Former JP Morgan Recruiting Captain REVEALS Investment Banking Analyst Recruiting Secrets!

back during my banking days i served as the jp morgan uc berkeley recruiting captain for two years and today i'll be sharing some insider recruiting secrets hopefully no one from jp morgan sees this anyway what's up everyone my name is ben i'm a former jp morgan investment banking analyst and welcome back to rare liquid the best channel for tech investing as a friendly reminder i'm gonna be doing my best to post three videos a week and on the weekends they're gonna be career related videos and on the weekdays they're gonna be related to stock investing and crypto investing alright so today's agenda looks like this first i'll be providing some info about my role as recruiting captain i'll then share an inside view of the process what bankers look for and lastly some uncommon recruiting tips also if you're interested in getting career or recruiting advice from me then i'm starting something called youtube memberships i'll leave a link to it in the description and in the comments down below i'm still working on the pricing and what exactly i'm going to offer but by the time this video posts all of the information will be there if you click the link what i do know though is that i'm going to be creating a separate discord just for rare liquid careers and this is something that's going to be for paid members only and totally separate from my patreon and investing discord that i have all right so first up let me briefly talk about my role as recruiting captain i worked at jp morgan from 2015 to 2018 and in my first year i was just a normal member of the recruiting team which really just meant helping review resumes doing some coffee chats and holding some first round interviews i really enjoyed helping out on the recruiting team so in my second year i became a co-captain of the jpmorgan uc berkeley recruiting team and then in my third year i became the sole captain as a recruiting captain i managed a team of five other analysts and we were really the core recruiting team we did have additional help from other uc berkeley alumni uh but we were really the main ones running all of uc berkeley slash j.p morgan recruiting for all of the offices across the united states the last thing i want to mention is that just because i was a recruiting captain doesn't mean that i was calling all the shots i was still coordinating with a lot of higher level uh vps and directors and they were also helping out with the process it's just that i was kind of the point guard or point person running the entire recruiting process one thing i want to add is that it's not like an amazing feat being a recruiting captain even though you're just an analyst and that's because most bankers just don't want additional work on their plates because they're so busy already i just personally happen to really enjoy helping out with the recruiting process and since i was involved a lot in my first year whenever uh hr reached out to me about recruiting stuff i just kept you know being in contact with them and i kind of just naturally became the captain during my time there okay so now you know about my role let me provide you with an inside look into the recruiting process for banking now a lot of things have changed in banking recruiting even since the time that i have left so i'm gonna be first starting off with how things used to be done when i was there because that's kind of just what i know best and then i'll explain a little bit more about how things have changed but one thing that probably has not changed is that most recruiting teams are structured based on school so at jpmorgan there was a recruiting team for uc berkeley one for usc stanford harvard and et cetera et etc okay so now going a little bit into how things used to be done let me first go into the entire process the first thing that happens is that usually we set up an info session on campus where we just invite a lot of the bankers whether they went to uc berkeley or not whoever from the office nearby was was just willing to attend they would just all come and talk to students about jpmorgan and investment banking we would have an application deadline for everyone to send in their resumes and we would also reach out to all of the major business organizations on campus at uc berkeley and they would send us their resume books as well so that's why it was also very important for as a student interested in banking at uc berkeley at least to be part of business organizations on campus usually we would get around 150 to 200 applications per cycle and what we would do is we literally just get into a room with about five or six of us the core recruiting team and we would just go through each resume and look at it for around 30 seconds and rate it from a scale of one through ten or one through five and after i'm looking at all of the resumes there usually would be kind of a natural cutoff point where we would find something like the top 40 resumes and those are the people we would invite to first round interviews or digital interviews we didn't have digital interviews back then so at least what we used to do is split up those 40 candidates amongst the different uc berkeley alumni that are at jpmorgan for first round interviews and we tried to have at least two to three touch points with each candidate that we kind of liked whether it was through an actual phone call interview or through a coffee chat each person would usually send me feedback via email and i would include it in a tracker that i had with the top 40 candidates and in that tracker i would have things like their name their gpa what we ranked their resume and we would have information about who talked to them and what kind of notes that the interviewer provided and naturally what would happen is that around 10 to 15 of the strongest candidates would just kind of rise to the top so after that first round interview process what we would then do is get in a room and discuss with the core recruiting team which five we wanted to send because at least back then we could only send five candidates out of the 150 to 200 to the san francisco super day and then for the new york super day we could also only send five so around 10 candidates for the two major offices in the us sfn new york out of the 150 to 200 applicants after that pretty much our work was done all the super day invitations would be sent out to the candidates and what that