Lying About SA Return Offer. What Do I Do?
Hi All,
I’m totally stumped. Last week my SA internship ended at a decent MM in SF, and I was declined a return offer. When gauging why, I found out the reasons were twofold. Firstly, I did not fit the culture of the specific team I was in - I performed well technically on the job and got along with several seniors, but just could not appropriately crack the shells of some fellow analysts and associates. Secondly, the group is slowing down it’s growth over the years, and I knew this coming in - as a result, I networked and studied technicals aggressively and landed a few interviews.
Now, I am a candidate in the play for several firms - I have read through almost every single WSO post on how to ideally play the scenario, but it is so situational given differences in reason for everyone, especially being at different firms. How do I tackle this? I know lying can come back and bite you, and it is totally against my morals. However, the work I’ve done to not only get my recent gig, but also these interviews, means the world to me and I don’t want the return offer undermining my stats (Target School, 3.7-4.0 GPA - and I provide these stats as humbly as I can). If I come clean, I fear that it is 99% an auto-ding no matter how passionately I can justify my situation. No return wasn’t necessarily a reflection on my personal capabilities as several people at the firm could speak highly, it was being in the wrong [group] at the wrong time.
Any constructive insight or advice would be appreciated. Thanks all.
tl;dr - no return offer for reasons more firm-specific than me-specific. How can I finesse this the most appropriate way?
bump
A relevant recent thread for you to check out
As stated in that thread, your best bet is to reach out to everyone you can and say honestly, the group is slowing down which limited the number of full-time offers they could extend. I did extremely well technically but the cultural fit wasn't perfect (in the back of your mind come up with reasons if pressed on this). I loved my job and am very passionate about doing banking ... etc. [as discussed in that thread].
Thanks for the insight - was definitely a helpful post. Do you have personal experience or any idea on how justification, no matter how in-depth, on a lack of a return offer fares overall?
I think it is highly personal and situation dependent. If you developed a good rapport with someone at another bank, you may get farther there than with a cold intro. Or maybe vice versa and it’s good to go in with no preconceived notions about you. I’m not so sure there is a common pattern other than it will get asked and you just have to grin and bear it.
Bump.
May end up lying about an exploding return here. What could go wrong? Do background checks at boutiques go in-depth?
Finance is a small community and could get yourself balled. Network and explain the situation, be humble and use it as a learning experience. Chances are you'll be fine, having it on your resume is way better than not and even if you start outside IB, it makes it that much easier to get back in
I know the street is small, but I am moving from MM to way smaller boutiques. I know this could be a learning experience, but what will I learn if I repeat this vicious cycle of receiving interviews and getting dinged on the sole fact that I didn't get a return (which wasn't even a personal reflection on my ability)? I know it sounds ridiculous I wouldn't just spin this into a compelling reason to interviewers as why I didn't get the return. However, it's a lot easier said than done to stick to honesty here. I'm desperate and want to stay in the industry.
I'm not going to give you moral BS here; everyone lies.
The problem here is that these bankers will almost certainly confirm whether you got a return offer or not (not necessarily with incompetent HR). Any solid MM or above will have well-connected bankers at every solid firm. Say you worked at Wells Fargo tech. You apply to Jefferies energy for FT. The energy bankers at Jefferies will literally call/email their buddies at Wells to ask if you got the return offer. Even if they know zero people in Wells tech, their buddies in Wells energy will just email Wells tech bankers to ask if 'kid A' got the return offer. When they send a negative response back, it'll filter back to the Jefferies energy bankers, and you will be categorically fucked.
A big point of all this stress is that even if you get past all of this, you have a background check later too. Who knows what this might uncover? Plus, the FT bankers you are applying to work with might ask for references from your previous summer to confirm your work quality, at which point you are also fucked. Trust me on this, I didn't have a return offer back in the day for FT. And I had tremendous trouble recruiting FT, but the network I built for several years while I was an undergrad paid off, and now I work at a top boutique AM.
Lying can get you fucked with both the the IB you summered at, the IB you are applying to FT, and if they really feel pissed, can get you blackballed across the other banks. Instead, just apply to a shit ton of places, and build a solid network.
Don’t lie about your return offer. Ever.
You have a valid explanation for why you didn’t get a return offer. Just roll with it. If you act ashamed it will look like you messed up.
Just own up when asked and be confident when you explain your answer. Don’t go too in-depth. Just hit the key points. Don’t sweat it
Awesome info. I won't lie, I was inclined to lie at first, but the contributions from you and @eloquence may have changed my mind, though I am still divided. I just can't imagine myself looking back in the past realizing my career is walking on needles. Besides, I'm sure its not as bad to have a return as everyone suggests as long as its not bs-justified. I can speak on it pretty compellingly.
Any last minute thoughts or comments would be so appreciated from either side. Got interviews lined up next week.
