Back in ancient times, recruiting took place during your 3^rd year of undergraduate, and you interviewed for summer internships several months before they began.

But then banks realized that Facebook and Google also pay pretty well and offer better work/life balance, so they started to recruit earlier and earlier to lock in talent and make finance appear more “exclusive.”

Recruiters at banks tend to copy each other, so once one bank started to recruit early, everyone else joined in.

In practice, that means that if you’re not prepared for IB recruiting by the start of your 2^nd year, you’re probably not going to join a large bank right out of undergrad.

This timing puts you at an especially big disadvantage if you’re at a lesser-known university that banks do not recruit at (a “non-target”).

But it is possible to defy the odds and break in – like our reader today did:

How to Get an Investment Banking Internship – Starting in High School

Q: Can you start by walking us through your story briefly?

A: Sure. I grew up in an “Asian country” and moved to the U.S. for high school, where I gained some exposure to finance and M&A via an Economics class.

An extended M&A deal involving a local company interested me so much that I began studying the field on my own, and I decided on investment banking by the end of high school.

I won admission to several top universities, but ended up attending a non-target school because of a full scholarship they offered me.

In my 1^st year there, I completed a search fund internship, an off-cycle internship at an elite boutique bank, and a Big 4 internship over the summer.

I had begun networking with bankers in my 1^st year and continued doing so during this time, including into my 2^nd year of university, all because of the very early investment banking recruiting timeline.

I eventually used all that networking to win a bulge bracket investment banking internship for the summer of my 3^rd year.

For the summer after my 2^nd year, I accepted an investor relations role at a “normal company,” which I found at the last minute.

Q: OK. We’ll go into more detail on each part of that, but let’s start with the search fund internship. How did you find it?

A: When I arrived at university, I realized within the first week that no banks recruited for real investment banking roles – just commercial banking.

So, I began searching for alumni in the finance industry on LinkedIn, but I couldn’t find anyone who had gone into IB straight out of undergrad.

I did some cold outreach on LinkedIn, eventually got a response from a search fund professional, and asked him for advice about the investment banking recruiting timeline.

He was impressed that I had researched his firm and reached out to him only a few weeks after arriving at university.

He explained search funds and offered me a part-time internship, which I quickly accepted and used to learn the basic buy-side and sell-side processes.

By the end of my first semester, I had a 4.0 GPA and a search fund internship on my resume.

Q: I think that’s more than I accomplished in my first two years of university.

Moving on, what about this off-cycle internship at the elite boutique? I’ve never heard of a bank in that category hiring a 1^st year undergrad before.

A: After I finished my first semester, I emailed all the contacts I had found on LinkedIn and updated them on my grades, my search fund internship, and the next classes I was planning to take.

One contact happened to be an Analyst an elite boutique’s regional office in my area, and he replied and said they needed help because another Analyst had quit midway through the year.

Because of the awkward timing, the bank was thinking of hiring a part-time university intern.

My contact pushed for me, and I went through interviews there and won a part-time internship during the spring semester of that year.

The interviews were easier than “real” IB interviews, and they mostly asked about whether or not I understood accounting, the DCF, LBO models, etc. rather than specific technical questions. Questions about the firm’s platform and the business models of different verticals within their industry also came up.

I did not work on any live deals in this internship because of the timing and its part-time nature, but I contributed to pitches, created market updates for our industry sector, and helped with administrative tasks.

Most importantly, I could write “Investment Banking Analyst – [Elite Boutique Name]” on my resume as a 1^st year university student.

Q: Yes, that is pretty amazing. The fact that it was a regional office helped – it would have been easier to hire someone full-time in NY or London.

You’ve mentioned networking with bankers several times. But how did you network effectively if you were at a non-target school?

A: I used LinkedIn to find names and companies and then emailed people once I verified their email addresses using tools like Email Checker.

There weren’t that many alumni in investment banking, so I searched for anyone in finance who had something in common with me – industry focus, family background, non-target attendance, same state or city, etc.

When I led with my internships and GPA, I got a fairly high response rate to my initial messages.

The Investment Banking Recruiting Timeline: Hyper-Accelerated Mode

Q: OK, fair enough. And I assume you did the Big 4 internship to get a big brand name on your resume?

A: Yes, exactly.

Staying at the elite boutique wasn’t an option, and I felt that a search fund internship + elite boutique internship + Big 4 internship were more than enough for IB recruiting the next year.

Q: On that note, can you explain the timing in your 2^nd year?

We get a lot of questions about when students should apply for internships, given that they may have to apply for 3^rd year internships before their 2^nd year internships.

A: Sure. I got around this issue by finishing my internships in my 1^st year, which removed the need to recruit for 2^nd and 3^rd year internships simultaneously.

If you can’t do that, or you started too late, then you should get a part-time, school-year internship in your 2^nd year and then go all out with recruiting during/after that.

The summer internship after your 2^nd year doesn’t matter that much because the investment banking recruiting timeline keeps moving up, so it may not even come up in interviews.

If it does come up in interviews, you could always say, “Oh, I’m still interviewing for this coming summer. Only banking recruiting starts and ends this early!”

I’ve used that line before, and it has worked like magic.

I did not think much about my plans after my 2^nd year because I was so focused on investment banking recruiting going into it.

But then a contact in banking told me about a “normal company” in my area that was seeking interns in investor relations, and he passed along my resume, which resulted in an interview a few days later.

I won and accepted the offer in March, ~3 months before the start date of that internship.

Once I had that offer, I switched back to 3^rd year IB internship recruiting in my area and New York, which happened in April and May of my 2^nd year.

Entirely through networking, I interviewed with multiple banks in both regions and won several offers as well.

Q: You make it sound quite easy, but I’m sure there were challenges.

For one, how did you stay in touch with your contacts for over a year and make sure they remembered you? You started networking extremely early due to the hyper-accelerated investment banking recruiting timeline.

A: As you always say, do not overestimate the competition.

Most people – especially undergraduates – do not follow up at all, so simply by sending an occasional email to each contact, I was already near the top of their list.

I followed up once every 4-6 months by sending an update email with classes I was taking and recent internship experience, and I also asked about deals they were working on.

I also asked for in-person meetings occasionally by saying something like, “I’d really appreciate the opportunity to catch up over coffee and get your guidance on a few matters.”

At these meetings, I spent 70% of the time asking about what they were working on and their future goals and only ~30% of the time talking about myself, which meant that the relationship became more personal over time.

And my goal was to get to know the bankers as more than just “business contacts” and make the relationships personal.

Investment Banking Interviews: Key Challenges

Q: What about in interviews? Was anything challenging, or were they straightforward after you had been preparing for IB for so long?

A: I did not encounter extremely difficult investment banking interview questions, mostly because I had prepared so long in advance.

The main challenge was convincing people that I was actually interested in their bank and that I wasn’t just leveraging the interview to win an offer somewhere else.

For example, some interviewers said, “I know you’re interviewing at Goldman Sachs according to Person A, so why would you join us if you win an offer there?”

Sometimes I answered that question by saying that I had built personal relationships at all the banks and that I was interviewing elsewhere to preserve those relationships.

If an Analyst had pushed for me to get an interview, I couldn’t just say, “Sorry, not interested – I can interview with better firms now!”

Also, I made a list of 3-4 firms I wanted to end up at and told each firm that they were one of my top choices, but I also made it clear that I was interested in the other firms on the list. That way, if an Analyst at Bank A reached out to his friend at Bank C, the friend would corroborate what I said.

