Thursday, September 18, 2008

How to be Remembered

Around this time of year, the investment banks start coming on campus to give presentations and meet potential employees. One of my friends working at Citi told me about a recruiting trip he recently went on to a well-known school. I asked him if he met anyone interesting, and he said that he was actually really not impressed with the students at the school.

"I was asked some uber-generic questions all night long, and felt like nobody really wanted to know anything about me or my job, they just wanted to go through the motions of talking to the recruiter."

I actually remember the days of being at those recruiting socials and I definitely am guilty of asking some lame questions to recruiters. Luckily, I'm working this semester so I won't even be attending a single one of those events. But in order to try and help you all out a little, I wanted to make a few suggestions about these types of events.

First of all, try to think about things from the recruiter's point of view. You're going to a school where you may or may not have attended, but either way you probably don't know more than a handful of people. You've been working for the past 70 hours straight and know that the work is just piling up while you're talking to some kid about "work/life balance." In the end you will have to sit down with your team and talk about anyone that stood out in your mind, and you'll probably have to go through a mountain of resumes before it's all over. What you're really looking for is to meet somebody unique that you can tell really wants to do banking, and also that you would feel fine recommending for further interviews.

Now, when thinking of things like this, you can easily make a few goals for yourself. First of all, you want to be prepared so that there's no question in the mind of the recruiter whether you know your stuff or not. Second, you want to ask smart questions that don't sound like you got them out of the Vault Guide. The recruiter has probably been asked, "So tell me what kinds of deals you've been working on" more times than he/she would want to repeat. Third, you want to have a really great resume to hand the recruiter so that when they take a look as you're talking to them, they'll be impressed enough to listen.

Last October, I brought my resume to a recruiter from Credit Suisse. He was actually just standing there taking resumes and critiquing them, telling students, "Change this. Take this off. You have a few mistakes here or there. If you ever turn in a resume like this you won't get a job on Wall Street..." I was a little nervous but had spent significant time getting my resume prepared for that night. When he took a look at my resume, he scanned it over and said, "Now this is a resume that I like to see. It's perfect."

My resume wasn't actually that great, but I had just prepared it in a way that it would look good. The recruiter told me that very night that he would get me interviews for an internship, which he did. I ended up getting an offer from CS.

One hard thing for me was knowing what kind of questions to ask. I think more important than having a list of questions already written down that you want to ask is just being able to carry on an interesting conversation with somebody. Instead of asking them, "Why do you like Goldman?" you could say something like, "I know that Goldman has a very collaborative culture. What kind of experiences have you had working across divisions to get a deal done?"

The point is that when you ask a question, you show that you have done a little more homework than everybody else. Most firms like to tell the world about about all of their accomplishments, so go to their website and take a few notes about what makes this bank unique.

You might ask about what the bank's relative strengths are compared to its peers. For example, "When you, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and UBS come to a bake-off, what is it about Citi that will win the deal? What does Citi bring to the table that is unique?"

I don't think I need to make a list of questions you can ask, but just point out that if you just spend some time thinking a little before you go and talk, you can make a great impression.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you post the PDF file about how the three financial statements link together?

Interview Q&A extremely helpful, love to see more real live examples of questions asked in interviews!

Anonymous said...

You mentioned you went to NY for several times to meet with people work there. Could you write something about how you get information interviews, how to nail the informatin interviews and how and how often do you follow-up with them? Thanks!