Diversity Recruiting: Your Secret Weapon for Breaking Into Investment Banking?

“Can you tell me exactly what I have to do to get into finance?

There must be a combination of grades, certifications, internships, and activities that will guarantee me a spot at Goldman Sachs, right?

Give me the magic bullet solution for breaking in!”

Ah, another day, another email.

And if you don’t believe that questions like this come in all the time, just take a look at some of the articles here that have hundreds of comments asking for similar answers.

Sometimes I’m tempted to say, “Yes, just pass all 4 levels of the CFA and you are guaranteed to become an investment banker,” but I can’t always bring myself to have that much fun.

The truth is that there isn’t a magic bullet for getting into the industry.

Or is there?

Diversity recruiting may just be the best, most “secretive” way to get into the industry that you’ve been ignoring up until now.

So read on to learn how you can use it, what to do if you’re not “diverse,” and just how effective it was for a reader who won a bulge bracket internship offer and who’s sharing her story here.

The Complete Guide to Cold Calling Your Way Into Investment Banking

Internship recruiting is over.

And you made a valiant effort, securing 10 interviews with everyone from boutiques to bulge bracket banks – but you didn’t land the offer.

And now you only have a few months before your non-existent summer internship begins.

With recruiting finished, your last, best chance of breaking in is to cold call your way into Wall Street.

But will that even work?

Should you bother going all-out and calling hundreds of firms?

And if you do take the leap, how do you cold call your way in successfully without getting slapped with a restraining order for being too aggressive?

How to Network Like a Ninja in London and Break Into Finance with Low Grades and a Non-Target School on Your CV

“You’ve written so much about networking, but it doesn’t work outside the US. No one in my country responds to cold calls or emails – what do I do?”

It’s one of the most common objections I get to the networking advice on M&I.

There are dozens of interviews disproving the old complaint that everything here is targeted at Ivy League grads with high grades – so let’s turn our attention to showing that networking does, in fact, “work” in other countries.

In this interview with a UK reader, you’ll learn:

• How he went from low A-levels and a non-target university to over 1,000 finance contacts in the UK and a top Master’s program there
• How he used a non-finance degree to boost his chances of breaking into banking
• Whether or not traditional networking “works” in the UK and how it’s different from the US
• What it’s like to work at a combined M&A and asset management firm