When I interviewed with any of the top 3-4 firms on my list, I told the interviewers, “I’m really interested in your platform and I want to take advantage of this Superday to meet as many folks on the team as possible. This will help me better understand which team I fit in with out of the top 3-4 firms I am targeting.”

I wanted to be completely honest because I knew it would be simple to fact-check any statement I made.

Q: What about your response to the “Walk me through your resume” question? You went from a search fund to an elite boutique to a Big 4 firm to a normal company.

How did you turn that into a coherent narrative?

A: In interviews, I said something like, “After I left [Elite Boutique Name], I wanted to get experiences that would give me all the skills required to perform well as an intern during my junior summer. If you look at my resume, you can see that I completed an accounting internship to strengthen my knowledge in the area and that I also worked at a normal company to gain the experience of working at a potential client.”

If they asked about the search fund internship, I just said it was my way to learn the ropes of the industry before going into banking.

My goal was to let the interviewer know that everything was well-thought-out and that nothing was a “random experience.”

I had always wanted to be in IB, but I had that experience so early on, so I took advantage of my time in university to gain complementary experiences.

Advice for Other Students About the Investment Banking Recruiting Timeline

Q: That makes sense. Do you think students at target schools still need to start the process as early as you did, or even earlier?

A: Yes! I have friends and acquaintances at places like Wharton and Stanford who missed the entire process, even though they knew they wanted to do banking.

The investment banking recruiting timeline moves so quickly now that even if you go into university knowing you want to do IB and you get solid internship experience, you might end up without a job if you’re late.

Realistically, you must be considering IB by the end of high school, or there’s no way you’ll be ready by your 2^nd year of university.

To give you an idea of the numbers, in my year, banks filled 50% of their 3^rd year intern classes in my region with sophomores and then gave the remaining 50% of spots to juniors in the fall.

But the year after that, all the banks in my region gave 100% of their 3^rd year internship offers to sophomores.

The process moves at breakneck speed, and you must be ready to jump when the first applications open.

Q: Well said.

Finally, what advice would you give to other students at non-target schools who have to deal with this super-early investment banking recruiting process?

Is there anything you would have done differently?

A: I’d tell them to read your article about preparing for summer internship recruiting (and all the other articles on this site) and follow the tips there, such as front-loading easy classes to boost your GPA early on.

I would also recommend completing finance internships in your 1^st year, as I did, so that you’re prepared in case the investment banking recruiting timeline moves up even earlier (which it probably will).

I’m not sure I would have done anything differently, but my biggest takeaway from the process is that you cannot afford to screw up relationships.

That means if you contact someone for a coffee chat or networking call, you must show up on time and do it.

That sounds like advice for 5-year-olds, but many university students are immature and flaky when it comes to networking.

To illustrate how important this is, I’ll tell you a quick story: one of the first bankers I met via my LinkedIn/email outreach had switched banks by the time I was recruiting.

But we had stayed in touch over those 1.5 years, and he had joined a bank I would be interviewing with – four days before my interviews.

After interviews finished up, the bankers were discussing candidates, and they casually asked my contact if he knew anyone from interviews that day.

He had just started working there, so he couldn’t officially conduct interviews, but he immediately noticed my name and put in a very strong recommendation for me.

His support resulted in the offer that I eventually accepted.

If I hadn’t put a few minutes of effort into sending out update emails every 4-6 months, that never would have happened.

Q: Great story. Thanks for sharing everything!

A: You bet. My pleasure.

The post How to Conquer the Super-Early Investment Banking Recruiting Timeline and Win Offers – Even If You’re at a Non-Target University appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

Can you get into investment banking at the last minute?

A long time ago, the answer was “yes” – at least if you had good grades and attended a well-known university.

Plenty of students “became interested in finance” when full-time recruiting began, and then made frantic efforts to pass on-campus interviews.

Over time, though, that path has become less viable.

You almost always need a sequence of internships, and banks prefer to hire full-time Analysts exclusively from their intern classes.

And if you’re at a non-target school… good luck, I guess?

That’s why I was interested to hear from a reader who broke into investment banking at the last minute, with no prior IB internships, from a non-target school.

I couldn’t believe his story, so I asked him for the details:

Last-Minute Investment Banking Recruiting: Odds and Strategy

Q: Can you walk us through your story?

A: Sure. I went to a textbook example of a non-target school; we were known for our parties more than our academics or placement into finance jobs.

I didn’t even get interested in finance until my junior year, at which I point I won a private wealth management internship at a bulge bracket bank.

When the internship began, I realized I wanted to do investment banking instead.

But I had no prior IB/PE internships, almost no alumni network, and only a few months until full-time recruiting began.

Despite that, I decided to go “all-in” with my networking efforts midway through my summer internship.

I looked up hundreds of bankers via LinkedIn, guessed their email addresses, and set up dozens of in-person informational interviews in my city.

I won a few first-round interviews toward the end of August, went through Superdays in September, and won two offers from “In-Between-a-Banks” (IBABs), as you’ve labeled them, by mid-September.

“In-Between-a-Banks” sit in between bulge bracket and middle market banks and include firms like HSBC, RBC, and many European, Asian, and Canadian banks that are strong in specific regions or deal types.

I accepted one of those offers, joined the group, and have been working here ever since.

Q: That story sounds too good to be true. It’s time to poke some holes in it.

First of all, how many banks recruit for full-time Analyst roles?

Don’t they all try to convert as many summer interns as possible?

A: It is very difficult to win a full-time offer without a prior internship, but a few points improved my odds:

1. I Was Not in New York – I was in a city with many “regional offices” instead (think: LA, SF, Boston, Chicago, etc.).
2. I Did Not Focus on Bulge Brackets or Elite Boutiques – The quality of summer interns at banks outside the top two tiers is often “mixed,” which creates opportunities.
3. I Had Directly Relevant Deal Experience in My PWM Internship – I had followed a few companies that were acquired or otherwise involved in M&A deals.
4. I Did a Ridiculous Amount of Networking – Sometimes I sent dozens of emails in a single day; in total, I contacted hundreds of bankers in the span of 2-3 months.
5. I Had Favorable Market Conditions – I recruited in a year when deal activity was on the rise and when some banks had under-hired.

The top interns usually head to BBs and EBs in financial centers such as NY and London, so it’s extremely competitive to switch banks after a summer internship there.

While there are fewer jobs outside the major financial centers, sometimes it’s easier to win full-time offers because there’s a higher percentage of “non-performing interns.”

Last-Minute Investment Banking Recruiting: Interviews, Explanations, and Time Frames

Q: OK, those are fair points. But how did you explain your sudden interest in IB?

A: Bankers did not care about my PWM experience at all, so I made it sound more relevant by pointing out my exposure to M&A deals there.

I said, “I was very interested in working in finance and advising clients, so I accepted the PWM offer. When some of the companies we followed were involved in M&A deals, I became a lot more interested in transactions and began learning all I could about investment banking.

I’ve now analyzed several companies in Industry X, and I’m particularly interested in your bank and group since you’ve worked on a lot of deals in that industry.”

Most candidates over-emphasize the technical questions and spend too little time thinking through their motivations for doing investment banking.

Yes, the bar for technical questions has risen – you need to know the fundamentals quite well to make it through interviews.

But like internship experience, technical knowledge is a “check the checkbox” item: Necessary but not sufficient to win offers.