entails is for candidates to either go to the san francisco or new york office or whatever office that they're interviewing at and they would go through around five to six 30-minute interviews in a row usually with vps and above and the vps and directors who interviewed them they would be the ones making the final call as to who would be chosen uh to get the offer sorry i meant offers not just one offer usually if we sent around 10 candidates or so ideally we would want at least six to seven maybe eight get offers but usually it was closer to around five next up let me share a little bit about what i know about how things are being done now first of all in terms of the recruiting timeline process i've heard that a lot of banks are now recruiting for junior summer internships in sophomore winter which is just kind of crazy to me because back then when i was in college the juniors when i was a freshman were that were recruiting for banking were recruiting during their junior year winter the issue with recruiting sophomores during their winter is that if you think about it they only really had their freshman year to build any sort of experience and they maybe might have one summer internship during their freshman to sophomore year but besides that they don't really have that much and you also have to put in a lot of time for networking behavioral prep and technical prep and it's just really hard to do that not even two full years into college and so that's why back then when i was the recruiting captain uh there was a lot of kind of drama amongst the banks going on because everyone was starting to recruit around march or april and usually even though i mentioned earlier that recruiting happened junior year winter at least when i was actually the recruiting captain recruiting was starting to happen junior year in the fall and that's when pretty much all the banks were doing it and then suddenly some banks started to do it in the spring of sophomore year for candidates and then everyone just wanted to be ahead of each other and get the best candidates and so things just kept being pushed earlier and earlier i actually remember having some pretty intense discussions with hr trying to convince them basically that we needed to move faster with our recruiting timelines because so many banks were recruiting in april and may back in even in 2016 and we were finishing our recruiting process that year in september october and it bled a little bit into november as well which you know was just kind of bad for us because a lot of the top candidates were really gone by then what has also changed a lot is digital interviews also called higher views and this has replaced a lot of first round interviews for a lot of banks when i was at jpmorgan during my last recruiting cycle we did have digital interviews it was the first time we were really doing it and we also combined it with first round interview phone calls i don't know actually if a lot of banks are doing that now later on in the future i do plan to make another kind of like ha insider secrets of how the recruiting process for banking uh with more information that i gained from some of my banking friends that are still in banking and so later on i'll have some updated information about you know what the whole entire recruiting process is like but basically what you need to know is that digital interviews are just interviews where you're asked a few questions and you record on your laptop camera your answers to them and a lot of the bankers will just kind of review a ton of them so something like 10 to 20 in a row and just mark them up and send it back to the recruiting team next up let me discuss what we typically looked for in candidates now all of banking really boils down to three main things which is your resume networking and interview skills now when we go through the resume i would say the first thing that we look at is just the education section and the gpa and i would say that the gpa is probably around 40 weight of importance and there are three natural cutoff points at jpmorgan 3.3 was the cut off if your gpa was below that honestly we would just kind of not look at the resume at all unless it had just crazy amazing experience and even then it would be a little bit iffy 3.5 is the level where we say okay this is an acceptable gpa and a 3.7 or above typically anything above that we would say okay this person checks off the box for gpa now in terms of majors we did want to see something like business or econ but if you had something like math or cs all of that was also totally fine and if you did major in something harder but had a really low gpa sorry but it would just not it wouldn't really help you to have a low gpa and a hard major it was probably actually better if you had an easier major and a higher gpa the second thing we looked at is professional experience and we would probably weight this around 50 percent of importance what we typically looked for are either big brand names or also just some professional experience where you have worked in some kind of finance related role usually the best candidates had around two to three experiences of working in some kind of finance role either through a boutique investment bank or private equity firm or maybe a finance position at some kind of tech company in san francisco or something like that the reason professional experience is so important and besides kind of the obvious of just that you know previous work that you have done is a good indicator of what kind of work you'll be interested in the future um but the additional kind of layer of nuance is the is that as an investment banker you're going to be working 80 to 100 hours a week right so we want to be sure that we're hiring candidates who know that this is the kind of lifestyle that they're going to be signing up for and they know what they're getting themselves into because the last thing we want to do is hire someone who didn't understand what kind of lifestyle banking had and you know just quit after a few months the last thing we would look at is leadership and extracurriculars and those would be about 10 of importance and you know if you were a leader of a club or something like that or a sports team then it would be a plus but it wouldn't be kind of what overshadows everything else on the resume um so that's how we generally looked at that section of the resume now once you are selected for interviews after you pass this resume