Ah, yes, so after deep and thoughtful consideration you’ve decided you want to spend the next few years of your life as an investment banker. Although in some countries I might be legally obligated to stop you, I won’t. In fact I’ll show you how, in three simple steps:

1. Get the attention of recruiters and get your foot in the door.
2. Make an investment banking resume that stands out and get an interview.
3. Nail your superday interviews and land the offer.

Your Foot In The Door

“I opened the doors for you… showed you how the system works… the value of information… how to *get it*! Fulham oil, Brant resources, geodynamics and this is how you pay me back you COCKROACH!”

-Gordon Gekko, “Wall Street” (1987)

If only everyone applying for finance jobs had Gordon Gekko to open the doors for them. But most of us don’t, which is why we need a strategy for getting a foot in the door ourselves.

The strategy you use depends greatly on your background. And there are basically three types of relevant backgrounds:

1. You are still in college and are just starting your senior year. Or you’re even younger.
2. You have been out of college working for over a year but have not yet entered business school and have no plans to do so in the near future.
3. You have been out in the real world for several years or more now and going to business school is a real option. Or perhaps you’ve already been.

If you’re not from one of these backgrounds (e.g. you are already a senior and it is past the fall recruiting season), it’s best to put aside dreams of banking for now because it will be very difficult to get in. I’m just being realistic and telling you upfront what most would not.

If you’re still in college, your best bet by far is on-campus recruiting for investment banking internships or full-time positions. Apply to every single position for any type of banking job available and make sure your resume is good enough to get selected (see next section). Have friends in i-banking? Contact all of them and forward your resume. But at this point you’re more likely to get in via recruiting since most of your friends are still in school.

If you’re out of school and want to transition over from another job, you’ll have to depend on recruiters and networking to break in. You should use your school’s alumni network, contact anyone and everyone you know in the finance industry and also talk to headhunters at finance-focused recruiting firms such as Glocap. When talking to all these people, it’s especially important to get your story straight because their #1 question will be why you want to switch in now. Your story is a 3-5 minute pitch on your background from college to now and why you’ve realized your calling in life is investment banking, despite not doing it initially.

If you’ve been out of school for a long time (more than 3 years let’s say), your best bet is going to business school to transition in. The longer you’ve been out the harder it will be to claim that you really wanted to do i-banking all along - if that were really the case, why are you just now trying to switch in? Going to business school lets you position yourself as being the expert in some niche (technology, marketing, publishing, media, etc.) related to your previous life experience and then say you want to move up and learn about “the business” of said niche. While I think this logic is questionable, recruiters eat it up.

What if you don’t match one of these backgrounds? Give up right now and stop dreaming. Just kidding. It’s still possible to become an investment banker but the process will be more roundabout.

Landing The Interview

Once you have a recruiter willing to speak with you or someone on the inside who knows you, you need a solid resume to stand out and actually land an interview.

The investment banking resume serves one purpose: to catch someone’s attention for at least 2 seconds and get them to say “yes” to interviewing you. Don’t get emotionally attached here or spend days trying to improve it, because all the wording changes you make are useless: no one at an investment bank will spend more than 2 seconds on your resume (unless you are a hot girl and attach a picture, I mentioned banks were male dominated and chauvinistic, right?).

When we reviewed resumes of people we would look for 3 things: 1) previous finance experience 2) previous industry experience (we were in an industry group) and 3) something interesting. If you had at least 1 of those we would probably not toss the resume away immediately. When I say “previous finance experience” this is a pretty broad category - something like accounting or consulting would also qualify, and sales might even work as well. Basically we just want to see that you haven’t just been a traveling bard for the past 5 years, because you probably won’t like sitting in a cubicle.

You should spin everything on your resume to make it sound more business-like/finance-like/related to banking. And if you have absolutely no work experience that can be spun into this, I recommend coming up with hobbies related to investing or stocks and then positioning your work experience as the “interesting” or “industry-expertise” part of your package.

How To Bankify Your Resume

“I’ve been getting a lot of tips on how to write it, mostly from my staff. They really seem to be up on this stuff. They tell me I have to use the active voice for the resume. You know, things like “Commanded U.S. Armed Forces,” “Ordered air strikes,” “Served three terms as President.” Everybody embellishes a little.”

-President Bill Clinton, White House Correspondents Dinner, April 29, 2000

And that’s exactly what you should do: embellish a little. You want to shape your resume to emphasize working with financials and numbers and leading vs. following. Here are a few examples of resume makeovers:

Industry Background

-Software Development Intern, Cell Phone Company

Developed cell phone applications for collecting demographic and user/revenue data in a team of 3 and investigated new web technologies. Presented findings to CEO.

This doesn’t exactly scream finance, now does it? In fact, it screams “nerd” to me. Let’s see if we can improve this….

-Technology Consultant, Cell Phone Company

-Recommended use of new web technologies and appropriate budget to CEO.

-Designed applications for analyzing demographic data and optimizing revenue per user for mobile software.

