SA no prospect for Full Time. What to do?

Hey guys - in a bit of a dilemma and I'd appreciate some advice.

Thanks to getting really lucky networking with an MD, I got a SA offer at a French bank in London working in DCM. This was a few months ago, and I signed. I subsequently leveraged my offer to continue networking within the bank and through this discovered that of the 30 or so interns last summer only 1 got a full time off. The VP who told me this basically said that while the intern pool was a bit poor, the low conversion rate was due to the bank simply being in a hiring freeze. He expected this to continue into the next recruitment cycle.

So my options, the way I see it are:

(1) Work at French bank in London, apply for full time both in London and back here in the US at other banks when the time comes

(worried that this would be quite difficult since most banks would presumably prefer to hire their own SAs?)

(2) Apply for SA roles at US banks who are not in a hiring freeze, hopefully land a SA gig, work hard to translate this into a full time gig. Renege on French bank, and potentially upset MD there.

What to you guys think? Are my concerns about the difficulty of translating a SA analyst role at one bank into a FT role at another bank overblown?

Thanks for your help.

-Ruggeretobs

 

Keep looking for another summer internships in the states or at banks that "aren't on hiring freeze" but that would be very hard to find since majority of BB banks are on hiring freeze. Just work your ass off and if not then you can apply for FT in the fall, nbd.

 
Vault:
Keep looking for another summer internships in the states or at banks that "aren't on hiring freeze" but that would be very hard to find since majority of BB banks are on hiring freeze. Just work your ass off and if not then you can apply for FT in the fall, nbd.
BB's may be on a FT hiring freeze (or at least significantly reducing their FT hiring efforts), but that's because they're essentially converting the majority of their SA's to FT analysts, which is why SA recruiting is even more important now than ever.
 
Best Response
timatom90:
Vault:
Keep looking for another summer internships in the states or at banks that "aren't on hiring freeze" but that would be very hard to find since majority of BB banks are on hiring freeze. Just work your ass off and if not then you can apply for FT in the fall, nbd.
BB's may be on a FT hiring freeze (or at least significantly reducing their FT hiring efforts), but that's because they're essentially converting the majority of their SA's to FT analysts, which is why SA recruiting is even more important now than ever.

Last post is definitely true. I would definitely look for SA positions that have the potential of converting to FT opportunities. While having that SA experience with said French bank would give you a leg up over other people apply for FT positions next fall, it's no guarantee of a job. With the high conversion rates at BBs for SA positions, an SA position at a BB is pretty close to a guaranteed job.

So scenario 2 would be what I would go with. You need to look out for yourself here, not worry about the feelings of an MD at a bank that doesn't hire interns FT.

 

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