screen your resume doesn't tend to be that important like maybe a first impression in your super day when the director or vp is looking at your resume you know maybe it'll make a bit of a difference there but ultimately what ends up being more important after that initial resume screen are the next two things we're going to talk about which is networking and interview skills networking is super super important for banking because as i mentioned earlier you're going to be working 80 to 100 hours a week with these people right so i saw my co-workers back at jpmorgan more than i saw my family my friends my significant other at the time you know all of them combined all the time i spent with them each week i would spend more with my colleagues at jpmorgan so you want to be sure that you're working with people that you actually like and that's what really networking is all about so for example if i had a really bad coffee chat with someone or a phone call that was kind of weird or maybe the person just didn't seem that poised then i probably would just immediately say that this person probably doesn't deserve a first round interview so that's really kind of goes to show how important networking can be and on the flip side of that if i had a really really great conversation like i remember i had a super good coffee chat with one kid who we talked about a lot of things for around 45 minutes and i pushed him really hard to get a super day and i probably wouldn't have done that if i didn't meet this person and you know have this really good conversation with him so overall i'd say that generally for networking you know i hate that word of course like as everyone does because it sounds so forced but generally how you want to view networking as just you trying to get to know the other person that's why i always recommend asking almost zero questions about work if you can and really focusing a lot more on life like hobbies and trying to create a shared mutual sense of uh hobbies or interests that you both have um that's what i really focused on during when i was networking for jpmorgan and the last thing i would want to mention is that a really really underrated quality that i think most people recruiting for banking don't really expect that they should try to showcase somewhat is humility i think most of the time when people outside of the banking world think of bankers they think of you know type a people who are really aggressive clawing on top of each other to get to the top of the corporate ladder but at least for when you're an analyst you're going to be doing a lot of grunt work right so you're not going to be doing a lot of the really really cool stuff with clients or you know being on these huge calls negotiating deals or anything like that right what you're going to be doing is sometimes grabbing coffee or lunch for the team sometimes you're going to be just you know working on powerpoint presentations and models for days and nights on end right and we want to be able to work with bankers and analysts to have a positive attitude and don't think that you know they're above anyone else so that's why i just really wanted to highlight that humility is super super important it's not something you can easily show you can't just say like oh i'm i'm humble you know right uh it's just kind of like what you or how you come across and you know i guess that's something that i just wanted to make sure that if you are recruited for banking something that you're you're aware of the last thing i want to mention is interview skills and the first thing i want to talk about are behaviorals which are questions where we're just trying to really get to know you as a person so things like tell me about yourself or why jpmorgan or why investment banking and i would say that this would generally have around 10 of importance in first round interviews and later on in super days it might be a lot more important depending on who's interviewing you the reason that behaviorals may be more important in future round interviews usually in super days is because the people who are interviewing you in those later rounds are you directors or vps and it's not like they spend all their time looking at financial models and things like that they might not really remember all of these small detailed finance concepts and they instead probably want to really get to know you as a person and want to ask you more about how you made certain decisions in life and that's why behaviorals tend to be a little bit more important as you go on throughout the banking recruiting process and the other type of questions that you're asked are technical questions usually around things like accounting equity value enterprise value dcfs lbos and accretion dilution and i would say that at least in first round interviews this is around 90 importance the reason it's more important earlier on is just that in the earlier rounds we want to make sure that you know what you're getting yourself into and the best way to really vet that and you know feel confident that you do is if you really spent the time understanding the technical concepts now for digital interviews everyone is asked the same set of questions but if you're ever interviewing with a person either in person or through the phone then usually if your questions are getting harder and harder then that is probably actually a good sign because it means that you're getting all the easy ones correct sometimes there are interviewers who are just really really easy and they just only ask easy questions but generally speaking at least what we tried to do is start off with the easier core concepts and then go deeper and deeper into all of the concepts and the best candidates usually got at least 90 of the questions correct okay lastly let me give you some uncommon recruiting tips now some of these are things that maybe you have heard but in my opinion they're not as commonly shared so let's get started the first one is to try to get in semester jobs and internships if you can now i know as a student you're probably super super busy with extracurriculars and studying for school but especially with a lot of recruiting timelines being pushed earlier and earlier it will really help you stand out as a candidate if you're able to have in-semester internships because it kind of adds one more thing that probably other people don't have on their resumes the second thing is when you're networking or when you're just trying