Q: I still can’t believe that banks would buy into your sudden, last-minute interest.

A: Many of them didn’t! That’s why I won only two offers from all this networking.

But here’s another way to think about this point: If a bank does not get all the summer interns it wants – which is very likely in regional offices – it has three options:

1. Be Understaffed – So, they’ll have to spend time and resources making lateral hires in the coming months.
2. Recruit Interns from Other Banks – But MMs and IBABs are more likely to get interest from interns who did not receive return offers elsewhere. Why else would a BB or EB intern move to a smaller firm?
3. Take a Chance on Someone New – And this is where I came in. I didn’t have prior IB internships, but I also didn’t have a track record of not receiving a full-time return offer.

The basic point is simple: Don’t assume that “all banks” hire 100% of their full-time Analysts exclusively from their intern classes.

Q: I can understand that logic, but I’m still skeptical.

What was the time frame for this process?

A: I decided to recruit for IB roles in late May / early June.

I spent the next month giving myself a crash course on IB and networking, and then I accelerated my efforts in July.

I continued that in August and won a few first-round phone interviews toward the end of the month.

My first Superday took place in early September, and I went through 5-6 interviews and received my offer a week later.

My second Superday took place in mid-September, and I went through ~8 interviews and received my offer a week later.

Q: What would you say to students at non-target schools who are in similar positions?

How can they decide whether to quit or stick?

A: It’s mostly a question of timing.

If you get interested in IB in the August before your final year, you have no chance of winning offers because you need at least a few months to network.

But if you get interested by May or June, and you’re willing to do a ridiculous amount of networking in a short time, you can pull it off.

Even if you don’t win offers, it’s not necessarily a waste of time: Keep networking during the school year, do an MSF program or delay your graduation, and apply for internships again.

There will be A LOT of naysayers who claim that you have no chance, but you shouldn’t listen to this criticism.

People often underestimate the high turnover in investment banking and how that can create opportunities.

For example, just my group at this bank has sometimes hired 1-2 new Analysts in a single month to replace ones who left abruptly for other roles.

And these off-cycle hires often come from groups like corporate banking or equity research.

On the Job in the Industrials Group

Q: Thanks for that summary.

Speaking of your group, what has the job been like so far?

A: Overall, I’ve been very pleased.

I’m in the Industrials coverage group, so I cover all the sub-industries, but I spend most of my time on defense and aerospace.

We work on all deal types – debt, equity, and M&A – and I spend ~50% of my time working on live deals.

The name “In-Between-a-Bank” is very appropriate because the firm is a cultural mix between a bulge bracket and middle market bank.

Since we’re not in NY, the culture is also different: People tend to be friendlier and come from more diverse schools and backgrounds.

I have worked on some very large deals, but mostly on the financing side; most M&A deals have been in the middle market range.

Q: We’ve received some questions on exit opportunities from the IBABs.

What have you seen so far?

A: Most Analysts here end up at middle market private equity firms.

Almost everyone joins industrials-focused PE firms, and some that went into PE have since moved into corporate development at portfolio companies or larger public companies.

A few people have gotten into mega-funds over the years, but it is not that common.

Few Analysts have joined hedge funds, but I’m not sure if that’s because funds aren’t interested or because our Analysts aren’t interested.

There’s geographic diversity to the exits, with people ending up in SF, LA, Chicago, Boston, NY, and more.

My bank has been pushing to keep Analysts around for longer, so more of them also stay for 3rd year and Associate promotions.

Q: Great, thanks for explaining that.

Can you share any other impressions of the job so far?

A: I’ve been surprised by the relative lack of Excel and financial modeling work, even when working on live deals.

I completed several of your courses, and the PowerPoint training turned to be more useful than the Excel tutorials because I’ve spent more time creating presentations so far.

We rarely build models from scratch, and much of the valuation work, such as retrieving data for the public comps, is automated via the Capital IQ and FactSet plugins (get more on Comparable Company Analysis via our YouTube channel).

If you’re about to start working at a bank, do not underestimate the number of written documents and presentations you’ll create.

And prepare accordingly!

Q: Thanks for adding that, and for your time.

A: My pleasure. Hopefully, my story inspires other students from non-target schools.

Want More?

If you liked this article, you might be interested in this article about the private equity internship.

The post Last-Minute Investment Banking Recruiting: How to Win a Full-Time Offer Without an IB Internship appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

Is a Master’s degree your best chance of getting into the finance industry?

It might be – if you pick the right program.

Master’s degrees are useful for “Plan B” scenarios where you didn’t get the job offer you wanted the first time around – though you came close – and now you want to try again.

But they’re also useful if you’re an international student who wants to work in the U.S., especially if you’ve already graduated from a lesser-known university.

The only problem is that visa issues are sure to come up, as are all the other challenges of breaking in as a non-U.S. citizen.

I recently spoke with a reader who overcame those challenges and leveraged multiple real estate internships to win a full-time investment banking offer in New York.

I’d call this one a “fairy tale,” but it’s very real – and I even have the pics to prove it:

Origin Stories: The Family Business

Q: Before we discuss each part of your story, can you summarize your background and what you accomplished?

A: Sure. I’m from China originally, where I attended a completely unknown university that offered limited internship opportunities.

I became interested in finance because a few family members worked in investment banking, and one of my mentors at university encouraged me to complete financial modeling workshops, enter case competitions, and learn everything I could about the industry.

On the advice of my family members, I decided to complete a Master’s in Finance degree in the U.S. at a somewhat-better-known school (though it was still a non-target).

I knew it would be almost impossible to win IB internships with my background, so I aimed for and won a real estate brokerage internship first.

Then I used that experience to win a real estate investment internship and a hedge fund internship, and then a full-time investment banking offer.

Q: Thanks for that summary.

So let’s start with the obvious question: why didn’t you stay in China, given that multiple family members were working in investment banking there?

A: It’s a totally different experience, and most companies are called “securities firms” rather than investment banks.

The experience you get at firms there “can vary quite a bit” (the polite way of putting it).

All my family members recommended working in the U.S. first to get more legitimate work experience, and then deciding on my long-term plans after that.

I could have probably won a job through family connections, but my poor university in China and lack of internships would have hurt me in the long run.

Q: Right. And you chose to do a Master’s in Finance program specifically because…

A: I was about to finish my undergraduate degree when I decided to go to the U.S., so an MSF was my only real option.

I didn’t want to work for 2-3 years and then apply for an MBA, and I felt that if I could get some internship experience and attend a better-known school, I would at least have a chance at investment banking.

Leaping Over Hurdles as an International Student

Q: OK, so you would have a “chance” at investment banking – but aren’t the odds pretty low as an international student?

What were the main problems you had to overcome?

A: Actually, you do have some advantages as an international student as well.

You know at least one other language, and sometimes multiple other languages, you might have connections in your home country that a bank could use, and you might be able to find a group that wants people with your background for cross-border deals.

But you will face two major obstacles:

1. 1. Your Work Visa – If you’re a non-STEM major on an F-1 student visa, you can work for only 12 months after graduating, and you need to line up a full-time role within 3 months of finishing the degree. After 12 months, you need to apply for an H-1B visa, which banks rarely want to sponsor.

But as a STEM major, you can extend your work experience period to 36 months before you have to apply for the H1-B visa.

Most banks will hire you for Analyst roles only if you can commit to at least two years, so you’re at quite a disadvantage as a non-STEM major.

