As Wall Street’s summer interns trickle back onto campus for their final year of college, some are re-entering a recruiting process they’d hoped to leave behind.
For those who have finished their internships without the coveted return offer, career coaches and recruiters say the best thing is to move quickly and be realistic about where they’d be willing to work.
“The important part is to get a seat in the game, no matter where it is,” David Haeberle, a professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, said. “Once you’re in that seat, then over time you can navigate your career or pivot your career in the direction you want to go.”
Not getting a return offer doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t get a full-time offer at a big-name firm. Roy Cohen, a Wall Street career coach, said it’s “very possible” to land an analyst position if you’re thoughtful about the off-cycle recruiting process. Circumstances matter, though, and he said that it’s harder to explain your situation if you worked at a large bank that tends to give out a lot of offers.
The return-offer rate is different across years, banks, and groups. Those who weren’t invited back can sometimes scoop up a position that an intern at another firm declined, but the window typically closes by the time school starts again.
That makes speed especially important. Both Haeberle and Meridith Dennes, managing partner at the recruiting firm Prospect Rock Partners, said that applying to a wide range of jobs in the banking industry quickly is the most important thing former interns can do when they return to school. Often, they said, that means applying to firms and in locations that aren’t as hot, and being realistic about the options. Cohen, however, suggested applying only to positions that they find genuinely exciting.
Networking matters — somewhat
Wall Street’s current junior hiring market is defined by potentially paradoxical forces: an active deal pipeline that demands more employees, and AI technology that some fear will cut out juniors’ work. So far, entry-level programs haven’t fallen off a cliff, as some firms hired roughly the same number of interns at the beginning of this summer as they did last year.
David Haeberle, a professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business who built the school’s Investment Banking Workshop, said around 95% of his students were offered full-time positions, up slightly from last year. He suspects that his students have a higher full-time conversion rate than is average.
Networking defines the internship recruitment cycle later in the fall, but Dennes and Haeberle said it doesn’t play the same role for jobless former interns, who should prioritize submitting applications over coffee chats. Bankers, Haeberle said, aren’t used to networking with students at this time of year.
Even so, he said students should still pass their resume to any of their existing contacts during the application process, since human resources teams will sometimes ask young bankers for potential names to fill open positions. Dennes suggested asking classmates whether there are any unfilled spots at their firms, and, for those who networked well the first time around, returning to old connections.
Be honest in interviews
Interns might not have gotten a job for any number of reasons, and it’s usually not just about raw intelligence — maybe they made a mistake early on, or they didn’t communicate effectively with their managers, or they had a tendency to show up late. It’s crucial to tell an honest, compelling story about what went wrong in interviews.
“IQ gets you in the door, but it’s your EQ that keeps you in there,” Haeberle said. “You don’t have to be necessarily, in most positions, brilliant. This is a customer-relationship business, a client-relationship business. It’s much more about apprenticeship. It’s much more about working in teams and getting along and being able to communicate.”
Beyond reflecting on the summer, Dennes said it’s helpful to ask associates or other former colleagues for specific feedback, and then come up with actionable ways to address any mistakes.
“If you just say, ‘I didn’t get an offer because of the culture,’ or some mushy gobbledygook, it’s not going to play well,” she said. “It’s always better to be forthright.”
While some of those who don’t get return offers might feel humiliated or defeated, especially if classmates were invited back to the same firm, Cohen said the situation isn’t all bad.
“It makes them far more resilient when it comes to knowing that being out in the world, we are going to experience rejection,” he said
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