Mecanicien

Posts Tagged ‘recruiting’

You need to do 3 things right to get into investment banking: win access to recruiters, get their attention with your CV / resume, and ace your interviews. If you’ve been failing so far, you’re doing one of these wrong.

First, let’s discuss access. “Recruiting channels” refer to banks’ presentations on school campuses, talking to headhunters, or going through school alumni or other referrals from professionals you know.

Banks only target around 10-20 schools - called “target schools” - for most of their recruiting efforts, so you will have a very tough time unless you are going to an Ivy League-caliber school.

That means that if you are NOT currently at one of these institutions, you need to work significantly harder to actually get into the industry, and you will need to rely on networking via referrals and cold-calling.

If you go this route, make a list of all local boutiques and small firms in your region, and don’t give up until you’ve called all of them - and then move onto alumni, referrals from friends, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other means.

Once you have some sort of access to recruiters or bankers at these firms who will actually pay attention to you, you need a winning resume / CV to actually stand out and get interviews.

Keep your resume short and concise (1 page or less unless you are 40+ years old), and focus your attention on the top 2 or 3 experiences that make you stand out - as a student, these would be your internships or best leadership activities, and as a professional these might be jobs you’ve had over the past 5-10 years.

Include as much as you can on specific results and what you actually did, using numbers wherever possible. Make your experience sound like it involved specific transactions, clients, or projects as opposed to just writing generic summary sentences.

With your resume perfected, you need to sharpen your interview skills. Focus on your “story” - what you say when they ask you to walk them through your resume, especially on the “why investment banking” and “why now” part.

You need to logically connect everything you’ve done, go in chronological order, and explain why you need to be an investment banker more than anyone else they talk to that day - other questions come into play, but 90% of the interview comes down to your story.

A good grasp of technical questions on finance and accounting is also necessary, but those can be learned from reading books or interview guides - your story should get the bulk of your attention.

That’s a quick overview of how to break into investment banking - good luck!