to get to know people at banks try to first reach out to alumni at your school because those are the ones who are really going to be willing to talk to you when i was in banking i would always constantly get requests from students who just wanted to chat with me and learn more about banking and jp morgan and things like that and honestly i just didn't have the time to respond to all of them and the only ones i really would respond to are people who i either actually knew through a shared mutual connection or if they actually went to uc berkeley because then you know i had some kind of kind of relationship to them i guess and it would also just make sense because i guess for me i was a recruiting captain and so eventually i might come across that candidate and so basically what i'm trying to say is reach out to people from your school in addition to that a bonus plus is if you can somehow figure out who's on the recruiting team and sometimes you might be able to figure this out if you go to like an info session and someone kind of like stands out and clearly is the recruiting coordinator or something like that for each school there is a little bit more of a benefit if you're able to talk with someone who is on the recruiting team versus someone who is just an alumni at the school and might be doing a coffee chat with you or interviewing with you um just to give you a little bit more insight you know if i personally talked to someone or if someone on the core recruiting team really really likes someone then you know when we were having our discussions especially for pushing students to super day interviews you know during that conversation if we had talked to an individual person who you know we're thinking of moving on to the next round then those people would have a much higher chance of moving on than others who maybe i or others on the record recruiting team have not personally talked to the third suggestion is to try to have as many competing offers as you can and this is just important because not only does it make you a more attractive candidate so that you'll most likely get the first round or super day interviews the second thing that's important about this is that a lot of banks also have accelerated recruiting timelines for the best candidates so let's say you get an offer from deutsche bank in april and you want to recruit for other firms like morgan stanley and goldman sachs or jp morgan then what you would what i would do is tell each of the contacts you have at each of these banks and you know mention to them hey i have this deutsche bank offer and i really really want to work at your firm i was just wondering if you could see if there was any kind of recruiting timeline that was faster that i could be a part of in the vast majority of cases there will be some kind of accelerated recruiting timeline that you can join but with that said like i kind of mentioned earlier on in the video recruiting timelines can be pretty strict and the reason for that is because each recruiting or interview super day that we have involves managing and coordinating the schedules of five or six vps directors who are all you know always so just incredibly busy right so usually they are very very set super days and we're not gonna you know move heaven and earth just to interview this one candidate so usually there are set super days and the candidates who are interviewed at each one of them uh you can get into the earlier ones basically if you're a more competitive candidate and have competing offers fourth thing i want to mention is to apply to as many conferences and participate in as many case competitions that are at your school usually for conferences you don't really have to do intense interviews because usually it's earlier on in your college career and so a lot of the times they really just ask behavioral questions so it's a really good way to have a top level bank type name on your resume just by going to some kind of virtual or in-person conference and for case competitions a lot of the times if you place first or maybe are a finalist then you're able to not only have that on your resume but also secure an interview invite the fifth and last recruiting tip i have for you is if you're interested in recruiting for an office that's on the opposite coast like a lot of uc berkeley candidates are interested in new york offices for example then a huge huge recruiting tip i have for you is to actually fly to that office and so a lot of our for example a lot of the candidates that i know who really did well in recruiting um even amongst my friends and just a lot of the candidates i know they actually flew over either during their spring break or i don't know they just took one or two days off of classes or something like that to set up a bunch of coffee chats in person and meet with the people at the office and this will just make a huge huge difference if you're able to do it i know it's really really hard but if you are able to then it really shows that you really went out of your way to get to know the people at the office and that you really really want the job so if you make a good first impression after flying you know across the country then most likely you're probably going to get at least a first round interview okay so that concludes the video but the last thing i do want to mention is that i'm actually going to be working on an investment banking course of how to break into the industry and that'll be coming in probably a few months from now i'm working really really hard on it right now if you do want career advice earlier on or earlier than that then like i said check out youtube memberships in the description below because i'll link to that alright so that pretty much just wraps things up thank you so much as always for tuning in hope to catch you in the next one peace out [Music]

Channel: rareliquid

Views: 288,364

Keywords: how to get into investment banking, how to get into investment banking from a non-target school, investment banking, investment banking interview, investment banking analyst, investment banking salary, investment banking associate, investment banking technical questions, investment banker interview, investment banking recruiting, investment banking recruiting timeline, investment banking recruiting process, recruiting for investment banking, summer analyst, jp morgan

Id: Pg7iMmylLZ8

Length: 22min 58sec (1378 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021