This second one is better for 3 main reasons:

1. The title. “Technology Consultant” sounds more related to finance and corporate jobs than “Software Development Intern,” which sounds more like a shorts-and-t-shirt type job. People scan resumes VERY quickly and often only look at the title for each job so it’s important to get this right.
2. It sounds like you had a higher-level position than just programming - “design” and “recommended use” imply this. These are also exactly what you’ll be doing in banking - designing presentations and recommending a course of action.
3. You dealt with money or financial matters. From this description someone could ask you how you sized up the market or thought about the budgeting process. While not directly related to banking, these are both more relevant than describing the design or implementation of a product.

Research Background

With a research job you need to show that you developed expertise in a particular niche and that this expertise also extends to understanding the economics/financial matters of a particular area. Here’s an actual example from a friend’s resume that I revised:

-Research Assistant, Cleantech Group
-Worked directly with Professor [x] to perform data collection and analysis of cleantech industries, including ethanol, solar cell, module and wafer manufacturers.

Ok, so he learned a lot about… solar cells. I’m not led to think that he would be a great investment banker from this. I gave it the following makeover:

-Research Assistant, Cleantech Strategy Group
-Gathered data on the ethanol industry in the US and analyzed performance of specific ethanol companies and the industry as a whole. Specific characteristics examined include firm management, history, financial performance and value of IP and technology assets.

-Performed data collection on solar cell manufacturing companies and analyzed financial performance and production methodologies.

-Tracked individual companies and determined which to focus research on based on financial metrics and qualitative analysis of fundamentals.

In this example you might argue that I made up stuff that my friend didn’t actually do and greatly embellished the truth. Guess what? With something like this you have to, and it doesn’t really matter.

Bending The Truth: Why It’s Ok

Bending the truth in this situation is acceptable because your interviewers won’t expect you to know the answers to advanced financial questions. At most with this type of entry they might ask you what metrics you looked at, what the typical range was, and to explain a bit about the financial workings of a solar company.

You could research this for an hour and come up with acceptable answers. The other reason why bending the truth is ok is that your interviewers are highly unlikely to know more than you in this situation. Unless you’re applying to a CleanTech group (of which there are very few so far on Wall Street), this is a risk-less gamble. Besides, what I wrote above sounds a lot better than the vague “data collection and analysis.”

If Bill Clinton can serve 3 terms as President, so can you.

Hope For The Best

Once you have created the perfect investment banking resume, you’re ready to submit it to everyone you’ve been talking to and all the recruiters you know. Spread your net WIDE especially if you do not have previous banking experience. These applications are very random and there is no downside to applying to as many places as possible.

One thing I didn’t mention in these resume tips is what to do with previous, actual finance experience. I think this should be pretty obvious, but basically you want to discuss each deal or project you worked on in as much detail as possible and shorten everything else on your resume to make room for this previous experience. Nothing else really matters if you have a previous investment banking internship, for example, so leave it on but abbreviate greatly.

For more on resumes for those who have previous finance experience, see my guide to private equity resumes.

Also if you really need resume help, check out my investment banking resume review service.

Landing The Offer

“And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that’s it, I’m done. “

-Jim Young, “Boiler Room” (2000)

So what do you need to close? I’m not going to give a complete list of questions to expect here because other sites already have plenty of those. What it comes down to is proving you:

• Burn The Midnight Oil
• Don’t Shake The Jello
• Want To Be Gordon Gekko

Can you do these 3, or if not at least pretend you can? If so, you will be able to nail your superday interviews.

Burn The Midnight Oil

“Alright, I’ll do it. But do me one last favor, will you. Can you give me two hours? That’s all I ask man, just two hours to sleep before tomorrow. I suspect it’s going to be a very difficult day.”

-Raoul Duke, “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” (1998)

No, you’re not going to get those 2 hours of sleep, and especially not if you ask for them like that. You must convince your interviewers that not only do you not need any sleep at all, but that you would never ask for any either.

More than just claiming you “work really hard” you need very specific stories here. When I was interviewing for these jobs in my senior year of college I discussed my experience working at a big company and how I regularly put in 100 hours a week and lived at the office toward the end of my internship there. We were under a massive time crunch to get projects up and running by the end of the summer, so we had to sacrifice a few things. Sleep, hygiene and social lives. The exact sacrifices you make in banking (ok, you probably shouldn’t mention the hygiene one).

What are some good stories to show how much you worked?

• Startups or starting your own company: what could possibly be more work? Not even banking.
• Taking leadership of a large project that takes several months to complete: carnivals, sports events, international science fairs, mud wrestling matches, it could be anything as long as you can articulate how much you worked and how you always felt like you were dying.
• Working 2-3 jobs at once and having to multi-task repeatedly. This lets you hit the multi-tasking theme and the working a lot theme.

If you don’t have a story I recommend that you make one up or exaggerate sufficiently to come up with one of the above. If the only times you worked really hard were during Finals Week or for a few days at a time, come up with something better.

Often times in banking you’ll be killing yourself for weeks at a time or more so come up with something that’s at least this long in duration. Besides, if you really never have gone for weeks on minimal sleep what makes you think you can do it now?

Don’t Shake The Jello

“To succeed as an analyst…. DON’T SCREW UP!”

