How to deal with consistent rejections?

Dear all:

I am a rising sophomore attending Baruch College. This is my first and probably not the last time experiencing a pool of rejection letters/phone calls pouring over me. These rejections come from interviews/networking event/school program. My GPA is 3.65, finance major, no relevant banking experience prior. Now I began to doubt my ability, if I could ever get a position on wall street. How should I construct a new plan to work toward my goal of getting into wall street?

 
Best Response

Rejections suck, but they are a part of life. You have to find your own way to cope. For me, if I made it to an interview and was rejected, I would try and follow up to find out why. If I didn't nail the technicals, I told myself I under-prepared, and would not make that mistake again. If it was a fit question, I would work on polishing my responses to questions of that nature. If I was flat out rejected without an interview, I accepted that maybe my experience & background was not good enough for firm XYZ at THAT TIME.

Your options are to stay at it or give up, and take an easier path in life. Do not give up.

You just need to come up with a plan for breaking in. If you have zero experience and are applying for IBD positions at BBs, maybe tone down your expectations. My first time looking for finance internships, I sent out 25+ IBD apps, didn't hear back from a single one.

My advice moving forward: your school is fine, your GPA is fine. Work on what you can control. Apply to every finance position across the board, and practice technicals until you are confident in your interviewing ability. Stress that you are a hard worker and a quick learner, and while you may not be able to add value yet, you will be able to soon. Look at unpaid positions, PWM.

Keep your head up my friend, and feel free to PM me if you would like to hear about how I broke into finance. Always looking to help those polite enough to ask for it correctly.

 

I can, but I am not going to unless you can give me a strong reason as to why you cannot do it yourself.

Search by city, and pick the largest of the following nearby (Chicago, NYC, Boston, LA, San Fran, houston, etc.)

Google lower-middle market and middle market investment banks in that area. You will find plenty. Use linkedin. When you find a smaller bank (i.e. 50-200 employees, look on the right side bar, and there will be similar banks of equal size).

Stay at this and you will have a solid list in no time! If you really wanna get after it, cold call some of the guys. Some people love it, some despise it. Cant hurt as long as you are respectful and polite.

 

Ditto on all of the positive comments made by Deal Team Six, but I also have a couple points of constructive feedback (don't take this personally, just trying to help you improve your chances):

  1. Baruch definitely has a presence throughout the IB world, but most of the kids I know have (or at least pretend to have a higher GPA. They are also very very very involved in banking and finance clubs on campus. If you're not, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage to directly comparable students (especially when networking with alumni). Take whatever classes you need to in order to get that GPA up as high as possible. Note: I broke into banking with a sub-3.5 from a state school, but I got lucky with a tight networking contact

  2. Do you speak another language in addition to English? There's something about your sentence structure/wording that seems forced/unnatural. Whether that's true or not, it's important that you're comfortable talking to people (especially for successful networking). I was awful at networking and saw no positive results until I started being more social (in my life outside of networking) and became more relaxed when talking to people. This also obviously helps a lot in interviews.

 

Thank you also for you advice! As for the clubs, I have attended finance & economic society, this upcoming semester I plan to join Wall Street club also. To answer your second point, yes my mother language is mandarin, but I do not have that thick of an accent, I speak fluently in English. I do however stumble on my words in networking chats..... especially when I get nervous, my accent tends to become thicker than usual.

 

100% agree with the comments from Deal Team Six and BluePilotG4.

Having been on both sides of the equation, there is nothing worse than networking with somebody who is socially awkward / uncomfortable. Make sure you come across as natural and confident and you will see the best results.

Additionally, there is no such thing as being over prepared for an interview. Make sure you continually prepare, so when you get your break, you will be able to present yourself in the best light.

 

Hey Personal MBA Coach, I think you deserve a response...heck, everyone does. We're listening, sorry about the delay ...my best guess at places on WSO that could help:

If we're lucky, maybe these professional users will respond: jbird94 Joshmmay Philip-Gavey

Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

People don't resort to Investment Banking and Sales & Trading after they've been rejected. Maybe for MBB, but not for anything else.

And, you don't think a big four path is a good back-up?

Thanks again though for the post.

 

 its okay, brah.  i just got rejected by gleacher.  he's probably using my resume to whipe his crack right now.  but is that going to deter me from applying to other banks that interest me?  hell no.

 
 

It is rough out there... got a rejection call today - I thought the interview went really well, my resume's a little weak but I really thought I had a good shot at this job.  The analyst said there was nothing wrong with me or my interview, thought I was a strong candidate, but just with the markets being slow things are more competitve than usual - she even recommended mutliple times that I apply for FT in the fall.. bad timing I guess..

 

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