1. Cultural Fit – You’re never going to fit into a U.S. company if you only hang out with students from your country, you never speak English, you don’t know anything about North American football, etc.

Q: So how did you approach each challenge?

A Master’s Degree in Finance doesn’t qualify for STEM treatment, correct?

A: No, it does not. But you pretty much have to do an MSF if you want to use a Master’s program to recruit for investment banking roles.

My solution was to double major in “Business Analytics” and use that, which counted as STEM, to qualify for the 36 months of work experience (NOTE: There was also a Finance track within Business Analytics, which I completed).

I added that major only after I had finished the Finance major first and had not had much luck with recruiting, but I never listed “Business Analytics” on my resume because most banks don’t like it.

For the second challenge, I went to a lot of networking events, contacted alumni, and did as many activities as I could to learn the culture.

I also focused on roles where persistence was as important as “fitting in” – I targeted real estate at first because it was a sales job, and 99% of sales is persistence.

From Real Estate to… Hedge Funds and Investment Banking?

Q: OK. So on that note, can you explain how you won the first internship?

A: Sure. I started my MSF program in the fall of Year 1, and then I spent most of that year studying for the CFA and FRM, both of which were silly strategies in this case.

I passed the CFA Level I, but I still couldn’t win anything close to an investment banking internship.

I decided that my best chance was to forget about banking and apply to real estate brokerage firms instead.

Also, I knew I had a much better chance of working at a Chinese firm, so I searched for ones with local branches near my school, added people on WeChat and QQ, and began contacting them directly to ask for informational interviews.

Some people do use LinkedIn, but these apps are both huge in the Chinese market and everyone uses them for networking.

I found a U.S. branch of a Chinese commercial real estate brokerage that offered an unpaid internship and could not sponsor a full-time work visa, but they needed junior employees to do grunt work, and I needed work experience.

The internship itself was fine; I mostly did due diligence, collected tenant and market information, and helped the senior people sell properties.

Q: So now we’re at the end of the summer of “Year 1,” and you’re starting your second year in school.

What was your next step?

A: I knew I needed deal experience after that or I’d never be able to win a banking internship or full-time role.

I was starting to get frustrated at the lack of responses, so I even considered going back to China and giving up on working in the U.S.

But I met with my mentor in the MSF program, who encouraged me not to give up and recommended focusing on case competitions and improving my modeling and networking skills.

So I switched away from the useless certifications, put more time into those areas, and began to search for real estate private equity roles.

I figured I would have a much better chance at RE PE roles because of my previous internship.

I got some responses and a few interviews out of the effort, but failed to win an offer in the final round of a 3-round interview process (including a case study and modeling test) at a small RE PE firm.

But I stayed in touch with one interviewer there, and a few months later he referred me to a “real estate investment sales” firm.

It was similar to RE PE, but they focused more on managing properties and also did some brokerage-type deals.

This time I performed a lot better in the interview process and I won the offer.

Q: Weren’t you about to finish the Finance degree at this time?

How did you complete another summer internship if you were set to graduate?

A: I still wasn’t in a position to get into banking, so I delayed my graduation by adding a second major: Business Analytics.

That gave me another year in school and, since it was a STEM major, also let me work for 36 months after graduating.

Q: Yeah, this is one of the few cases where it might make sense to delay your graduation.

So what was the internship like?

A: My experience there was more like CRE brokerage because I worked on sell-side deals, but I spun it very heavily to make it sound more like RE PE (e.g., I wrote about my analysis of a renovation and how it improved the returns without specifying that it was for a deal we pitched to someone else).

During my downtime, I continued networking, focusing on the bulge bracket banks. This lasted from the summer after Year 2 into the fall of Year 3.

I thought I would have a good shot at the big firms with two relevant internships and a better-known school on my resume, but I was completely wrong and didn’t get traction anywhere.

I started panicking because I thought that only large banks would sponsor my work visa.

Plan B: What to Do When the Big Banks Fail You

Q: Yikes. So what was your next step?

A: I figured that some mid-sized firms might be able to sponsor me, so I broadened my networking and went after literally anything that was related to real estate: bigger brokerage firms, REITs, RE PE again, property management companies, etc.

After a few months, I found a small hedge fund/investment management firm that wanted to switch its focus to REITs.

It had previously invested in oil & gas companies, but the commodity price crash ruined that strategy, so they were re-aligning to real estate and needed people with an industry background.

Q: OK, but why did you bother getting this internship in the first place?

Since you already had the CRE one and the real estate investment one, did an internship at a smaller hedge fund add much?

A: It was mostly because of visa issues. This firm wanted to hire international students, and it seemed like they might be open to visa sponsorship if I did well enough there.

As an international student, your #1 goal has to be winning an internship at a firm that can sponsor your visa and then converting it into a full-time offer.

It didn’t add much to my resume, and it reduced the amount of time I had for networking.

But it would have been a huge gamble not to take this role and to hope that something would turn up at a large bank.

Into Investment Banking

Q: OK. So you delayed things once again, but now you were midway into Year 3 and approaching graduation.

Most investment banks had already finished full-time recruiting, so what did you do?

A: I changed my approach in a few ways:

1. Firm and Group Focus – I skipped all the big banks and aimed for real estate industry groups at middle market and boutique banks.
2. Geographic Focus – Instead of contacting regional offices, I went directly to the New York office of each bank. The NY offices are more familiar with visa issues and the OPT program, so they’re more comfortable sponsoring you.
3. MDs Rather Than Analysts – I started going straight to Managing Directors and emailing them to introduce myself and ask about roles. They have a lot more hiring power than Analysts or Associates.
4. Aggressiveness – I started following up more consistently, and if I didn’t hear back within a week I would always send a short second email, and then another one if I didn’t hear back after that.

And then I also tried many combinations for their email addresses until I finally found what worked – that trick let me contact bankers even if they didn’t list their contact information anywhere.

I strongly recommend using Capital IQ to find the names of bankers if you have access via your school.

Q: OK, so you narrowed your focus by honing in on real estate, but you also expanded it by going for banks outside the bulge bracket.

What were interviews like this time around?

A: They asked the standard questions for the most part; the biggest surprise was the focus on “Warren Buffett” questions (as you label them in your guide).

In almost every interview they asked me:

• What do you think about the Chinese economy?
• What do you think about Market X in China, where X = real estate, construction, lodging, etc.?
• How is the market near your school different from the one in New York?
• What do you think about the global real estate market?

They focused heavily on markets questions because they expected me to know a lot about my country, and also because market cycles play a huge role in real estate.

You need strong opinions backed up by numbers and specific events, which you can develop only by reading sources like the WSJ, the Real Deal, and local publications.

For example, if they ask you about the difference between real estate in your local market vs. New York, you want to be able to say something like:

“The multi-family property segment has seen more activity locally, whereas in NY, most acquisitions have been for office and retail buildings. In the local market for multi-family properties, the average selling price per square foot has risen about 10% in the past year, and Cap Rates are down from 8% to 7%; despite those changes, I still think it’s an attractive market because we’re well below the selling prices and Cap Rates in the last market peak.

NY is attractive for sellers at the moment because Cap Rates, occupancy rates, and selling prices per square foot across property classes are near their peak values, but as a buyer, I would be less interested.”

I ended up winning an offer at a middle market bank, which I accepted right away.

Looking Back on the Process: Tips, Tactics, and Oversights

Q: Thanks for giving that example.

Is there anything else important that we haven’t yet discussed?

