Junior year sa recruiting without experience?
Hello, I am currently a freshman worried about the timeline for recruiting. it looks like recruiting for junior year sa positions starts extremely early, some even winter of sophomore year. I don’t have anything lined up for this summer and am worried that I will not be able to put anything on my resume in time for networking and applying. Any thoughts on how to stand out?
I'm in a very similar position. I'm actually graduating a year early, so even though I just finished freshman year, on paper I'm technically applying for junior SA currently. My advice is just try to get an finance/accounting related internship this summer. Are you from a target or non-target? What are your stats(GPA, SAT etc.)? Any EC involvement?
if your goal is IB you may want to consider staying for one semester of a fourth year. even if you land a decent gig after your second year, you could likely get a much better one after junior year that would more than financially pay off in the long term, and you would only have to do one extra semester and could take spring off. just make sure you consider all options!
For sure, thanks for the advice. I'm definitely going to weigh the options and see if I could get a better opportunity by delaying graduation. If I'm not satisfied, I'll probably just sign up for one online class to delay my graduation to the winter semester and get into the next recruiting cycle.
bump
Hey, I'm a sophomore who just went through SA 2021 recruiting. I was a camp counselor my freshman year, and didn't know I wanted to do business, let alone finance, until fall sophomore year, so I wanted to let you know it is possible to do and you will be fine.
If you can't find any internships this summer, work somewhere else, take classes, volunteer, or work on a personal project. Expectations for freshman summer are pretty low, so as long as you can talk about something that you did, that's fine.
If you aren't involved in school orgs already, join that your sophomore year and you can put leadership positions/involvement in any finance clubs/business frats on your resume. Some smaller companies will also allow you to do academic year internships, where you work a couple hours each week on small responsibilities for them. I did that, and it was helpful to talk about and explain how I discovered my interest in finance.
There's also different case competitions/pitch competitions throughout the school year, participating in those and (hopefully) winning, are also good things to add to your resume and talk about in interviews. Good way to stand out IMO!
thanks this is exactly what I was looking for. can you speak a little about the timeline some more in terms of when you start networking, looking for sophomore summer stuff and then junior stuff? I’m just really confused what would even be the point of sophomore summer internships if you already finish recruiting for junior year before you even start.
Yeah of course! It differs slightly from person to person and school to school, but in general bank don't start OCR until sophomore second semester. I think around early January after winter break was when I started reaching out to club org alumni I already knew, and early February was when recruiting really kicked off. Some people will start networking before that, but unless you are from a super non-target or have other unique circumstances, I think January is fine. If you do much earlier than that it's hard to keep the conversation and relationship going.
Diversity candidates go first and start interviewing end of March-summer, and everyone else usually starts around late April (earliest), and into the summer. The boutiques are usually earlier (from my experience), and some of the BBs like GS don't even open apps until July. So in some cases you would have your junior internship locked down before sophomore summer, but also sometimes you won't, depending on how your recruiting is going and what banks you're targeting.
So sophomore year internships are a lot less structured, I had some interviews in October of sophomore year (didn't get them bc I was so unprepared lol) but didn't get any offers until March. If you do get a sophomore internship early, it's nice to talk about in your interviews and show that you're dedicated/smart. If you land a really impressive sophomore internship before junior recruiting (some of my friends got PE like Oaktree, Audax, one girl got something at Carlyle) that can almost be like leverage in a way because it shows other firms want you.
ALso even if it's in April/May/before summer, most banks interviewing you for junior SA will also ask what your plans are for soph summer, in which case saying you already got something or are in the process of interviewing for summer sound a lot better than saying "I have nothing"
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