Recent Grad -- Lost & Frustrated, Seeking Advice
Hi guys,
I have been a long time lurker on this site, and a lot of the advice from threads I have read on here helped me land my internships in the industry. This site has been great for answering my questions in the past, so I am hoping some of you will have suggestions for my current situation.
For background on me: I am a recent finance graduate of a top state school. I have experience at a BB in corporate banking, and two other finance related gigs. Great GPA and some relevant ECs.
In the fall I pushed hard to secure a FT IB role and managed to land a couple of superdays, but wasn't able to obtain any offers. I also had superdays for some buy-side opportunities and consulting, but none of those panned out. I got feedback from a couple of those superdays which suggested that my technicals could use some work, so I went back to the drawing board. I set up informational chats with alums, practically memorized the BIWS guides, and hit recruiting again in the spring. I had some promising leads in February, but my pipeline completely disintegrated as COVID hit. I am now at a point where I have no interviews, and I am becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the idea that I will get any traction from applying to these online portals. Virtually all of my interviews have been through OCR, and it seems that the few opportunities that are posted online require prior work experience.
I don't want to give up on the IB dream, but I am also a realist. Given the state of the economy, what positions are still hiring that can be leveraged to IB? Some of the advice I have received so far is doing valuation work at Big 4, but I haven't even seen postings for positions like those. My long term goal is to be competitive for PE, and I realize I am already off that "track," which has brought significant stress to my life in the past year. With that in mind, I still want to put myself in a position where I can be competitive for laterals to IB, or worst case scenario, find a role that I can use that will allow me to apply to T15/M7 schools for MBA.
With regard to interviews -- should I even bother applying online, or should my focus be on cold-emailing and alumni?
I am at a point now where I have received so many rejections that I am beginning to question my fit for the industry, but many of the posts and stories on here have kept up my resolve and I am not willing to quit just yet.
Thank you guys in advance for any advice that you might have for this lost grad. I really appreciate it.
On a couple of other threads seems like GP Bullhound and Tech Boutique is hiring - https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/tech-ib-opp-for-an1-an2s-cut-fro…
life is a highway.
Bump. Good luck dude. Reddit r/FinancialCareers may be more responsive
Quarantine has provided us a really valuable opportunity to rethink our lives. Take the time to figure out what exactly you want to do. I recommend the book "What Color Is Your Parachute", which walks you through step by step to figure out what your dream career looks like.
Then, build up a portfolio and have someone review it. You can even hire someone from Upwork or Fiverr to do this. Once you have the portfolio, get really good at informational interviews and do more of them, but selectively based on what you figured out in Step 1. The book "2-Hour Job Search" helped me a lot with this. Get on these companies' radar and make sure to follow up with the contacts every few months to keep them warm.
A few things I learned from my own experience, either getting the informational interview or giving the informational interview:
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