A: Never give up!

I almost gave up dozens of times because I went to a poor university, my Master’s program had many international students who didn’t win job offers, and I came close to winning no internships at all.

But once you give up and adopt a “defeatist” mindset, you can never turn things around.

Q: Well said. Do you have any more specific tips for international students looking for IB jobs in the U.S.?

A: Pick a STEM major or, if necessary, add a second major that qualifies as STEM so you can work for 36 months after graduation without applying for an H-1B visa.

A lot of people assume that only the bulge bracket investment banks can hire international students, but this is not true in my experience – smaller firms can still do it, especially if you have the 29-month OPT period.

If you cannot realistically get an offer at a large bank, be honest with yourself and focus your efforts elsewhere.

Finally, don’t underestimate the role of luck in the entire process: if one interview or job application goes your way, your entire career could change.

Q: Great. Thanks for your time!

A: My pleasure.

The post How to Win a Full-Time Investment Banking Offer as an International Student in a Non-Target Master’s Program appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

What background makes it toughest to break into finance?

Engineering?

Accounting?

The back office?

Being a male escort in Tokyo?

Each of those careers presents different challenges.

But there’s one particular background that bankers do not like: insurance, and specifically insurance sales.

If you attend a university where “everyone” does it, though, you could easily end up doing it as well.

Our reader today had it even worse:

• He went to a school that was completely off the radar of large banks.
• He had a low GPA (3.4) below the minimum that most banks required.
• He had a total of 0 relevant internships.
• And he only made a serious effort after junior-year recruiting had finished up.

Despite all that, he recently won a full-time offer at a boutique bank.

And he has a few ideas on how to overcome all these challenges if you’re in a similar position:

Falling Into Insurance Sales

Q: Can you give us an overview of your story?

A: I grew up in the Chicago area and had a few family members involved in the banking industry, so I was interested in finance even before university. Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking far enough ahead to attend a top school.

So I won admission to a few “good” undergraduate business programs in my area, but nothing that would help with IB.

At my school, one insurance company attempted to recruit almost everyone.

So I interned at that insurance firm and eventually rose to a management role in sales over three years, but that experience turned out to be a huge negative in interviews.

I liked sales, but over time I realized I wanted to work with large companies rather than individuals.

Unfortunately, I was so clueless and so far behind that I missed junior-year IB recruiting season (I applied to a few banks, but it was very late and I never heard back).

I did some networking, but got almost no responses.

So I took a different approach and attended a summer finance program offered at a top business school in the area, and spent three intensive weeks there learning financial accounting, corporate finance, and some financial modeling.

I then used that program, plus a brief stint as an “equity research analyst” for our school’s investment fund, to network more aggressively and cold email banks in the fall of my senior year.

I still didn’t gain much traction after months of effort, but then I changed up my approach heading into December / January.

That led me to win multiple job offers within the span of a few weeks, including one that I accepted at a boutique investment bank.

Q: OK, so a couple questions there…

First off, why do bankers hate insurance firms so much?

A: Insurance salespeople are always calling bankers, pitching products, and annoying them.

Finance professionals also tend to view insurance sales as “below” their work.

I improved my interpersonal and presentation skills through the job, but otherwise it was a big hurdle to overcome.

Q: But you just said that your insurance firm was calling bankers all the time.

You must have had a few clients in the finance industry – why didn’t you network with them?

A: Yeah, that was an overlooked opportunity: I was an inexperienced student, and I didn’t know that networking with the firm’s clients was “allowed.”

Many clients told me to look into investment banking as a career (just as a random comment in passing)!

I did apply to 5-6 large banks in my junior year, but I completely ignored middle-market and boutique firms until much later.

Intensive Summer Finance Camp 101

Q: So you applied for internships too late, you didn’t have any real options, and as a result you ended up doing this “summer finance camp” instead.

What were the benefits?

A: For me, there were three distinct benefits:

1. Better Brand Name – I could “hide” my lesser-known undergraduate institution by saying I was a “[Top Business School Name] Grad” instead.
2. Network – The school had a built-in network, and I met a lot of professors and professionals during the program who were willing to help me.
3. Academic Rigor – I partially made up for my 3.4 GPA by earning perfect grades in the program and pointing to the difficulty of the classes. This school had a reputation for being difficult, so that also helped my case.

Q: Yeah, agreed on all those points.

Can you explain how you networked after completing this intensive summer program?

A: I went to the LinkedIn page of the business school, found alumni and investment bankers who were in the group, and started messaging 10-20 contacts per day.

In total, I contacted ~500 bankers via LinkedIn.

I also looked up banks in my area each week and sent emails to everyone I could find.

Over the first four months, I got a fair number of responses, but nothing that led me to final round interviews at any firm.

A lot of people said they would “pass my name along,” but then never did anything.

Q: Why do you think this strategy didn’t work well?

A: It was a combination of factors:

1. My GPA and academics were lackluster;
2. I didn’t have relevant internships; and
3. My email template was generic and poorly worded when I first started.

Q: Did you try anything else when you didn’t get great results via email?

A: I did some cold calling as well, but I felt more comfortable with email and received more responses via email.

I also attended other schools’ career fairs, but that didn’t work too well for me.

I went to four other fairs, but bankers lost interest once they found out I wasn’t a student at the school.

Also, the banks at those career fairs were all quite large – the smallest one was Lazard – and they had even less interest in me as a result.

In my opinion, email is the way to go for undergrads who are new to networking.

Bankers are in their inboxes all day, and if you send out enough messages you’re bound to get at least a few responses.

Q: But you weren’t getting helpful responses at first.

Why and how did you change your approach?

A: The low point came in early December of my senior year. I had just found the email address of the Chairman at a well-known boutique, and I emailed him with a variation of my usual template (also attaching my resume).

He responded with a personalized rejection email, writing:

“Thanks for your interest in [Bank Name]. Unfortunately, your email didn’t reflect much effort or initiative to tailor your efforts to [Bank Name]… [More explanation about how poor my email was]. Also, we require at least a 3.8 GPA.”

That harsh, but brutally honest, response convinced me to change my approach.

Effective Emails 101

Q: So what did you do?

A: I made three main changes:

1. I customized my emails for each bank, even though this made my initial messages longer.
2. I focused on firms where I knew someone or could spin some type of shared connection.
3. I also stopped contacting large banks altogether and focused on smaller banks. But I also broadened my search and emailed commercial banks, different types of lending firms, and any company offering “financial analyst” jobs.

Q: To make this more concrete, can you give a “Before” and “After” email to show us what worked and what didn’t work?

A: Sure. Here’s an example of an email that did not work well:

“Greetings [Banker Name],

My name is [Name] and I am currently a student at [University Name] excited to get into investment banking. I am reaching out because I have searched for many investment banks, came across your website, and hope to hear back from you guys. Additionally, I saw you went to [Business School Name], and I recently finished [Summer Program at Business School].

I am willing to work in any group within the investment banking division, but I prefer to work in the middle market industry at this time. I have applied to many banks, interviewed at a few, and have not heard back from most.

I have some experience in I-banking from working with my colleagues at [Business School Summer Program], and I am a diligent, hard-working individual. I believe this would be a great opportunity if I am given the chance to interview, or if you could pass my resume along to anyone within your firm.

My resume is attached, and I hope to speak with you soon.

Best regards,

[Name]”

Q: Wow.

That’s not the worst email I’ve ever seen, but I’m still surprised you got any responses.

