Why is banking becoming more competitive?

Same number of seats or fewer seats. Ever increasing pool of applicants. Even the lowly, WSO besmirched middle market banks can afford to be more selective. I don't buy for a second that the valley is draining talent - perhaps +/- 10% of any target's given class who is on the fence may choose SV instead of wall st., but those are the lucky ones to have a choice. Everyone else is still fighting for a spot to get in. One just has to look at how quantity of applications for summer analyst seats have been trending the last decade or so, and the corresponding offer-to-application ratio. I think offers hover around 1-3%? Also consider that not every summer analyst comes away with a full-time offer, and it frames things that much clearer...

Because the "talent drain" coming from Silicon Valley is not enough to offset the massive influx of interested students.

What makes you think it is becoming more competitive?

This is just a theory, but I think a lot of finance students that were interested in trading have switched over to Investment Banking. Trading's an excellent field, but a lot of students seem wary about it over all.

Also not sure about startups. Groups like GS TMT and Qatalyst seem to cater pretty well to individuals interested in tech and have seen increased applications.

Because "all of a sudden" people started to finally realise that tech isn't the hot shit into infinity that is made to believe by force shoving "Meet this 20-something year old entrepreneur ..." Facebook and Medium garbage up your throat.

I said this in the Amazon MBA recruiting thread and the tech is overrated for MBA thread and will re-iterate it here.

1. Unless you're hardcore STEM with very strong programming skills and technical knowledge, tech is an overrated career path.

2. Banking, despite the bad rep it gets, offers awesome compensation, great exit opportunities, and relatively interesting work with very talented people.

3. People are realizing that the vast majority of startups are total crap. Why join an unstable startup for crap pay and "paper" money rather than a stable lucrative career such as banking or consulting?

4. I have always believed that tech is hype, an obnoxious bubble. I'm glad that people are waking up to this reality and thinking through in a more sober manner.

5. Most tech jobs are in SF Bay Area and Seattle, which are awful places.

I think there are two big differences since I was recruiting almost 20 years ago that have made banking relatively more competitive (or more democratic at least).

The first is that non-targets have learned a lot more about banking and the playing field is considerably more level, so there are many more candidates. Part of this is due to greater access to information that WSO and other websites provide; it used to be that the banking recruiting process was this mystery that was only passed down amongst target schools and that has changed. I also think bankers are much more open to casting a wide net, and for a long time there was frustration at the sense of entitlement that many target school kids were perceived to have had (although that has receded considerably).

The second is the process is considerably more structured. I went to a target but didn't do an internship in banking (albeit in a relevant industry), had zero prior finance experience, and my grades were average at best. I didn't get on any interview lists. Still, I was able to cold call bankers who covered the industry I interned at and was able to get 6-7 decent interviews and 3 offers. That's not happening today. Even our summer interns have relevant experience and the process is so structured, it feels hard to imagine my path is possible today.

Just throwing in another theory here.

• Grade inflation is a factor. Everyone who should be a 3.2GPA is now a 3.5 (just v rough numbers of course).
• More people are going to university than ever before. Even at non-targets, people have much better access to training and information. They are much more likely to know about (and therefore apply to) IB. Even if these kids don't want to end up in IB, they will be filling those accounting or other professional jobs. That makes the semi-target kid think "oh dang now i have to be a banker as being an accountant is not cool enough anymore". I call this trigger up economy lol.
• Universities also look for ways to increase their total number of graduates. Look at the number of MSc programmes that didn't even exist a few years ago. As a result, the number of 'qualified' people with 3.5+ GPA who went to a semi-target (or above) increased.

Another contributing factor: The very top students from countries like New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa (but really across the world) are more frequently deciding to study in the US/UK rather than back home. In the past these guys would have gone on to work for BBs in, say, Sydney, whereas now they're competing for the New York/London spots.

There used to be 4 decent front office positions to apply for if you're at a target or semi-target.

IBD, S&T, ER, and some kind of asset management (i.e. from Blackrock and I'll even include PWM).

3 out of 4 of these groups have much less seats available today while the # of college students continue to increase. Even a small headcount cut has a massive multiplier effect on competition, as these seats usually had 50-100 qualified kids to begin with. Nothing compounds faster than fear. I recently had 300 applications for 1 day for 1 posting and of the 10 apps I followed up with, they all had ridiculous amounts of internship experience as ugrad juniors and seniors.

Look at how competitive college applications have become. That ripples through to top-tier jobs such as unicorns and IBD.

diversity

The talent pool is much larger, as is the number of students competing for seats thanks to the increased awareness of what IB through sites likes this.

Actually, I think it's more competitive BECAUSE of sites like this, Mergers & Inquisitions, and the ease of access to prep guides + useful resources. The ease of access removes the advantage of information scarcity so your competition pool is at a more even level. Simply put, technology allows people to be more well-prepped. This is why networking is becoming such an important factor because being likeable is one of the few scarce differentiators.

I think the competition increase in IB is pretty much on par with the same thinking as "whey are schools getting more competitive to get into". In many cases, as information becomes more readily available, it gives more people the ability to learn about these different ideas. I mean again this sounds anecdotal, but I don't think I would have found the world of high finance if it weren't for the internet. I also like that theory someone made above, the fact that S&T is a dying industry in the world of banking might also be applicable. I am guessing the ratio of traders to IB has been reduced drastically.

Asian invasion.

I don't know if anyone has said this yet, but banks have become increasingly corporatized in the sense that people are staying in banking longer term for their careers. Pay has come down, and so banks have been attempting to push lifestyle improvements (to an extent). So what happens is that everyone from Associates to MD's are staying on longer. This makes the advancement pipeline at those levels more competitive as banks have fewer slots to fill because there isn't as much turnover.

At the junior level, many more analysts are staying on past their second year. There are only so many analysts a group needs, and so having a new layer of senior analysts in the group takes slots from "normal" analysts in that they don't need as many to cover the workload.

This is part of it. It affects analysts less so than the rest of the firm, obviously, but less turnover in general means less openings.