Is Investment Banking really that hard to get into???
Before any of you guys go ballistic on me, I admit that the title is a clickbait. I know that the front office positions such as IBD, Sales and Trading, and Equity research are extremely difficult to break into.
How is asset management, specifically private wealth management, in terms of competition when compared to the other front office positions. Is it equally as hard? Slightly easier? A lot easier? What about other positions that are less sexy such as risk positions?
Wealth management is a lot easier to get into compared to the other positions you listed. Asset management scales up in difficulty, but with wealth management background/experience should help with placement.
Credit risk positions are pretty cush, depending on the bank (hear JPM is FO and for other smaller banks the hours are pretty good with solid pay).
you're damn right it is
It's purposely hard because it rejects (the antonym to choose) from the bottom instead of just selecting from the top. But, if you can deceive recruiters into thinking you're not the bottom, then it becomes much easier. That's why it's important to learn how to walk and talk like a banker and you can potentially outrun the knife.
Recently just broke in and can honestly say that it was the hardest thing (academically and professionally) that I've ever done in my life.
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How competitive is IB?? (Originally Posted: 02/25/2008)
So, I hear Google gets 1300-1500 resumes a day. My question is, how many people start working for all of the BBs/all IBs as FT analysts in IB and S&T in any given year? I know this can fluctuate a lot, but let's say the bottom is zero when the economy is in recession, what would the top be, in a good year like 2006-2007??
Also, for all these positions, how many resumes/applications do you estimate they get?
I'm at a target school and in total we had about 20 kids go to BB IBs.
Didn't read the second part of your post... they generally get anywhere from 500-900 resumes (GS had 900 according to someone I know). Out of all those resumes, 1-3 kids got SA positions.
I actually just found this, which kind of answers my own question: http://www.businessweek.com/careers/bplc/companies_4.htm
Kinda interesting... So GS hires around 600 entry-level people each year. I'd guess at least half of them is in IBD or in S&T. Does it sound reasonable that the analyst class would have 300 people or is that too big?
Also GS actively recruits at 37 schools? I didn't know it was that many.
Anyways, interesting stuff...
I haven't worked for GS but I am positive they don't have an analyst class of 300. Maybe 100 of those are IBD.
Yeah that sounded like too many to me too. I was thinking IBD and S&T analysts combined. But that might be still too many at 300...
I heard from friends in the analyst programs that BB's usually hire 80-100 FT for IBD.
Investment Management (PWM and GSAM) take 100, approximately 1/3 of which are sophomores.
IB is not competitive at all, by any means
^ Don't want to lose a point, but that was for Goldman obv. I'd say 300 is a reasonable estimate since IMD has one of the bigger class sizes.
So this one (updated)
http://www.businessweek.com/careers/bplc/2007/13.htm
says that GS received 15,000 applications/resumes in 2007. I think it's a reasonable assumption to make that most of them were for either IBD or S&T and less for IMD, technology, operations... That would give us let's say 100-200 positions/10,000 apps = 1-2%. OK, that's... quite competitive :)
I'm not sure if this helps much, but I was told when I was offered a final round interview by a recruiting manager at BofA IBD that the company received over 2500 applications for summer associates and they were planning on hiring 30 to 40. I was also told at the GS superday that they hire a handful or less of the non-targets that apply and approximately 5% of the target school students that apply. The process was extremely competitive for me coming from a non-target and I felt very fortunate to receive a few offers in NYC for a summer associate position this year.
From a numbers perspective it will never look good; however, it's more important to consider how many quality resumes are being submitted versus how many total resumes are being submitted. I assure you that the former is much lower than the numbers banks often quote.
I wrote about this a bit in how investment bankers decide who gets offers, but I'd say we get a couple hundred resumes for every few people we hire.
While 1-2% hire rate sounds really bad, I would point out that most of these resumes are terrible and from completely unqualified people. Merely by making your resume better you can improve those odds substantially.
Then, by preparing for interviews and really knowing your stuff and giving well-thought answers you can improve your chances even more.
It's still a crapshoot, especially with the market these days and all, but if you are good and well-prepared, you can probably get an offer somewhere, even if it's not your first choice.
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