How did you modify this email to get a better response rate?

A: Here’s an example of an email that yielded a better response rate:

“Dear Mr. / Ms. [Banker Name],

I hope this email finds you well. I am currently a student at [University Name], and I completed the [Business School Summer Program Name] this past summer, with a focus on corporate finance, financial modeling, and investment banking. I have previous experience in insurance and equity research as well.

I am set to graduate in [Month Year], and I am very interested in your firm because of your focus on [Industry Name]. One of my contacts, [Name and Explain Who the Person is], also focuses on [Industry Name] at [Bank Name], and has discussed recent deals such as [Name 1-2 Examples] with me.

If you have any availability next week, I would greatly appreciate the chance to speak with you and learn more about your firm. I understand you are extremely busy, but even a few minutes would be helpful to my recruiting efforts.

Best regards,

[Name]”

So even if I didn’t know someone at the firm, I name-dropped someone else who worked in a similar group elsewhere.

It takes time to research deals in a specific industry, but I got a much better response rate when I mentioned that information.

Q: The name-dropping strategy helped, but there were also many problems with your first email.

How well did this new outreach effort work?

A: I saw better results within 1-2 months of using it – there was one week in February where I had five phone interviews, all via contacts I had emailed 2-3 weeks earlier.

A lot of smaller finance firms still had open positions, so the timing worked out.

Interviews: What’s Your Greatest Weakness?

Q: So tell us what happened in these interviews – what were your top three biggest challenges?

A: Most interviewers asked similar types of questions:

1. Do you know what investment banking hours are like / what this job entails / what different groups do?
2. Can you link the three financial statements and explain how changes to one line item impact everything else?
3. Can you analyze a company’s Cash Flow Statement and draw conclusions about its business from that?

Those questions are not hard if you’ve done a lot of preparation.

But my preparation was only mediocre, so my three biggest challenges were:

1) My Insurance Sales Background – Most banks saw this as a huge negative, and they ripped apart my resume once they saw it.

To respond, I agreed with them on some of the negatives, but I also pointed out that I gained sales and interpersonal skills that I could leverage in other roles.

This experience also helped answer the “Where do you want to be in 3-5 years?” question.

Many other candidates saw banking solely as a path to PE or other exit opportunities, but I could tell a more credible story by saying, “I’ve already done sales, I like sales, and now I want to work my way up to a sales role in another industry by working with higher-end clients.”

2) My Low GPA – The Managing Directors were far more skeptical of my GPA than anyone else.

Analysts, Associates, VPs, and Directors were supportive once they saw my interview performance, but the MDs were very traditional and kept saying a 3.4 was too low.

I countered this objection by pointing to the intensive “mini-MBA” I had done at the business school, and I showed them how I had earned perfect grades in classes that were directly relevant to banking.

I also pointed out that I worked part-time while taking classes full-time for three years, and had done quite well in my finance classes.

3) My Lack of Accounting Knowledge – Looking back on it, I should have double majored in finance and accounting, or at least done a minor in accounting.

My economics classes weren’t helpful because the field is too theoretical and has nothing to do with financial statement analysis.

I relied on your interview guide and several others, which definitely helped, but my accounting knowledge was still spotty in initial interviews.

Q: But your approach must have worked since you won multiple offers.

A: A lot of places were still skeptical, but I ended up with several offers, including one at a distressed M&A-focused boutique bank, which I accepted.

It made sense to join that firm because they had the most interesting work; also, I had been interested in distressed M&A ever since the summer program I completed.

I also asked a few bulge bracket bankers for advice, and they all said I would gain more client interaction at a boutique bank.

The drawback is that my firm has no real training program or formalized instruction, but they did send me some materials to review and I’m sure I can pick up more on my own.

Q: Yeah, accepting that offer was the best move. I’m still amazed at your results, given how late you began recruiting.

Thanks for sharing your story with us!

A: My pleasure.

The post From Insurance Sales to Investment Banking: How to Make Up for an Unknown School, a Low GPA, and No Relevant Internships appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

In this interview we’ll speak with a reader who landed a full-time bulge bracket investment banking offer with 0 banking internships and a non-target school on his resume.

There have been a few interviews with readers from similar backgrounds – but I thought this one was great because he shares unique insights and unusual networking strategies – including surprising conclusions on what worked and what failed miserably.

So let’s jump in and see how this reader went from no connections and no experience to a full-time investment banking offer – and how you can do the same.

Background & Last-Minute Networking

Q: Tell us about yourself.

A: Sure. I went to an unknown state school that was off the radar of major banks, and which had very few alumni in finance. My family was involved in the retail industry so they knew almost nothing about it, and I had no connections.

I started getting interested in finance my sophomore year, but I knew almost nothing about it so I had to look online to get started, using your site and others.

The summer after my sophomore year I did an internship selling life insurance. It was commission-based and absolutely brutal – they just throw you out there and say, “Find clients and sell insurance ASAP.”

After that, I did an unpaid private wealth management internship at a large bank, which I leveraged into a full-time investment banking offer at a bulge bracket bank.

Q: Impressive. So let’s go back to that internship selling life insurance – most people would discount this experience because it has nothing to do with investment banking or private equity. Was it helpful at all in securing your PWM internship or your full-time offer?

A: Yes – in fact, my internship selling life insurance was my #1 talking point during interviews.

It sounds crazy, but bankers spent more time asking me about that experience than anything else on my resume – including my PWM internship at a brand-name bank.

In one bulge bracket interview, they spent 30 minutes having me pitch them an insurance policy.

I think they focused on it so much because it was extremely tough and I had almost no direction – it wasn’t much different from what you do at the top levels in banking, although obviously MDs work on much larger deals and with more sophisticated clients.

Q: I’m still surprised they focused so much on that internship. How did you make the transition from selling insurance to private wealth management?

A: It was pretty much a last-minute networking effort on my part – I knew I needed an internship for my junior year summer, but I assumed I had no chance at investment banking, so I didn’t even try.

I did contact a few friends and alumni from my school who were in the industry, but most of those leads didn’t go anywhere.

I got the internship itself by going through a friend who had recently graduated from my school and who was working in New York – he passed my name along to a recruiter at his bank.

Then I followed up and sent 20 emails over the next month before the recruiter agreed to discuss an internship.

Q: Let me stop you right there – why did you send so many emails? I usually say that calling and meeting in-person are more effective. Did you try cold-calling at all?

A: Yes – but it didn’t work at all for me. I could never get past the gatekeepers no matter what I did.

I know it works since I’ve had friends who pulled it off successfully – but overall I didn’t have much luck with it. You need to be really good at sweet-talking secretaries and finding the right people to begin with, and I wasn’t great at that.

M&I Note: In addition, location seems to matter a lot with cold-calling. A lot of readers have used it successfully in California, for example, but other regions are more hit-or-miss.

Q: Yeah, people do tend to have mixed results with cold-calling. Going back to that internship, though, I’m curious – most bulge bracket banks don’t do unpaid internships. How did you arrange that?

A: It worked because this was in the midst of the financial crisis / recession and everything was chaotic at the time. They actually gave me a choice of 2 internships: a paid, back-office position in New Jersey or an unpaid, front-office private wealth management position in New York – I wisely selected the second one.

A lot of students would have chosen the paid internship, but I knew it was a bad move because banks want to know that you can live and work in New York – and as you’ve pointed out before, the back office to front office transition is difficult.

