How do I get the job I really want?

January 30, 2006 2:49 PM

I want to become an investment banker, badly. After finding out as much as I can about what i-banking actually is, the more I want to do it. There's a short list of about 5-10 "top 40" institutions that I think make a good match in what kind of culture I want, what I'm looking for in a company. I'm a senior (err, graduate a semester early in December). The problem is I'm at a non-top tier college.

My grades are good (3.80, which puts me in the top 10%), the school I go to is small, private and well known regionally -- in the midwest. I've talked to numerous people about investment baking and know all the caveats. The 80-hour weeks don't bother me, and everyone who hates it seemed to get into i-banking simply for the money.

What's the best way to go for internships? I graduate a semester early in December so I can feasibly do it over the summer. The firms I looked into appear to be "recruiting at school", which are all big name coast schools. I bought a "WetFeet" guide which states somewhat simply that you either need to be Ivy or know someone in the business to get into a big NYC firm.

There must be a way around this? Would trying to find work in London be easier or harder? Is the Ivy bias that bad at top firms? My goal is to work in i-banking for several years, get into a top MBA program and then return to i-banking. I've been told that to get into a top MBA program the best thing I can do for myself is get into a top i-banking firm. It's kind of a circular problem.

I have a pretty good resume for someone of my age, with extensive corporate experience which I doubt too many people have (lucked into a really good IT job with a lot of responsibility during college, working near full time every week).

Some other questions, are internships really that important? They seem least obtainable, albeit a good stepping stone into a future career. This career guide I got also states some firms do have a strong Ivy bias but doesn't list those firms, are the big players pretty exclusionary? How the hell do I land a job at one of those firms?

All the firms I'm into say something along the lines of "please stop by our office for more information", and NYC is a fairly expensive trip to go and pick up internship packages.

Sorry to be rambling and somewhat broad. All the advice I keep getting is somewhat frusterating, "We'll come to your college! You go to Harvard or Yale right?" There's obviously some hyperbole there, but that's what it's starting to feel like.

PS Since I can't respond to questions, would doing a two year stint at a top management firm (Boston, Bain), then MBA, then i-banking be a better route to take?

posted by anonymous to work & money (17 comments total)

I just finished my analyst career at a bulge bracket bank. Feel free to email me at the address in my profile. I came from a school that was way off the recruiting radar for investment banks.

Just to answer a few of your questions in the most basic of fashions:
Do you need an internship at an i-bank? No. Internships are basically a guarantee of a full-time analyst offer but internships are harder to come by than full-time offers. You just need to do something time-consuming and finance-related. Something interesting is a bonus but by no means required.

London? This would be harder if not impossible for a US undergrad. I've only heard of US analyst moving to overseas offices after their second year to do a third.

Do you need an ivy league degree? Nope. It makes it easier, but is by no means necessary. Aside from Goldman and Morgan Stanley, a lot of firms are starting to see state school kids as "scrappy" and more than willing to work insane hours.

If you want a summer internship, you better get your ass to NYC about now. Resumes drops at NYU have already begun.

Whatever you think you know about firm culture and what firms will be a good fit for you is bullshit. There is no way to know and it probably doesn't matter. That's great stuff to use in an interview and you should use it then, but it has no relationship with actual working conditions.

Anyway, feel free to email me and I'll answer whatever questions you have in gory-detail.
posted by mullacc at 3:20 PM on January 30, 2006

I'm curious... what sort of undergrad education do investment banks expect from entry-level employees?
posted by rxrfrx at 3:26 PM on January 30, 2006

Have you spoken to career counselors at your school or staffers for the business/finance major? Do that, and also investigate your alumni network.
posted by apple scruff at 3:36 PM on January 30, 2006

There's always the nuclear option.
posted by TonyRobots at 3:37 PM on January 30, 2006

I know at least a few people from my small, regional LAC that have gone into investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Lazard Frere, and JP morgan and at least one of them was not a spectaclar student.

I don't know what they did besides be very aggressive in contacting firms and traveling to NYC for a lot for interviews, even informational-type interviews. Having an Ivy background is a big leg up, but in my limited experience it is by no means essential.

