Investment banking questions

[chisness]

Assumptions:
-College ranking: about 5-20 (exclude very top schools)
-GPA: about 3.5
-Major: Econ/finance/accounting
-Achievements: No major awards or projects completed
-Interviews: Above average, well prepared for

How likely is it to get an i-banking job at:
1) Top firm
2) Any firm

The assumptions are pretty close to describing me and probably a lot of other students vying for the spots. What are some major "hooks" to getting these jobs aside from junior year summer internships? I know it's heavily GPA based, so once a threshold GPA is met, does the interview become the main factor?

[Evan]

The short answer is that they're pretty much looking for two things.

1) Basic financial knowledge. What are the 4 financial statements? What is a WACC? What is enterprise value? You're not going to blow anyone away with your financial wizardry, no matter who you are. If you do get hired you will go through several weeks of pretty intense training anyway, so it doesn't make much difference to them whether you already know 1 week or 2 week's worth of material. They just want to make sure you have an understanding of the basics so they don't have to start from scratch and that you're capable of learning.

2) Someone they can stand to be around. You're going to be working super long hours and no one wants to hire someone they can't stand. The selection process, once they've weeded out the people that just have no business being there, sounds kind of like a fraternity as far as trying to establish who's compatible with who.

So obviously the interview is very important. Each company/interviewer will have a different culture and different attributes they're looking for. So it's not like you can just go in and "be funny" or "be clever" and get the job. My advice would be to spend as little time as possible talking about the actual job. Obviously you need to establish that you're qualified and able/eager to learn (that's big with them), but after that you're not going to do yourself any favors by giving a soliloquy on all the different ways you can calculate a beta. This isn't to say this part of the interview isn't important, because if they do happen to ask about different ways to calculate beta or to briefly analyze a company or whatever, and you can't answer it, you're pretty much done. But once you've gotten through the basics try to steer the discussion toward anything else that you can establish as a common interest. Sports tend to work pretty well in my experience.


I have no idea what your chances of getting a job at a "top firm" or "any firm" are. Not that it's going to make it any more likely I'll give you a numerical answer, but you might get a little more color on the subject if you lay out what you consider top tier.

[edtost]

the people at iBankingOasis are probably your best resource on this, though anyone's opinion on how to get IB jobs is going to be fairly tainted by their own experiences.

[Esection]

in all seriousness, ibanking could be taught to monkeys. it doesnt take much intelligence. all is required is that you suck the balls of your superiors and work yours off.

[whyzze]

In my limited research I found that they recruit in the fall. so you have plenty of time to prepare yourself.

I think getting the interview is probably the hardest part. Like Evan said, you need these people to like you. They are going to train you to do your job so what do they care if you memorized your textbooks.

Today i went to a job interview at John Hancock, I didn't really want the job, I mostly went to brush up on my interview skills since it was nearby. of course they woudldn't hire me due to citizenship issues. But after talking to the guy about his Alaskan cruise he basically offered to be one of my references.

I walk into an interview not with the attitude of why should they hire me. But why should they not hire me. I take nearly any opportunity to make them talk about themselves because thats what people love to do. This is assuming you know all the answers to the dumb questions they are going to ask you.

[Daddy Hoya]

Investment banking recruiters are looking for you to excel in something. They get plenty of applicants from kids who are 4.0's at Ivy League, but turn them down because they are a bunch of egg-heads. They would rather have a good student that excels in something special. I'm a 3.4 student at a top-25 school with a business major, and i just turned down an i-banking offer from merrill. the only reason i got the offer was because i have a very impressive resume and i sell myself very well at interviews.
Make them remember you...

[minnesotasam]

[ QUOTE ]
They get plenty of applicants from kids who are 4.0's at Ivy League, but turn them down because they are a bunch of egg-heads. They would rather have a good student that excels in something special. I'm a 3.4 student at a top-25 school with a business major, and i just turned down an i-banking offer from merrill. the only reason i got the offer was because i have a very impressive resume and i sell myself very well at interviews.
Make them remember you...

[/ QUOTE ]
Thinly veiled brag post? Meh.
Also, lol @ the part in bold. This is so far from the truth its not even funny.

[edtost]

you'd be surprised how many 4.0 ivy kids they actually DO turn down. once you get an interview, no one really cares about your resume, its all what you know and how personable you are.

[Daddy Hoya]

And I give you a quote from my last month’s interview with Goldman:

“What people don’t understand is that just because you have a 4 point from an Ivy doesn’t guarantee you’ll even get an interview. We turn those kids away all the time. Why? Because most of the time they are ‘eggheads’ whose transcripts look amazing, but other than that, the only thing they excel at besides going to class is video games. It’s just frustrating interviewing those kids. How are you supposed to interact with a client when the only thing you can talk about is derivatives and how many monsters you killed in Halo last night on your f***ing Xbox 360? Those kids just don’t make it here.”

You can dispute that argument, but he wasn’t the first person that I’ve heard that from…

[minnesotasam]

You just said that they don't get interviews, but that interviewing them is frustrating.. hmm.

Maybe its different at other Ivy's, but here a 4.0 is a really, really tough thing to do. My friends going into I-banking next year with a 4.0 are working at Blackstone in Restructuring (2), Morgan Stanley (1), and Lehman Bros in Banking (1).

They really didn't have any trouble. Maybe its different here (Penn) because of Wharton, but the kids with the 4.0s dont have issues.