After last week’s Bear Stearns debacle, it seems that readers took my advice and hedged their offers appropriately, shopping them around and focusing on boutiques in particular.

While this is a great strategy for reducing risk, it carries with it an additional challenge: how to decide on an uncertain offer vs. a certain but “lesser” offer.

Meanwhile, the usual questions on how investment bankers read resumes and whether advanced degrees are actually useful continue to come in.

Hedging Your Bear Stearns Summer Offer

“I got a summer internship offer with Bear Stearns during recruiting season this year. I was nervous about what would happen, so I started hedging my offer and talking to smaller firms and received a summer analyst offer with a regional bank.

Although the internship is unpaid, the office does have good dealflow and has a decent record of sending summer interns to bigger banks.

I still technically have an offer with Bear Stearns, so is there any way I can try to postpone a decision here and wait to see what happens with Bear? It’s not that I don’t want to work at the boutique, but all else being equal, I’d rather get paid a decent amount for the summer rather than earning nothing.”

Inquisitor:

First off, in general I wouldn’t be too concerned about the pay. You should be much more concerned over having an internship at all vs. not having one! Making $12K in one summer sounds nice but in the long run it’s not that much money, especially if you go into finance eventually. With internships you always want to be more focused on the experience rather than the pay.

It’s difficult to postpone your offer decision because they’ll know what you’re doing. So I don’t know how far you can push back the timing here.

It seems likely that at least some Bear Stearns offers will be honored, but I would lean toward going with the smaller bank and be assured of actually getting a banking summer internship rather than having it fall through.

Normally I tell people to avoid boutiques and smaller firms if possible, but it’s a bit different here because:

1. It’s just a summer internship, so it’s not as relevant for future opportunities as the bank where you’re a full-time analyst will be.
2. There is a chance that Bear summer offers will fall through (again, no one knows for sure) and it’s better to have an internship 100% rather than have the chance of losing one, especially at this late stage.

Who Really Reads Resumes?

“I understand that the people who read investment banking resumes are usually analysts who went to the school in question. However, are they usually recent graduates, or have been analysts for a couple years?

For example, if I send my resume in through on-campus-recruiting in Fall 2008, will it likely be reviewed by someone who graduated in 2008, or graduated in 2007 and been in the industry for at least a year?”

Inquisitor:

Analysts at all levels will review resumes - even back when I started a few years ago, I was reviewing resumes a couple months into the job and making interview decisions. Sometimes it’s actually 1st Year Analysts who do the bulk of resume reading since it’s a task that 2nd/3rd year Analysts tend not to want.

It may sound interesting to determine peoples’ fate and who gets interviews based on resumes, but it gets tiring when you have to read hundreds and only have 30 seconds to spend on each one. Reviewing resumes and helping people improve them is much more fun.

It may seem haphazard to allow recent hires to make interview decisions, but you don’t need a lot of deal experience to make interview decisions - you just need recruiting experience.

The Value Of A Master’s Degree

“I’m currently a non-business undergrad looking to get into trading. I graduate in one semester and have been trying to get a summer job at banks, but my best shot may have just imploded with Bear Stearns’ collapse. They probably have no time to worry about interviewing people at this point, even those who made it to final rounds.

If that happens and it falls through, I would be left with no internship and no other offers, giving me almost no shot of getting into finance.

Getting an MBA seems worthless post-graduation since only lower tier schools would even consider someone with no work experience. However, I was thinking a Master’s Degree in Finance or related major could serve as a segway into a finance career. I’m considering such a program at a well-known undergraduate business school currently - do you think this is my best option for getting into finance?”

Inquisitor:

As you said, it would definitely be a mistake to get an MBA without work experience first; it won’t help you get into finance at all if you go to a lower-tier school.

The Master’s program you mention will not give you a significant advantage; although it is at a good school, it’s not equivalent to an MBA.

The main advantage it would give you is time - you would have more time to find jobs because you could take advantage of the full-time recruiting cycle in the fall.

Before doing this, you should check on how many banks recruit there in the fall and how many people get jobs at banks via that program.

But if you don’t have an internship or full-time offer lined up currently, the Master’s program is probably your best option.

As the economy worsens and hiring slows down even more, I suspect more people will make this same decision and head back to school.

Like this post? Subscribe via RSS and start understanding investment banking.

Tags: Bear Stearns, investment banking, investment banking resume, investment banking summer internship, Master's Degree, MBA, Summer Analyst, understanding investment banking

Posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 12:51 pm.