For those lucky enough to go to “target” schools (e.g. the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, and roughly the rest of the top 20 or so schools in the country), breaking into investment banking is easy.
Well, maybe not easy. But getting investment banking interviews is relatively easy.
You go to the career website, check a few boxes, upload your resume, and wait to hear back on which banks have selected you for interviews.
If you don’t go to one of these schools, though, or are trying to get into investment banking from a different industry, the process is not so simple.
If recruiters don’t reach out to you and solicit resumes, you have to be proactive; reach out to them, and find any way in you can.
You have to network.
Networking With Friends And Acquaintances
Your best starting point for getting investment banking interviews are your friends and acquaintances already in the industry. If you went to a 4-year University in the US, chances are you know at least a few people in the financial services industry.
A long time ago it was difficult to stay in touch with everyone over the years, but today social networks like Classmates.com (and of course Facebook) make it easy to re-connect with old friends and see what everyone is doing career-wise.
If you’ve been out in the real world for awhile, chances are you’ve met at least a few people in financial services. If you work in consulting, business development, or anything even remotely related to banking, this is definitely the case.
Also note that you don’t necessarily need to know someone specifically in investment banking - it’s fine to know people at hedge funds or in private equity, and you may actually be more likely to have connections in those if you’ve been out of school for awhile.
Anyone in financial services should be able to ask around and see if there are any open positions in the field.
Who knows? You might even end up interviewing for traditional “exit opportunity” jobs rather than investment banking jobs.
Going Through Friends Of Friends
If you don’t know anyone in the field directly, I would make a list of all your friends and acquaintances and figure out who is most likely to know someone in the field. Fields like technology, consulting, and anything “business-related” are more likely to have people with connections in finance vs. non-profits, medicine, the arts, etc.
Yes, I realize that is a generalization and may not always be true, but finding a job is a sales process.
You’re selling yourself.
When you sell, you have to start with high-probability leads, and those in business-related fields generate higher-probability leads than others.
Networking With Alumni
Once you’ve exhausted your supply of friends and acquaintances in finance, or those likely to know someone in finance, it’s time to move on to your alumni network.
Sometimes I get emails from readers saying, “But no one from my school does finance!”
My reply is always the same: “Are you sure? You’ve checked on every single person from your school, what they’re doing, and whether or not they might know someone in the financial services industry?”
Even if you did not go to a well-known University, it’s likely that at least a few alumni are in finance, if not investment banking specifically.
Go through your alma mater’s career center, and get a list of alumni (recent is better, but older alumni have the advantage of being more senior and thus more able to actually get you a job) in finance.
Email them to introduce yourself, explain that you’re interested in moving into the field, and would appreciate a chance to speak with them about their experiences.
Don’t expect to hear back from many of them. This is something you have to get used to when breaking into investment banking - expect a good amount of failure on your way to success.
Why try this if most alumni won’t even reply to you?
Because all it takes is one.
All you need is one alumni to pass on your information and get you interviews, and that could result in a job.
What To Do With Absolutely No Connections
Sometimes I get emails asking, “My school has no alumni in the field and I have no friends in the field (or no friends at all). How can I get in?”
Well, if you have no friends that is a problem and could be indicative of larger issues outside of getting investment banking jobs (I’m sure all my readers do have friends though :)).
If you hit dead ends on both of my recommended tactics above, you’ll have to cold-call investment banks directly and try to get in like that. I wouldn’t even bother with email or the Internet as most banks discard anything received through their websites.
This method is unlikely to have a high success rate, but it’s all you can really do if you’ve hit dead ends everywhere else.
The Banks To Focus On
With cold-calling in particular, I would not even bother with a single bulge bracket bank. You need to focus on boutiques and middle-market banks, as they are far more likely to take someone from a non-standard background or someone from another industry.
Yes, I’m sure there’s the odd person out there who got into Goldman Sachs by calling them repeatedly, but finding a job via networking is a sales process. If you were a salesman, would you focus on customers with a 1% probability of buying or customers with a 20% probability of buying?
For alumni, friends, and acquaintances you pretty much have to focus on the banks and firms that they work at, regardless of whether they are bulge brackets or boutiques.
Again, you’ll have a much higher success rate at smaller firms, so if given the option you should focus on those.
Why Headhunters Are Probably Useless For You
Sometimes people ask me if headhunters are a good way to break into investment banking or financial services.
The answer is almost always, “no.”
Headhunters get paid by placing people in jobs. Just like Ari Gold, headhunters are salespeople who only get paid if they successfully “sell” potential employees to firms.
So they have no choice but to focus on those who are most likely to get jobs.
There are plenty of people already in the industry looking to switch firms and plenty of investment banking analysts from bulge brackets trying to get into private equity, so headhunters focus on those candidates over someone from the outside trying to break in.
Sure, contact headhunters if you like, but don’t expect much in the way of results.
What To Send Once You’ve Made Contact
Once you’ve made contact with any of these groups via networking or cold-calling, they will generally ask for a resume. I don’t think this even needs to be said, but make sure your investment banking resume is as good as possible so you get their attention and so they take you seriously.
When you send it, write a brief (no more than a paragraph long) email introducing yourself, giving your background and stating why you’re interested in investment banking and their firm specifically.
I’m not going to give a sample paragraph here because I don’t want everyone to start using the same paragraph in their introductory emails. 
Just try to make this email short, courteous and to the point. Don’t write a page explaining your life-long desire to be an investment banker, but also don’t write an email with 1 sentence reading, “Do you have jobs, my resume is attached.”
For more on the proper resume, you can refer to a few previous articles on writing investment banking resumes, how investment bankers read resumes, and if you’re really in a pinch you can even use the resume review service.
The Interview Process
Typically the interview process is not tremendously different for those from non-target schools vs. those who go to targets and do on-campus recruiting.
Both processes will usually start with a single initial “screening” interview where the bankers interviewing you decide whether or not you should move onto the next round and meet more people at the firm.
The difference is that for non-target schools and for people outside the industry, the investment banking interview process will be more of an extended affair and your initial interview may be a phone screen.
Instead of one superday interview, you might have multiple days of interviews with different bankers. And you might end up meeting more bankers and doing more interviews than you would in a normal superday.
You will need a much better story about why you really want to do investment banking. You’re more likely to be tested on accounting and finance concepts to see just how motivated you are and how much you learned independently.
For more on investment banking interviews, refer to the superday interview guide, our guide to closing investment banking offers, and our guide to how investment bankers decide who gets offers.
Anything Else?
There you have it, my guide to networking your way into investment banking. I’ll have more to say on some of these topics in the future, but for now email me with any questions.
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Tags: alumni network, boutique investment banks, changing careers, finance industry, investment banking, investment banking analyst, investment banking interviews, investment banking jobs, investment banking resume, middle-market, Private Equity, superday interviews, understanding investment banking
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