Your career is not “on needles”. Your first job will not define the success of your career. Dropping that attitude will do wonders for your self confidence / general attitude in interviews.
Plenty of people transfer into good investment banks after gaining 1 year experience doing something else. And that’s just the worst case scenario. Again, don’t sweat it.
In the same boat as you OP, cannot emphasize this point enough. I did very well and the group unfortunately overhired and I was on the wrong side of the boat. It happens more frequently than you'd imagine and I'm from a non-target school so it can be even more excruciating (not that it's a competition).
I've had a handful of interviews so far and a lot of it should be centered around the narrative. Mine was that there was a crunch for numbers and they couldn't hire everyone, so the offer rate decreased substantially from year's past because the whole group intern class was larger for my year. Sure, the no offer can sting and make you look bad but if you spin it into "i learned a lot, did well, it didn't work out and now i want to move elsewhere for X, Y, Z reasons" then you should be fine (again depending on the caliber of the bank/group you were coming from). You can spin the MM experience into a boutique by showing your desire to focus on M&A, or can spin to other BB/MM's that you want a different coverage group or different product focus. It'll inherently be tougher if you want to do tech having done tech somewhere, but even that can be helped with a strong narrative.
Moral: don't lie, there's no good reason to.
You probably won't get caught right away if you lie, because it would be incredibly bad form (and pointless) for the firm potentially hiring you to contact the firm where you summered. But once you're hired into the new place they'll probably learn the truth, and might fire you then.
One way to spin it, in addition to getting an MD at the MM to give you a genuinely positive reference, is tell the other places you're interviewing that the MM is substantially overstaffed relative to their dealflow, but extremely sensitive about that information getting into the market. Will help if you can drum up any data points on how many summers they hired back full time. Hopefully it's zero or some very small percentage.
That way when they call for a reference, they'll interpret anything they hear from the MM as an effort to deflect from a slowdown in dealflow, even if there isn't one.
How often do interviewers actually call previous firm references to confirm work performance? I thought it'd be moreso on the recruiter part / 3rd party after-the-fact to just confirm dates, GPA, and education. I'd hope for the first, as I would definitely have some positive backing. Really crossing my fingers here and hoping they look beyond the lack of return.
No idea. And probably very rare at a really small boutique (these places often have zilch in the way of support staff and functions). And you're probably right - if anyone were to have that conversation, it would be an HR person. But as other posters have pointed out, this is a small industry, and it's not unlikely that a banker at your new firm mentions you to one at the MM.
Even then it may not come up that you were/were not made an offer, but if it does and anyone calls you out on it, I guess you could swing for the fence, and claim the MM is lying because they were pissed off at you for not accepting the offer and for disclosing that they had little dealflow...
It depends. I've had people actually check them. Even if it's only a 20% chance they check, is it worth the downside if they do? At best, you'll never have an opportunity to work there again, and at worst, they might tell buddies at other banks. Then your old employers will know you're out there lying about it, and may not be willing to serve as a reference again. If you tell the truth, some firms may ding you, but you'll be able to find something.
Banking in SF is such a small world. It will definitely be discovered that you lied due to how well people know each other at different firms. My recommendations are as follows:
As stated above, develop a strong and concise story as to why you didn't get the return offer (you spread yourself too thin by overstaffing yourself, which lead you to xyz problems)
Give an explanation as to why you didn't fit in culturally. You don't want to leave it too open-ended as it will come across as you are not a cool/nice guy to work with. Maybe something like "I loved taking the caltrain down to the south bay to surf. My colleagues went to bars and clubs on the weekend so I didn't get to connect with them as much as I should have. I learned how important it is to develop with those you work with and to make more of an effort to spend doing so."
My last recommendation would be to ask for a letter of recommendation from an associate/VP that you did a lot of work for at the firm. If THEY can confirm that the group is slowing down its growth, and you performed quality work and were a good guy to work with, you should be able to overcome a lot of concerns potential employers will have in your FT interviews. I know a guy who did this and was in a similar position to you and he found himself in a good spot.
Good luck!
I was in your position and considered lying. I did not, and I don't think lying would have helped me. I don't know if it was assumed that I was re-recruiting because I didn't get an offer, but very very few companies even asked me why I was re-recruiting.
I tried to proactively address it by explaining why I'm recruiting. "[after explaining what I did during the summer], it was a valuable experience and a good opportunity to strengthen skills x, y, and, z but I ultimately realized that my interests lean more toward [whatever the company of interest does best]"
I also tried to apply for firms that were slightly different from where I interned, but not too different where my skills wouldn't transfer. Also in a different part of the country so that I could position my re-recruiting as an interest in returning back to the part of the U.S. where I grew up. If you interned at a large firm, you can also focus on boutiques and say that you prefer working for smaller companies.
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