Why is recruiting starting earlier and earlier each year?
Hey monkeys,
Could we address why recruiting for bulge bracket banks starts earlier and earlier each year? As many of you may know, recruiting and applications has started mid-July this year. This is a first for most BB. Not only that, but some banks, such as Citi, have enacted early internship programs, in which rising juniors are already given return offers two years in advance.
I'm curious as to what the underlying reasons behind this are. I'm assuming that banks want earlier access to competitive applicant pools but I'm not entirely sure this is the case.
What do you guys think? How soon until banks start recruiting from High Schools? Perhaps some of you know the real reason behind this shift in recruiting periods.
As you mentioned yourself, I believe they're doing this to secure their analyst class before other banks do... Beyond that, I don't really know the rationale behind that. I mean, there are PLENTY of capable potential bankers at targets and non-targets so idk why they are competing to secure candidates. It's not like the demand for analysts and class sizes are increasing massively every year.
I think you are overestimating how many competent candidates there actually are. I ran campus recruiting for the semi-target I graduated from for a BB. We had a 3.6 GPA cut-off and only made applications available for business and engineering students. We'd get 200-300 resumes and interview 24 kids during on-campus interviews. Of those we'd see 3-5 really strong candidates and 5-7 maybes. More than 10 of the 24, who were all top students based on resume/GPA, were completely incompetent, either due to lack of preparation, lack of maturity, lack of interest in the job or lack of social skills. When you are interviewing there is a clear divide between the great candidates, the good candidates and the not so good candidates.
I dont know because my dad offered me a internship?? Woah, I guessed I dodged a bullet.
Seems like someone is salty, oh you're a commercial banker i'm sorry if I offended you.
I would say that it's exactly as you said: earlier access to great candidate pools. There's heavy competition for talent in tech and there's plenty of money to go around, on top of the fact that getting a tech job is based much more on how much you know rather than the more rigid "banker profile" (top HS > top college > top bank).
There was a post about this a while back but I think there are already target high schools for MS and GS.
Someone put it very well: "Banks are in the business of low risk in everything. When selecting a candidate they want someone who is little to no risk (i.e. top target student with previous experience and high GPA)."
So long as there is a clear cut way to measure prospective talent at a younger age, there will definitely be more recruiting timeline advancement. Just like in basketball, schools start recruiting at a young age, but when is it too young?
One thing to also note is that not every banker goes in the traditional SA --> 1st year analyst route so I don't think the real rat race can be much earlier than Sophomore year, because most schools don't even teach the basics of accounting in the first year of study and most students have very limited knowledge of what banking is even as freshman in college.
The earlier timeline really hurts people like me; transferring students who plan on going to a better school as Junior transfers. Ideally I wouldn't want it moved up further, but it's inevitable.
By the way, some schools with strong OCR have their recruiting timeline as early as December/January. Ex: For class of 2020 with SA in summer of 2019, they start recruiting around December 2017/January 2018. Pretty crazy, but again only schools with top OCR.
True, and the flip side is that banks attract risk-averse high achievers. The kind who would take one bird in the hand (an IB offer) before, arguably, two+ stones in the bush (tech, consulting, etc).
Then there's the idea that young, cheap (in relative terms), easily brainwashed-into-drinking-the-kool-aid hires are the best hires.
I guess it's risk averse in terms of having a secured and predefined path that you know you will make bank in. However, you can't do this work elsewhere so due to that this career might pick up a lot of various people.
Not to mention its much easier to do PE/HF shit from IB instead of consulting. Also with Consulting and Tech, only the top firms are worth anything and they do not take as many people as "good" firms in IB do
Maybe since returning offers are usually given after 8-10 weeks summer positions (end of Aug./early Sep.), wanna secure talent.
Hi, just wanted to ak which banks - apart for GS and Credit Suisse - has already opened the applications. I'm speaking only for the EMEA.
there's a thread for that :)
Soon you will have to recruit out of kindergarten
HAHAHA or maybe hold an NFL Draft for IBs? The bottom tiers of BB and EBs get first pick on students. Maybe even have an NFL Combine type event where you're measured on your ability to quickly perform a DCF analysis, handle getting yelled at by superiors, and maybe even see how long you can stay awake and function?
As others have stated, IB recruiting happens early in order to lock up top candidates. The same reason applies to why PE recruiting happens six months after you start IB. That being said, the reason IB recruiting keeps creeping up is because IB finally has some real competition for top candidates from another industry (tech).
Since when didn't banking have competition for top candidates? Might I've been true in the pre 07 years, but if anything, I'd say tech and consulting have long surpassed the quality of banking candidates ever since.
Global warming mainly
Global warming is a hoax created by the CHINESE!!!!
Seeing everyone of you college students with their name tags bug eyed internally flipping out in the lobby of a major bb is really entertaining to pass by in the morning. Asked one student where where she was from and what they were doing, got so nervous it looked like she was gonna lose her mom's spaghetti.
Good luck youngin's!
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