Q&A : Regional Office Recruiting

3rd Year Associate at regional BB. Q&A about recruiting in regional offices - Summer Analyst, Summer Associate, or lateral recruiting. + @ELurker7"

 
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For lateral recruiting, timing is different for each firm. Your best chances will be with places you have already spoken to (e,.g. recruited in UG/MBA but went somewhere else) / had some traction, but still should cast a wide net. Best practices are same as general recruiting:

If a bank has a lateral slot, for example if someone leaves, they will first get HR to approve their ability to hire another person. Usually there is a dual-track process: an internal email out to colleagues at that bank to internally move to a group, as well as posting a job opening externally. Usually I see smaller, more focused processes run for laterals and the resumes and candidates are more carefully screened. At least in our regional office and I suspect broadly, HR is not involved in the actual interview or screening; the bankers do it all. We might skip a "first round interview" and go straight from fit-based screening calls to a fast superday with the top 3-4 candidates. Decision is made and offer is communicated same-day.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

Actually, our approach is we ask broadly the exact same interview questions but have a higher bar (to some extent) for MBAs. We are pretty laser focused on culture in our office so a big part of the MBA screening is how they might treat the Analysts at work, and if they have the demeanor to theoretically be a future MD. For Analyst recruiting the culture focus is working well with others, positive attitude, being accountable, etc.

The technical bar is higher for candidates that have more technical experience (e.g. finance major for undergrad, former accountant for MBA). That being said of course there is an objective standard everyone has to meet, but the applicants are looked at holistically and definitely not purely on technical performance.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

Biggest thing is people need to know who you are. There is a big difference between, e.g. Candidate A: a lateral candidate in LA that we had a superday with last year, and went to our competitor when we chose to go with someone else, and that person left so now there's a slot... and Candidate B: a cold email from somebody who works at a boutique in NYC and is "open" to moving to LA. The farther away from a "known entity" that you get, you'll have to really hit the pavement. Ideally would be trying to set up calls and even better, short coffee chats proactively.

Tied for first is the concept of "plug and play." Banking teams, particularly regional ones, are always wary of outside hires that don't come from school. We want you to prove you're able to jump right in and start helping as if we hired you from Day 1. Being able to effectively communicate your experience is crucial.

Finally, culture, and it's different at different places so I can't generalize too much. When you fit in with a group, you'll know it. The conversations are easier and free flowing. Discussion will trend toward hobbies and that "last bullet on your resume" type of stuff. That's a good sign.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

I came from a Big 4 TS background and probably over-estimated how useful/relevant bankers considered it. I would say if you could lateral to "something" in front office banking (whether that's a MM, EB, BB, and even boutique), you would have a better chance of continuing on in this banking career than someone going straight from Deloitte.

The takeaway is don't sell your experience short, but also know that non-banking experience is heavily discounted by bankers when recruiting. We would also question whether you can "grind" especially if you're coming from something like Corp Fin, but even consulting and Big 4 have nowhere near the hours.

Hallmarks of a good associate is being a trusted pair of hands, which includes being a good manager of people, processes, and time. If people trust you to do things independently then you get to move up to a VP role. If not, then not.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

I'm in lateral interviews now, started applying about a month ago and had one superday I didn't care too much about earlier this week (probably didn't get it)and another one on deck in NY next week, that I do really want.

Do you have any tips for a lateral candidate? I know these places are trying to fill spots quick and I was wondering if there is anything you particularly like to see a candidate bring to the table, especially in a superday?

Many thanks. I know this isn't necessarily a regional office focused question (although I am interested in reading other people's, since I am in a regional office now), but any input you have would be greatly appreciated. The NY office is technically regional for the bank, so I guess this still counts.

Dayman?
 

Be the most solid, safest person they could choose. Positive demeanor, confident, know your experience very solidly, have a crisp story, bulletproof basic technicals, good energy. How this works in a superday is we sit around at a table afterwards and kind of go in a circle and say who was our favorite. If someone gets most/all of the votes, it's over. If there is debate between 2 candidates, then the discussion trends further toward intangibles (on the good side: Nightman seems like a really good guy to have around, remembered people's names he talked with during the day, was a clear communicator... or Nightman was too intense, rattled, sloppy, nerdy, bro-ey, whatever excuse they can make for not liking you).

To make a bunch of sports analogies, ideally you are the "good fielder and high on base percentage" (baseball), "good passer and free throw shooter" (basketball), "accurate, smart QB" (football), "great short game" (golf), etc.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

Thanks for doing this - appreciate someone willing to shine some light on Associate recruiting.

Where do you pull most of your Summer Associates from? Is preference given to local schools (UCLA, USC, maybe even Haas), or is it more overall top schools (Harvard, Wharton, Booth, Columbia etc.). By preference I mean the number of interview slots allocated per school - if that’s even how you organize it - relative to the size of the class/number of students interested in IB.

Me: applying to b-school this year with an interest in IB, specifically in SF, and would prefer to be local (Haas/GSB), but generally trying to understand the relative importance of school geography to school “ranking” in IB recruiting.

 

It is a combination of both local and top. Students from all schools are considered. UCLA Anderson is the vast majority of the LA Associate banking scene on an overall headcount basis. However, Haas and Wharton do show up to all the LA banks on their treks and always seem to be represented well per capita in the superdays (e.g. 3 people serious about banking, all 3 will get superdays somewhere). Finally, there is always some person going to Booth, Columbia, Kellogg etc. who is from the West Coast and wants to go back instead of working in NYC.

I have not heard of allocating interview slots per school (although that is the way that NY recruiting is done), maybe it happens in HQ offices like Moelis/Houlihan? I doubt it's that prescriptive, though.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

Thanks for doing this. Do you have any advice for candidates not from your region? What are some specific steps that we need to take to land an interview? This is for SA/1st year FT recruiting.

 

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Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.

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