Talk about meritocracy, Citi and diversity
This post has been long in the making, about finance and meritocracy :
****WARNING: Details have been slightly altered to hide my identity"
X years ago, I did a summer internship at an eastern-European office of Citi in CIB -coverage. The office was not glamorous but it was a great opportunity as :
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I knew I wanted to do a masters so did not care about the full-time offer
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I go to a STEM non-target school (Got admitted to oxford but couldn't afford it) so thought that a brand name would help the masters application
Close-up at Citi:
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During my interviews, the local HR tells me the internship is not paid, which was surprising given that it was a summer analyst internship. I ignored it till I got the offer. The London recruiter calls me, congratulating me on the offer and mentions a relatively decent salary. I respond by saying what HR said about pay, he says he'll look into it and ignore the issue for a while.
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I accept the internship despite the uncertainty about pay because quite frankly, it felt like it was unmissable at the time. Training week starts and I still have no clue about my pay. I end up meeting with the Citi EMEA head of staff and a London VP from HR, let's call the VP Joelle for the sake of this story. We have this "heart-to-heart" conversation about the local office and how there is a disagreement between London and the office about the pay. They say that I will be paid less than 25% of the salary I was told about and that they would understand if I decide to quit (too bad I had already rejected a well-paid consultancy internship and the conversation was in June) and that they would do their best to secure me an offer elsewhere, I say sure cheerfully thinking that this is Citi, surely people stick to their word. The head of staff says "she won't forget about it".
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I work my a** off during the internship, staying late even though most analysts didn't. I even started developing VBA Macros for other departments because I had time and wanted to impress. To the extent that people from other departments started asking me for VBA tasks (imagine you're in IBD and a guy from markets shows up and asks you to work late for him).
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I inform London that the local office is really not welcoming and I could feel people were not interested in me being around. They ask me to forget about them and do my best. I force myself on analysts to give me work and additional tasks just to prove a point.
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I do exactly that. Come to the end of the internship, I do not hear from anyone regarding the full-time offer and kind of realized by then what happened and the local office not wanting me there.
I ignore it and start applying for internships at Citi. I network with people and manage to get a call with a director in HK, he says he'll recommend me. I get ecstatic and start prepping for the interview. My London HR reaches out, lashes at me for trying to secure an interview elsewhere at Citi, saying that he's been sticking his neck out trying to find me a position, I apologized even though I was not aware. The guy moves to a Tech company a few months later.
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Protests start in HK, I get rejected and then covid hits, I lose someone close due to Covid so stayed home during the summer. I start my masters at a top target school in Europe, I email the HR VP Joelle who told me to reach out and that "Citi" will look after me during the SA season, she doesn't reply and ignores my message.
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For some reason, Citi opens another summer later in the cycle, I apply and reach out again to Alice and two recruiters. The two recruiters wish me good luck with the application, Joelle doesn't reply.
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I network my ass off and manage to secure a decent but non-convertible PE internship in London but that's another story for later.
Moral of the story:
All these banks pretending to care for interns, analysts, associates, VPs... The reality is no one gives a f*** about you. I got led on by HR just because they didn't want to explain to higher people why an intern quit mid-internship. I got underpaid just because the local office felt interns don't deserve pay. All I asked from Joelle is a recommendation for an interview and was ignored.
1- look after yourself
2- Citi is a shamble of a bank
Thanks for sharing!
No you are just a sucker. The meritocracy still is there, you just failed to show any merit
United Kingdom is not the place for any type of business. You are fucked because your society breeds entitled liberal morons to be quite frank; and it’s starting to effect the United States but UK failed to be relevant when Winston Churchill died honestly
I do actually think there’s such thing as ‘trying too hard to impress’. Honestly maybe you have topdraw work ethic but are not the best person to be around, have you thought of that? Because the thing is everybody realistically can be trained up to do the work, but not everyone will fit in with the culture
Sorry, but this is just ridiculous. Your post is incoherent and full of holes.
You say that you completed your internship, but then you say that you quit mid-internship? Let's say you did quit, why the hell would they get back to you then?
A Markets guy comes and asks you to complete work for him when you're in IBD?! What a stupid lie or stupid move from you and him. I know for a fact that Citi bombards you with like a 100 internal compliance and training modules that they force you to do, otherwise your card gets deactivated. So after doing all of them you didn't know about who you can and cannot speak to?
You weren't underpaid either. Of course you're not going to get the same salary as the London office, your cost of living isn't as high.
You go about applying for different positions w/o even hearing back about a return offer yet... Then Citi finds out you're applying to other places, of course the HR person is going to be pissed off because they do actually stick their neck out for you. I know this for certain because I didn't get a return offer for my group, but my HR recruiter stuck their neck out for me because I was genuinely a good intern, and she went to her boss and managed to get me onto another internship without having to do the AC.
Frankly, there's nothing wrong on Citi's end here, you were just arrogant and burned bridges, specifically:
You might not have been a technically bad intern, but from what you've written, there seems like you had a pretty stinky attitude.
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