Going back to your original question, the bank itself and the industry as a whole were in such trouble around this time that everyone was running around frantically trying to cut costs – so they decided to give large groups of us unpaid internships.

The “interview process” itself was really informal, and all it took was 1 interview to get the offer.

Door-to-Door Networking

Q: Ok, so it was more of a firm-wide policy than a special exception for you – which makes sense. So how did you keep networking with bankers once you started? Were the people in your PWM group helpful?

A: From day 1 I walked in there thinking, “How can I turn this into investment banking?”

Most people in PWM were completely useless for investment banking recruiting – a lot of times they’d give me contact information for recruiters, but then the recruiters would ignore me or lie about the process.

People in PWM were fine if you wanted to do Sales & Trading, but they hated investment bankers – if you mentioned that you wanted to do that, they would instantly start looking down on you.

The only good contact I got through the PWM group was actually in private equity – my boss had the interns go around to visit key clients in-person one day, and I met the head of a PE firm like that.

I made a good impression on him, and then ran it by my boss before I contacted him for networking purposes – he was fine with it, so the PE guy referred me to a lot of people and forwarded my resume to all his contacts, which was huge.

Q: Nice – I guess we can call that one “door-to-door networking.” So aside from that one PE guy, did you do most of your networking outside the bank?

A: Yes. I did an extensive search and left no stone unturned – which was key, because my most random strategies ended up working really well.

I reached out to alumni via our database as well as LinkedIn – I often found names on LinkedIn, and then plugged them into the alumni database to get contact information. I didn’t limit myself to investment banking, either – as long as the person did something in finance, that was close enough for me.

I ended up getting my full-time offer via an alum that no one from my school had ever contacted before – he worked in a Restructuring group and had good friends at bulge bracket banks, so I got the referral through him.

No one had contacted him in the past because he went to a top business school and was detached from his undergrad institution – so others wrongly assumed he was “off limits.”

I also met alumni via my finance classes, and I directly asked a lot of professors for referrals – teachers are severely under-utilized for networking purposes.

It was really important to be the first person to contact an alumnus – the same alum is unlikely to help more than few people with referrals, so getting in early is crucial.

Q: Right, that makes a lot of sense. But those strategies don’t sound that much different from what you’d expect – you mentioned some “random strategies” before. Could you give a few examples?

A: Sure – here are 2 specific examples of more unusual strategies:

Example #1: I found out that someone very high-up at an investment bank a few years ago (C-level executive) was an alumnus from my school from many years ago. I couldn’t find his contact information anywhere, so I went through my Dean to get it instead.

I met with my Dean, told him about myself, and then he sent the resume along to the C-level executive because he knew him personally. A few days later the executive called me personally and I would have gotten an interview at his bank had I not already accepted an offer elsewhere by that point.

Example #2: Many people didn’t respond to emails, so I tried a more creative strategy instead – I went through the Bloomberg terminals available at my school.

You can look people up there if you know their names – rather than calling or emailing, I instant messaged them via Bloomberg. It worked really well, especially for people in Sales & Trading and Equity Research that were on Bloomberg all day.

Q: That’s a great way to use Bloomberg, though you do have to be careful not to go overboard with IM. Once you contacted these people, what did you say to them? Was it just the typical informational interview?

A: For most of the interviews I just said, “I’m interested in your industry and want to learn more about how I can get there.”

I did this because I knew that industries like private equity and portfolio management require another job first – and I wanted my contacts to give me referrals to other industries.

So if I called up a PE contact I would say, “I’m interested in private equity – how can I get there after I graduate?” and he would say, “Well, you have to do investment banking first,” and I would say, “Oh, ok, do you happen to know anyone in the industry?” and then I would get contact information like that.

I found that feigning ignorance – to a certain point – was more effective than acting like I knew everything from the get-go.

Full-Time Recruiting

Q: I think that one should answer all the “Which industry should I tell them I’m interested in?” questions I get. Did you do anything else to prepare for full-time recruiting?

A: Not really – I read the usual sites online, interview guides, message boards, etc. but I focused on my networking efforts through the summer and fall. I’d say I spent around 40 hours per week networking and interviewing until I had my offer lined up.

It’s important to be persistent even when it’s the last minute and interview slots are being announced.

Quick example: A couple people from one class of mine got interviews at this one bank, and I noticed that my friends all had interviews lined up but I didn’t.

So I contacted the recruiter directly and said, “I noticed some classmates of mine had interviews lined up with your firm. I’d really appreciate the opportunity to interview with you as well.”

And just like that, she set up the interview and I got through first rounds there.

This might seem obvious, but 90% of people are too afraid to ask for what they want so they sit there and get no results.

Q: Another bold but effective move there. So what were interviews like? Did you have to address a lot of “objections” because you had no banking experience and because you were coming in from a non-target school?

A: Not really. They didn’t care much about the lack of banking experience, and hardly anyone raised my school as an issue.

However, that may have been because I interviewed fairly late in the process – after most full-time recruiting was finished. A friend who interviewed at the same firms earlier than me got grilled on why he wasn’t from a big city and why he didn’t go to a better-known school.

I had a low GPA (3.2 / 4.0) so that came up in interviews a few times. I gave the usual defense and explained that I didn’t feel it was low given my work experience, and hardly anyone asked about it past the first round.

I know a lot of people complain about their GPA, but I think those concerns are overblown – especially if you’re from a lesser-known school, networking is far more important than boosting your GPA by a small amount.

Interviews were actually easier and less technical than I expected – even though I was a finance major and had the PWM internship, I received only a few technical questions throughout the entire process.

Thinking on your feet and being good at making up stuff on the spot was critical, because I got some curve-ball “fit” questions that I hadn’t thought about before.

Q: Any interview tips that we haven’t heard before?

A: A few points:

1. Interviewers often drifted if I went beyond 1-2 minutes in my answer to the “Walk me through your resume” question – I know some people say that 3-5 minutes is ok, but I’d aim for 60 seconds instead.
2. I tried to keep all my “fit” answers to a max of 3 sentences, or people would start to lose interest – be concise and let them ask for more detail if they want.
3. Be confident but not cocky – cocky gets you obscure technical questions, while confidence makes them like you.

On the last point: a friend and I were interviewing for the same bank on the same day, and I got 0 technical questions while the interviewers asked him to build a 3-statement model on a piece of paper (!).

It was all because he walked in and acted like he was a finance guru, which was a huge mistake.

Q: Yeah, definitely. People try way too hard to impress and it always backfires. So now that you got this offer, what are you planning to do in the future?

A: I want to do PE and get an MBA in the future, but those are both quite a ways away. In the short-term I’m definitely looking forward to joining my group, but I’m also interested in the distressed debt side and possibly doing something there.

Q: Awesome, thanks for your time.

A: No problem. Later!

The post From Non-Target School and Unpaid Wealth Management Internship to Full-Time Bulge Bracket Investment Banking Offer: How to Make the Leap appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

No! Of course not.

At least, I hope not.

We do get plenty of readers from “elite universities,” but many readers have also broken into the finance industry from unknown schools – often with lower GPAs and less-impressive work experience.

Today’s story is in the second category: A reader at an unknown state school who used aggressive cold-calling and cold-emailing tactics to win an offer at a boutique investment bank:

Origin Story: From Accounting to Merchant Banking to Rescinded Offers to Full-Time Offers

Q: Can you walk us through your story?

A: I became interested in finance my freshman year, but I had no background in the industry and no relevant internships.

