Networking Your Way Into Investment Banking Jobs
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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?
Ask away.
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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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Because I had started hunting for a summer internship late in the game, all the roles of summer analysts had been taken so I had to resort co cold-calling. I was so nervous every time I picked up the phone (and still am whenever I have to do cold-calling) but I took the initiative to do so, and also set up informational interviews with contacts I obtained through networking. And with that I was able to get an internship with a mining company – not investment banking, but some similar experiences.
Having been in the situation of cold-calling, I would recommend to anyone who wants to try this, to remember when you call, don’t sound formulaic. Don’t rehearse your script over and over every time you call, rather make it personal and sound very interested in that particular firm and that particular VP (if that b**ch receptionist even let you through!) =D
I’ll do a helluvalot more networking to land a full-time job in September.
Great tips, Jane. Awesome that you managed to get that internship via cold-calling as well.
I would be applying to junior year internships next summer and so have some time but was wondering if I could get your thoughts on how should I follow through after the initial informational interview to “build a relationship”. Also wondering if the initial informational interview would differ in some way and the dress code for the informational interview(formal/business casual/casual?)
I answered this separately via email, but basically you have to ask for something very specific and ask to speak on the phone or in-person… dress code, I would just wear a dress shirt and dress pants but I don’t think you need a suit unless you’re meeting at their office. Most bankers don’t even wear suits on normal days.
I will have an informational interview with an alum via phone in a few days. Do you have any advice on this? How to break the ice for example? How to prepare for it? The alum is senior, 20 years older than me, and I don’t know if I could make it a casual conversation.
Look at all the recent Networking articles on this site and everything under “Networking” below for hours of video/audio on this topic. The short answer is be yourself, come across as an interesting person, and don’t prepare that much.
What about cultural differences? People from Asia aren’t that familiar with “Networking” and I even heard some employers find it as “ill-intentions”.
Any insights on how to network into Asia(Asian offices like jp, hk?)
Networking into Asia can be more difficult – I would suggest looking for people who are from the US / Europe originally and going through them, because they’ll be more likely to understand networking and help you as opposed to people who have never been exposed to it.
M&I:
The alum I talked to told me at the beginning of the week that she would try to push my application as far as possible this week ‘cuz she is gonna be abroad next week. It’s weekend now, and I haven’t heard back from her. Should I send her an email and ask how it’s been going or not? Would that border upon being annoying or pushy?
What is the appropriate approach, in your opinion? Thanks a bunch!
Yes I would follow-up and ask if you haven’t heard back in a week.
Brian,
A senior banker I have not met, but spoke with via email, asked me to send her my resume/cover; she offered w/o being provoked. Because of work/travel/personal reasons, I wasn’t able to send it until a week later. she mentioned she was busy w/ travel the 1st email, can I assume she hasn’t responded because of that, or did I screw up?
Can I follow up w/o bugging her? Any suggestions? Thanks!
Oh wait, I just noticed above someone asked a very similar question and you gave a response, thanks.
Any particular way of asking? I guess “Hi XXX, I’m following up to see if you had a chance to read my application or send to the recruiter?”
Tks!
That’s fine, keep it to 1-2 sentences at most
I did it!!! I FINALLY DID IT!!! After recruiting since my sophomore year for banking positions, having a shitty economy mess up my chances during FT recruiting, and having to start in another industry….I FINALLY DID IT!! Against all odds, I finally broke into to investment banking! And it is all because of NETWORKING, my best friend. Thanks M&I. I read this from the day it began and will continue to do so…keep up the good material.
Now comes the fun part…surviving…
Congrats!
Since summer analyst recruiting just wrapped up, is it appropriate to start/resume networking with alums at other companies (which you may pursue for full-time recruiting) ?
I guess it can be awkward because you haven’t even started working at the firm where you’re interning this summer. But if you wait till August (post-internship) to network, it may be a little too late for the purposes of full-time recruiting.
At the same time, there is an inherent risk. The alum you network with will likely ask where you’ll be working this summer. The street is very small. Every target school kid has friends at pretty much every bank. And if word gets back to your company that you’re networking at other places even before starting your internship, that could be disastrous in terms of your summer experience and full-time return offer chances.
Any advice about navigating this full-time networking/recruiting process? Basically there is a window of opportunity starting now (March-August) to improve full-time interview chances.
I would maybe wait until May-June so it doesn’t seem as odd. But you shouldn’t worry about it too much because everyone does it and it’s not really seen as odd… just say you already have something lined up for the summer, but also wanted to find out about other areas. They’ll obviously know what you’re doing, but as long as you’re not overly explicit in the beginning it’s fine.