How to Get an Investment Banking Job

You need to do 3 things right to get into investment banking: win access to recruiters, get their attention with your CV / resume, and ace your interviews. If you’ve been failing so far, you’re doing one of these wrong.

Let’s address “access” first. You need to begin a dialog with banks by going to business school or college campus presentations, speaking with headhunters, or going through school alumni or others you know professionally.

Unless you’re going to a top school, you’re going to have a tough time winning access – because banks only target around 10-20 top schools for most of their recruiting efforts, nearly ignoring everyone else.

If you’re not at one of these schools, you’ll have to cold-call, network with alumni, and go through informational interviews until you break into the industry – it’s not an easy ride.

To start doing this, begin by contacting alumni and getting referrals from friends and searching on social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook. Make a list of all local firms in your region and call every single one of them.

Once you have access and people listening to you, you’ll need a top-notch resume to stand out and start getting interviews.

Keep your resume short and to the point – 1 page or less is appropriate in 90% of cases. Focus on the 2 or 3 experiences that “sell” you best, whether those are internships, leadership activities, or your most recent jobs for more experienced candidates.

Focus as much as possible on results and specificity, using numbers wherever it’s possible to do so – and try to structure your experience in terms of specific transactions, clients, or projects rather than just having generic summary sentences.

With a solid resume in place, next you need to hone your interview skills. The most important part of any interview is your “story” – what you say when they ask you to tell them about yourself, so lock down why you want to be an investment banker and why now is the perfect time to do it for you.

Go in chronological order, and connect your experiences to explain why you need to be in investment banker more than anyone else they talk to that day – other questions are also relevant, but 90% of the interview hinges on your story.

You need to have a good grasp of technical questions on finance and accounting as well, but you can learn those by reading a book or an interview guide – spend the bulk of your time on your story.

That’s a quick overview of how to break into investment banking – good luck!

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