There is also the ridiculously expensive and roundabout way of going to law school, working for a aw firm in NY in a related sector, and transitioning into investment banking after some years. Of course, this would be a terrible plan for you. I only mention it because the law firm I am summering at has Goldman Sachs as one of its clients and they have a program where some associates "transfer" to the investment bank for six months at a time to get a better sense of the clientside. Some of these associates then went on to work for the investment bank itself.
posted by Falconetti at 3:38 PM on January 30, 2006

rxrfrx: Officially, investment banks are major agnostic. I once heard that Morgan Stanley did a study which came to the conclusion that music majors had been the most successful investment banking analysts. But, in practice, most analysts tend to be finance majors (Wharton and NYU kids) or economic majors (Ivy League and other schools that don't have an undergrad business program). Every bank has an intense 6-week training program that will teach in-coming analysts everything they need to know. Having a finance background just makes those first 6 weeks a little easier.

Investment banks certainly want as smart as analysts as they can find but the most important factor, by several orders of magnitude, is the candidate's willingness to work 90 hour weeks (filled mostly with BS).

The most prevalent schools are: Wharton, NYU, Columbia, Harvard (Yale/Princeton/Dartmouth/etc to lesser degree), Duke, UVA, Stanford, Michigan and Berkeley. Chicago, U of Illinois, Indiana, UNC and a handful of others show up randomly.
posted by mullacc at 3:47 PM on January 30, 2006

mullacc: "London? This would be harder if not impossible for a US undergrad."

True. Many London investment banks only bother to go to Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and Imperial (such as Lazard), so are likely to be, if anything, even more elitist.
posted by matthewr at 4:01 PM on January 30, 2006

It interests me - why do you want to be a banker so badly? It strikes me that a lot of undergrads think they want to be bankers and get to wall street only to find out it was some other area of finance they were after.

This is sorta what happened to me - though I never was a banker - thought I wanted to be one until some people actually took the time to show me /introduce me to all different parts of the street.
posted by JPD at 4:12 PM on January 30, 2006

your school's alumni association may be able to help put you in touch with grads from your school at those firms who have indicated their availability for informational interviews and such.
posted by judith at 4:28 PM on January 30, 2006

Working through your school's alumni network is a very good idea. They may not be able to offer you a job, but they might be able to point you in the right direction or open a few doors. Don't limit your contacts to I-bankers: many alumni associations also track advanced degrees, so talk to folks who got an MBA and ask them for advice.

I don't know that a stint in management consulting would necessarily open any doors for you at an investment bank, and it's just as difficult to get your foot in the door at a top consulting firm, if not more so. If all you are looking for is something to give you a leg up into B-school, there are lots of other options besides I-banking and management consulting, so I would encourage you to keep your options open, unless you are dead set on the I-bank/B-School/I-bank trajectory.
posted by ambrosia at 5:01 PM on January 30, 2006

Banker here. Submit your resume through every bank's online system now. Almost all of them have forms online and those that don't have e-mail addresses for HR - it will get read, but you only get like three seconds, so make your GPA and SAT scores easy to find. Get a summer gig, find out if you really do like it, get a full time offer, then relax knowing what you're getting yourself into for the next two or three years.

However, let me strongly remind you that you can get into PE/VC coming out of a top tier consulting firm where the hours are less and the environment is more collegial.
posted by sachinag at 6:05 PM on January 30, 2006

You lost a good networking opportunity by asking this question anonymously. Surely stranger things have happened than finding a job from a fellow Mefite.

You should also consider banks like BofA, Wachovia, NatCity, SunTrust, etc. (outside NYC) that have corporate and investment banking. You can easily start on the corporate side and move the investment banking side.
posted by Frank Grimes at 6:12 PM on January 30, 2006

Or ones that are in the Midwest: Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, or middle market like Baird (Milwaukee), AG Edwards (St. Louis) and William Blair (Chicago).
posted by milkrate at 6:55 PM on January 30, 2006

Edward D. Jones also has it's HQ in STL, if I recall correctly.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:26 PM on January 30, 2006

Internship recruiting at Goldman is going on right now. Get your resume in, network *hard* to find anyone there that you might have a reasonable connection with (sorry, I'm not a banker), and cross your fingers. I honestly don't know anyone that went into i-banking out of a non-ivy/ivy-esque school (dartmoth, williams, etc), so I have no idea how it's done. I do know a lot of "management consultants" that went to non-top MBA schools and are now... still consultants. If you can get into a top MBA, though, that is clearly the way to go. If you are tech and really, really motivated, you can go do tech at a place like Goldman, get them to pay to send you through MBA at, say, NYU, and then maybe you can transfer to ibanking? It's a long shot but not impossible.
posted by ch1x0r at 8:54 PM on January 30, 2006

you Want to be an investment banker? personally, i think you should kill yourself now and save yourself years of pain and boredom.
posted by gt at 9:30 PM on January 30, 2006

anonymous: If you haven't already, read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (amazon) .
posted by matthewr at 10:00 PM on January 30, 2006