game changer, after studying it, I emailed an alumni from my university who is a global head of TMT at a BB, and that is how I landed my interview. 

I want to thank each and everyone of you, your posts have helped me and taught me a lot, and your replies to my previous posts have greatly helped me as well. I want to also thank Patrick and the fellow WSO team.