Investment Banking Recruitment: Separating Yourself from the Pack

Every year, several people apply for investment banking jobs. Drawn by money, prestige, career progression, peer pressure or plain inertia, candidates face severe competition when applying for limited positions. Students try to use their creativity to differentiate themselves; however, remember, you’re not breaking into the fashion industry or advertising. Understanding how to direct your creativity when applying for a job will help you land a position and gain insight into the job your applying for.

How NOT to Separate Yourself

When applying for these jobs it is important to understand what banker looks for and what will prevent you from getting a job. Below is a short list of bad ideas, my a few of my peers thought were genius before they tried them.

1. Don’t create a packet of work items you previously worked on. Instead of looking like your are prepared, it can come off as pretentious and is unnecessary. Instead focus on being able to present the information verbally. If the interviewer wants more information, they will ask you to email it to them.
2. Don’t print your resume and cover letter on heavy paper or colorful paper. Instead bring a copy of your resume to an interview printed on regular paper. Bankers are conservative individuals. Resumes and cover letters are much more appreciated when they are simply formatted and presented.
3. Don’t dress better than the interviewer. For interviews I wear a dark blue suit, polished black shoes, black socks, a black belt, white shirt, and solid blue or red tie. Notice how I don’t wear my tie clip, brown shoes, green shirt, handkerchief or perfume. Business casual means black belt, black shoes, suit and white shirt.
4. Don’t lie on your resume. Think long-term and this won’t be an option.

How to Separate Yourself

                             

Giving yourself an advantage when it comes time for recruitment doesn’t mean spending 900 hours getting the CFA, studying extremely hard for a PHD, taking the GMAT, or even taking a modeling course (Source: M&I). Here are a few actual examples of actual peers (names have been changed) who broke into finance using innovative methods. Keep in mind, all of these students come from state schools.

1. Mike knew he wanted to break into IB research ever since his junior year of high school. After doing some research of his own, he noticed that hedge funds often provide weekly research reports on their sites.  He decided to do the same. Every week, Mike would post his market commentary on his website. His readership was small, but it helped develop his thought process. As Mike’s network and style evolved, he emailed out the weekly newsletter to investment professionals. Mike spent last summer interning at Morgan Stanley’s research department in New York.
2. John had a passion for trading, so much so that he would study and build option pricing models in his free time. At the beginning of sophomore year at University of Virginia, John joined his school’s trading club. He eventually moved to the position of President by his junior year. Debating on how to make the club more successful, John decided to invite alumni traders and Wall Street professionals to present at his meetings. He knew all of them wouldn’t agree, but he used that email as a front to get an informational meeting set up. When recruitment time came around, John hit up his contacts and landed a trading internship at Citigroup’s Delta One trading desk (i.e., talked about in Liars Poker).
3. Lance was an entrepreneur. He figured he wanted to pursue a career in investment banking his sophomore year. However, he didn’t have any investment banking knowledge since he just became interested in the field. In the past he had worked as a website designer. He decided to ask investment banks for unpaid internships and a chance to renovate their websites for free. Eventually, he landed a job at a boutique firm and is now working for Blackstone Hong Kong.
4. Steve was always interested in business. He attended many conferences and participated in several case competitions during his tenure at Indiana University. Luckily, he thanked all the professionals he meet via email and added them to his LinkedIn network. When it came time for IB recruitment he emailed his contacts and secured an internship at a middle market venture capital firm.

All of these students used creative techniques to expand and capitalize on their networks from early on. Moral of the stories: if you want to be creative, find new ways to network. You’ll be surprised how many bankers you run into on the elevator, supermarkets, or public transportation. Finally, once you break in, use the relationships you made during the internship to learn more about the industry and create opportunities