I was at an unknown state school with no on-campus recruiting, and hardly anyone went into investment banking.

My first step was getting an accounting internship after my freshman year – but I told the MDs there that I was actually interested in investment banking, and they gave me referrals to local boutiques and merchant banks in the area.

I saw a few ads for merchant banks on my school’s website, but rather than applying online, I called them directly and told them I was interested.

I made it into a 3-step process:

1. Saturday – I spent most of the day researching boutique and local firms online, including a review of their transactions.
2. Monday/Tuesday – I cold called each bank to ask about positions and indicate my interest. Then, if I actually connected with a real person, I submitted my resume.
3. Tuesday/Wednesday – I called back the next day to follow up and make sure they had received it.

I aimed to email at least five banks per day.

I kept calling until I received a response, and sometimes it took many, many tries to get through.

Eventually, I landed an offer at a local bank in the summer following my junior year.

I went through full-time recruiting after that, won an offer at a well-known boutique, had it rescinded because of “economic conditions,” and eventually won another full-time offer.

Q: Wow, that sounds like quite the journey.

Coming from that kind of background, you must have faced many “objections” in your recruiting efforts.

Why did bankers say “No,” and how did you overcome these negative responses?

A: There were three main “objections”:

1. “You’re from a no-name school – why should I hire you over the guy from Princeton or Wharton?”
2. “You have a pretty good (3.8) GPA – but what does that mean coming from your school? That’s equivalent to a 2.0 at an Ivy League school, right?”
3. “Why didn’t you go to a better school? You seem like a smart guy, and I’m sure you could have at least gotten into a better-known state school.”

To overcome objection #1, I pointed out that it’s the person who does the work – not the school.

There are plenty of people from top schools who are privileged and unmotivated, but I was hungry to get in – and they could tell.

To answer questions about my GPA, I pointed out that I was also working 30 hours per week and paying for rent and my tuition – so I was working harder than many other students and still earning good grades.

For objection #3, I said that I couldn’t afford a “good school.”

I didn’t come from a privileged background and I had to pay for my education by myself, so I went to the best place I could, given my budget constraints.

Q: OK, but how well did that story resonate with everyone?

Some people in finance are not receptive if you don’t come from a wealthy background.

A: Most people accepted the story.

I did run into a few people with Ivy League undergrad or MBA backgrounds who couldn’t understand the concept of poor or middle-class family, but most people “got it.”

Q: You must have found a high percentage of “nice” bankers; that’s amazing.

How did you approach firms differently, given your background?

A: I was a lot more persistent, for one thing.

I never stopped at just speaking to HR or to an administrative person – I’d always try to speak with at least an Associate or VP, and if they didn’t call me back, I would call back two days later to get someone else on the phone.

I made sure every phone call resulted in either:

1. Speaking with a real person; or
2. Getting a real banker’s name and email address.

Q: What was your response rate when you were contacting these firms?

A: It started out at close to 0%, which was odd because my cold-calling skills were fairly solid.

I thought the problem might be my resume, so I went through your resume editing service, and my response rate improved significantly.

By the end, I was getting responses from around 50-75% of banks.

Thanks!

Q: No problem; I can’t take all the credit for that one, though.

How did you find the contact information for bankers in the first place?

When you cold call firms, sometimes they’re reluctant to give you anyone’s contact information or put you in touch with bankers.

A: If I couldn’t find it on the website, I called the secretary or assistant to ask about it and said, “Who can I speak to regarding recruiting / employment here?”

Sometimes they would transfer me, and sometimes they wouldn’t.

If I got transferred to voicemail, I would immediately hang up, call back, say I got disconnected, and then ask for the person’s real contact information.

The gatekeeper was more likely to give me the first and last name of the person in charge of recruiting on my second try.

Since I said, “I got disconnected,” they assumed it was a problem on their end.

I also did this to figure out the company’s email format.

To make it seem like an innocuous request, I asked for the secretary’s email address first.

I didn’t care about his/her address, but I used it to determine the email format of the company (e.g., firstname.lastname@company.com or firstname_lastname@company.com).

I then used that format with the first and last name that the secretary had just given me, and I emailed people directly like that.

I also got a few referrals from the alumni database. Hardly anyone was in IB, but a few alumni over the decades had entered the industry.

In those cases, I emailed the alumni first and pointed out where I found them.

Sometimes I also did simple Google searches – “@ubs.com,” for example, would give me contact information for anyone who put their address online.

Finally, I looked through old job postings on Doostang and Monster.com, and I wrote down names of firms I wasn’t familiar with.

On Doostang, I looked through users’ profiles to find firm names as well – this approach gave me names that weren’t listed in any boutique database online.

NOTE: Today, LinkedIn is far more effective for finding firm names and individual bankers at firms. This reader did not use it because this story took place before LinkedIn was as widely used as it is today.

You will not get great response rates if you contact people through LinkedIn – email is always better – but it is a great place to find people.

Q: OK, so you found the contact information like that, and then called and emailed everyone.

Did you do anything to make yourself stand out or get their attention more effectively?

A: In my initial emails, I made myself sound more experienced than I actually was.

I said that I had been in the market before, so it seemed like I wasn’t just an undergrad looking to break in.

I always wrote something like:

“I’ve worked at ABC and XYZ firms before in DEF industry, and I’m interested in learning more about opportunities at your firm.”

I didn’t want to sound like too much of a student, and I wanted to avoid listing my school’s name anywhere since I knew it would count against me.

Q: How did you follow up with these local/smaller firms ?

A: After I emailed a firm with my resume, I waited two days to follow up with a phone call.

Then I’d wait a few more days and email them, call again, and if there was still no response, I would email them to suggest a date and time for a call.

If I still didn’t get a response after four separate follow-up attempts within a week, I would wait for 10-14 days and try again with a series of follow-up calls and emails within a week.

Some banks didn’t respond at all, and some did – there was no real pattern, and it was more of a numbers game than anything else.

Q: You were quite successful in your recruiting efforts.

Is there anything you would have done differently, looking back on it now?

A: I would have started earlier.

Even if you don’t know 100% whether or not you want to do banking, it always helps to start building relationships early.

Outside of recruiting, I would have focused more on “fit” questions rather than spending all my time on the technical ones.

While you do have to answer the technical questions reasonably well, bankers care more about them if it’s your second or third internship; they’re not necessarily going to grill you on advanced/obscure concepts if it’s your first time at a bank.

I found myself well-prepared on the technical side, but stumbling when it came to basic “fit” questions, such as “Tell me your strengths and weaknesses.”

Finally, lower your expectations.

If you expect everyone to say “No,” or you expect the worst in interviews, then even a slightly better outcome is a success.

Q: Sounds good.

Any parting advice for students still looking for internships or jobs, or for anyone who’s out of work right now?

A: Keep at it. If you don’t get something right now, don’t give up until you have something lined up.

A friend of mine was about to graduate without any job offers, but then he went around and started offering to work for free.

That allowed him to be far more competitive, and he won several unpaid opportunities that could turn into paid options later on.

Also, look at my own story – I had my offer rescinded, but then I went around and continued to recruit until I found something else.

You just never know, and giving up too soon is a huge mistake – especially when you’re dealing with small firms that recruit year-round.

Read More

If you liked this article, you might be interested in Investment Banking Target Schools: Lists by Region and What to Do If You’re Not at One.

The post Unknown State School with No Finance Background to Investment Banking: How to Make the Leap appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.