b*****o
发帖数: 6080 | 1 How 300 Emails Led to a Summer Job on Wall Street
As recruiters target elite universities, students at less-selective schools
put in extra legwork
Members of Rutgers Business School’s student finance club in New Jersey. ‘
We are actively searching for firms,’ said Jason Seo, co-president of the
group, second from the right. ENLARGE
Members of Rutgers Business School’s student finance club in New Jersey. ‘
We are actively searching for firms,’ said Jason Seo, co-president of the
group, second from the right. PHOTO: DAVID LAU FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By LINDSAY GELLMAN
这篇的link我以前贴过，大家看看原文。犹太人也是借着藤校占领商法医这类中产偏上
的职业，统治美国的。
April 1, 2015 7:52 p.m. ET
37 COMMENTS
To land a summer job on Wall Street this year, Fairfield University junior
Matthew Edgar sent 300 emails, made dozens of phone calls and several
networking trips to New York banks from the Connecticut campus.
Darwin Li had a more direct route: The Princeton University junior applied
online for positions and attended campus information sessions where company
recruiters walked him through the application process and the firm’s
culture.
A growing number of employers say a degree from a prestigious college counts
less than it once did. But among elite finance and management-consulting
firms—which offer some of the highest starting salaries for new graduates—
an alma mater still matters. That puts students from less-selective schools
at a disadvantage, career-services officers and students say.
“We teach our students that they’re going to have to compete,” said
Eugene Gentile, director of the office of career management at Rutgers
Business School. “Many of our students are not already moneyed. They’re
often first-generation college students. When they get out there in these
firms, they compete with the best of them.”
Competition is intense for summer analyst positions at Wall Street firms and
management-consulting firms, the surest way to land a full-time role after
graduation. For instance, fewer than 2% of applicants to Goldman Sachs Group
Inc.’s summer investment-banking programs are accepted.
‘I treated every phone call like an interview.’
—Sameer Saifi, a senior at the University of Texas, Austin
The odds can be even longer for students at places like Fairfield, Rutgers
and Northeastern University, which are usually considered “nontarget”
schools by recruiters. For those students, getting a foot in the door at a
prominent Wall Street firm means sending hundreds of emails and cold-calling
a string of bankers in hopes of landing a brief phone interview and a
recommendation.
Wall Street target-school lists vary, but they tend to include Ivy League
schools and a handful of other elite institutions, such as Stanford
University, because that’s where they find top students, recruiters said.
At target schools, it can seem as though banks and consulting firms are the
ones in hot pursuit during fall recruiting season. Students submit
applications for summer-analyst roles, which are then funneled directly to
recruiters who visit campus several times throughout the fall semester for
information sessions and informal coffees.
By the time a bank invites applicants to a first-round interview, “we’ve
probably met you three or four times” on a target-school campus, said one
big bank recruiter.
Classmates have to do little outside work aside from just showing up, said
Mr. Li, the 20-year-old Princeton student, who recently accepted a summer-
analyst offer at Credit Suisse Group AG. “The industry is very connection-
based,” he said.
Rutgers senior Jason Seo, co-president of Little Investment Bankers of
Rutgers (LIBOR), the school’s finance club, said companies “are actively
searching for kids” at target schools, while “we are actively searching
for firms.”
Recruiters and alumni employees from consulting firms like McKinsey & Co.
visit target campuses several times a semester, hosting informational events
and getting to know students.
Bank and consulting firm recruiters say that all applicants for summer
positions who make it into the pool of candidates for consideration are
evaluated equally.
For students at nontarget schools, the trick is finding a way into that pool
. Without recruiters on campus, they must initiate a blitz of emails, calls
and messages through networking sites like LinkedIn to find a banker or
consultant willing to flag their application to recruiters.
“I treated every phone call like an interview,” Sameer Saifi, a 22-year-
old senior at the University of Texas at Austin, said of his two dozen calls
to bankers. Those calls were followed by 200 emails, he said. Houston banks
recruit heavily at the school, which is on some big banks’ target lists,
but recruiters for New York-based investment-banking positions rarely visit,
he added.
Mr. Saifi got a foothold at Bank of America Corp., where bankers he spoke
with agreed to give his application a nod, landing him a first-round
interview in New York, and a summer-analyst stint at the bank last year.
After graduation, he’ll begin work with Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, he
said.
Mr. Edgar, the 20-year-old Fairfield junior, was determined not to end up in
a back-office role. He said he contacted a Fairfield alumnus at Morgan
Stanley who put him in touch with colleagues for informational chats. He
followed up with a visit to the firm’s New York headquarters, where he
asked the Fairfield graduate to introduce him to other bankers.
In addition, Mr. Edgar said he spent upward of five hours a week teaching
himself investment-banking concepts, such as valuation techniques, that
would come up in interviews—and that competing applicants from higher-tier
schools likely knew already.
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other firms dedicate recruiters specifically for
applicants from nontarget schools who read applications but don’t
typically visit campuses. But the banks say they are doing more to cast a
wider net.
Goldman Sachs said its list contains more than 25 schools, including some
that others consider nontargets, like Rutgers ( Harvey Schwartz, the firm’s
finance chief, is an alumnus). Bank of America Merrill Lynch said last year
it rolled out Web-based info sessions to reach a wider array of potential
candidates at schools it isn’t able to physically visit. Citigroup Inc.
said 28% of its incoming summer investment-banking analysts hail from
schools it didn’t visit. And J.P. Morgan said a significant portion of each
summer analyst class is made up of candidates from nontarget schools.
Mr. Edgar’s Morgan Stanley contacts came through, and he landed a summer
analyst spot this year. The extra legwork tested, and ultimately confirmed,
his interest in investment banking, he said. “I know this is exactly what I
want to do with my life.”
Write to Lindsay Gellman at [email protected]
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