Weekly Reader Q&A: Hedging Your Bear Stearns Summer Offer, Who Really Reads Resumes And The Value Of A Master’s Degree
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.
What Should I Do With My Bear Stearns Investment Banking Offer?
Update: Ok, looks like JPM is planning to cut half of Bear Stearns’ 14,000 full-time employees… I think it’s time to assume the worst and look into other options as I recommend below. True, no one knows what exactly will happen but with that many job cuts planned I don’t think new jobs are particularly safe.
With the news on Friday of Bear Stearns’ impending collapse and Sunday’s news of its $2 per share acquisition by JPMorgan, as well as the rumored impending collapses of several other banks (Lehman and Merrill seem to rank highly on those lists), summer interns who have received offers from Bear are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
This Deal Journal article sums up pretty well the predicament that senior bankers from Bear Stearns are in.
But what about those who haven’t even started working there yet? What is going to happen to their offers? Are they still going to have jobs? Will they get offers at JPMorgan? What about full-time hires?
Unfortunately, no one really knows the answers to any of these questions. The best we can do is speculate and make educated guesses.
How To Dominate Your Investment Banking Internship
Nye: Learn everything you can, then get the hell out of there before it’s too late.
Ellen: How exactly will I know when that is?
Nye: Ah. That’s for another walk.”
You get an investment banking internship for 2 reasons:
- To learn the job and absorb everything you can.
- To land a full-time offer.
Keep these 2 points in mind, and you’ll pass with flying colors.
Fail to remember them, and your internship will resemble the Hindenburg.
