International student for buy-side (AM) FT

Hi all,

I'm currently a international 1st year student at m7 and have secured internship at a BB. I am actually gunning for AM roles, but most AM firms explicitly state that they do not recruit for internationals as they do not want to deal with the uncertainty of H1B visa. However, I come from Singapore and have a special visa application pool (H1B1) whose quote has never been filled (i.e. i do not compete with the H1B pool and historically almost 100% success rate).

I tried raising this point to a couple of AM firms during career events/network but they basically ignore it and continue to stand by no international students recruiting. I am guessing this is partly due to ignorance or not knowing how the process works. Career services has not been particularly helpful either - basically just saying that I should mention it when I speak to firms.

How would you go about dealing with this? I would like to recruiting for FT AM roles.

Many thanks!

 
Most Helpful

Many of the big shops and some of the boutiques actually hire internationals in their US offices fairly liberally. Among the big AUM ones Eaton Vance, T Rowe Price and MFS are more strict, but networking with the actual DoRs making the hiring decisions has proven to be a feasible way around that.
In your shoes I'd be less concerned about the visa situation and more about the fact that you're not doing an AM internship this summer. It simply makes you a far less likely hire. Yes, some firms do come back to campus and some re-interview select people quietly, but it's a far more complicated recruiting process. Firms will almost always pick someone who interned even at another AM fund during the summer (and chose not to come back FT) over someone with no AM experience. That of course does not apply if you did AM prior to your MBA.

 

Thanks for your input theadoor

You are right - surprisingly the big ones are stricter than the smaller ones (i think for visa reasons). I was too focused on securing a safety net (IB), as the conversion rate from a AM internship to FT is not good at small-mid AM firms. I got offer for small long only AM shops at Boston, but decided it was too risky - do not want to end up with 0 FT offers. There were few AM firms that opened their doors - I tried fidelity but failed. Now that I have IB internship, which hopefully leads to a FT offer, I want to go all out in securing a FT AM role. I am going to try networking through linkedin. This is definitely a dilemma for international student.

Could I make the switch from IB to AM after 1-2 years? Or should I try to get a FT offer at any AM to begin with and then work my way up?

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