-VP to my friend at bulge bracket training this past year

As a junior investment banker, your most important duty will be checking numbers and not making mistakes. You may think this is a waste of time but I’ve seen countless occasions where someone screws something up in front of the client and everyone ends up looking stupid. As with showing your interviewers that you can burn the midnight oil, you need specific stories here to really make an impact and stand out.

It would be ideal if you were an open heart surgeon or astronaut in a previous life. Unfortunately if you’re reading this right now you probably have neither of these experiences.

Assuming that I’m correct and neither of the above applies, the way to show your attention to detail is by emphasizing that whatever you did was used by real, paying customers or read/viewed by a lot of people. Having wide exposure implies that you had to get your stuff right. Which is again exactly what you need in banking.

An example of how to tell this kind of story:

“I ran a web site about getting into college and common questions that students and parents might have, from my sophomore year til now. It started off pretty slowly but after awhile we built up an audience of 1,000 readers a day. As editor, I spent hours checking all the material we had for the tiniest of mistakes and errors before making anything public. There’s nothing that damages your credibility as much as careless mistakes. Parents especially notice this. Early on I published an article with a few glaring mistakes and received a pile of email from readers pointing this out. From then on I made sure to triple-check everything, paste it into Word and print it out and re-check it multiple times and ask friends to look it over before posting anything. With such a wide readership I can’t afford to make mistakes and now I require all my writers to do this prior to me even reviewing their work.”

This is perfect because of the following:

1. Admits that you did make a big mistake once but learned from it and are now super-attentive to detail.
2. Shows that you are in a position where mistakes cannot afford to be made or your business suffers.
3. Adds in a touch of leadership theme near the end by mentioning in passing the others you worked with.

If you have nothing like this, make a list of every single organization you’ve been in and every single project you’ve worked on over the past 3-4 years. Bending the truth is ok; outright lying is not. Pick the one thing you’ve done that is most applicable. Add in some of my description from above as necessary.

If you want to work at top groups (e.g. the former UBS LA) this is critical. If you want those investment banking bonuses, you can’t shake the jello.

Want To Be Gordon Gekko

“I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

-Gordon Gekko, “Wall Street” (1987)

Yes, greed is good. Even if you’re not quite Mr. Gekko himself, you should be able to convince me that you’re actually interested in finance. This sounds elementary but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do this. You will be asked about industries, companies and markets you’re interested in. Here’s an example dialogue to show the points you need to emphasize.

Interviewer: “Tell me about an industry or market you’re interested in.”

You: “I really enjoy following the alternative energy industry because it is up-and-coming and no one really knows how things will play out yet. Within the industry, there has been a lot of activity lately in the solar cell manufacturer sector, driven by technological breakthroughs that make solar cells more cost-effective as well as favorable government subsidies in Germany and Japan and major budget commitments by the Chinese government.”

Interviewer: “So were the any alternative energy companies you personally invested in? There’s been a lot of IPO activity lately, right?”

You: “Yes, there have been a lot of IPOs lately… but I think most of them were overvalued and riding on hype alone. After looking at the landscape, I personally invested in [xx solar company] a year ago. I looked at their financial performance compared to the competition and despite growing at 50% year over year, on par with others, and having 10% profit margins, also on par with the industry as a whole, they were trading at a discount to their competitors. Their P/E was only 30x rather than the 40-50X that others had and their EBITDA multiples were 30% lower than their competitors as well. It seemed like a bargain.”

Interviewer: “Interesting… but there must have been a reason why they were valued less highly than the competition.”

You: “I did some research into that… the main reason was that they came in below earnings expectations in the quarter just before I invested, and announced expansion plans for new facilities at the same time. Investors balked and questioned why they were spending more on CapEx and product development when their margins were falling.”

Interviewer: “A valid question. So why did you not see this as a serious weakness?”

You: “I did some research of my own on growth vs. profitability for solar cell manufacturers, and I found a much stronger correlation between annual stock returns and growth compared to returns and profitability. It seemed investors were focusing on short-term results instead of thinking long-term and looking at other companies in the industry. It is a nascent, high-growth industry so you’d expect growth to matter more than cost savings.”

There. Now unlike Gordon Gekko, you’re not using insider information to boost your gains. And you’re probably not making millions a day on your investments.

I’m not saying this is a perfect response, but it does a few things correctly. For one, it shows you’ve put some thought into this stock pick and can explain in simple terms the qualitative and quantitative reasons for investing. Candidates often give weak responses to this sort of question, saying they liked the management team or product or something else. That’s nice but you have to mention something about the financial metrics and how it compares to the competition as well. This is a finance job after all.

One thing to note: don’t mention anything about wanting those high investment banking salaries. Yes, wanting money is good but be sure to frame it correctly and don’t be so direct. Plus, your investment banking analyst salary won’t even be that great on a per-hour basis.

But What About The Finance Questions?

Don’t worry about them. Well, to be more specific, if you have had a finance-related position before you should worry about them and you should know your stuff. But if you have no experience these will not play a huge factor. Besides, there are plenty of other resources on banking interview questions. We focus on how to sell yourself rather than memorizing specific questions.

Recommended Resources:

• Investment Banking Resume Review Service
• (More coming soon)

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