what's up everyone Kenji here and in this video i want to share how to network for investment
banking in particular using linkedin obviously there's many other ways to network like what
might be career fairs or conferences and so on but i personally don't really use those resources so
i mainly focused on linkedin and i thought i'd share how i went about that that being said this
is not just for investment banking it's probably also useful for any other like business oriented
um work so it might be accounting it might be strategy business development so yeah just so
you guys know so you've probably heard that networking is crucial it's essential to getting a
job and so on and so forth but firstly let's just start with what even is networking because that
wasn't all that clear to me when i started off so simply put at least for the purposes of somebody
looking for a job or an internship networking is just trying to build relationships in this
case with investment bunkers so that further down the line they might be able to recommend you to a
role where they might be able to help you out in some way or form and you're probably wondering is
networking even necessary well the reality is that nowadays investor banking is such a competitive
industry there's well over 200 000 applications for most of the top tier investment banks
and the acceptance rate is really around the two to three percent mark which is actually lower
than harvard's acceptance rate so you really need something that's going to set you apart especially
when the large majority of the pool have good grades and they have they go to somewhat decent
universities right so you really need something that's going to make the difference and more often
not networking might just do that for you let me just say that networking isn't just for those that
are not good candidates say even people that have good grades and go to the best universities say
harvard and stanford they still do networking just like everyone else because they're also aware that
that might make the difference for them right so i split this video up into four main sections the
first one has to do with your story so making sure that your story makes sense it's coherent
and your resume is looking good and i'll show you how to do that then secondly it has to do with
the research so looking at what banks do you want to apply to and how to actually find the people
that work at those banks so i'll show you how i went about that thirdly we'll look into reaching
out so what message you should actually send them so that hopefully they actually reply to you
and then lastly we want to look at following up right so once you've got in touch with them once
um you might want to follow up and ask them for a favor with relation to the job itself right so if
we were to have a timeline it would look something like this basically here's the job start date
and actually one year ahead is when recruiting actually starts at least in the us that's when
it starts i know it's super super early but that's just what it is at the moment and so prior to that
recruiting season starting that's when you wanna already have your story ready have researched
the companies that you want to apply to and have started to reach out right so you ideally want to
reach out between one to three months in advance where you send out the messages and hopefully they
reply to you and you get on a call or two with people that work at the bank you want to work for
and then you want to follow up later on um say about one month ahead to a couple weeks ahead
of the actual of you actually sending out the application that's when you want to let them let
them know that you'll be applying and if they can help in any way right so the first section is your
story and here before you actually reach out to people you want to know what you want and why you
want it right so that's basically making sure that it makes sense and that it sounds like something
genuine that you really want and it might be something like i'm a business major at university
i was just taking this corporate finance class and i found it really really interesting and so
i realized that investment banking is a typical career for those that like corporate finance
and so i'd like to learn more about the role right it can be something as simple as that as your
motivation so once you have your story ready it's time to tailor your resume or cv to an investment
banking role right so make sure it follows the right structure and that you put your best things
on it i did make a video on my resume for goldman sachs if you want to check that out i'll
leave that down below i also left the template there and hopefully that can be useful to you
and also for networking you want to make sure that your linkedin is looking good if you don't
have one you should get on it it's completely free to to start with and it's basically like
a social media somewhat of a facebook for careers or for professionals or you can find things like
jobs you can connect with other people as well as share your own thoughts right so the second
section is research and here you're really looking for two main things the first one is what bank you
want to apply to and the second one has to do with who you want to contact right so looking into what
bank you want to apply to if you're not really sure about that a quick google search is usually
quite useful you can see which banks there are and typically they offer both full-time roles as
well as internships another very useful resource that i found was the vault guide where basically
you can kind of see what internships there are they're ranked for full-time and internship roles
so for instance you can get a good idea of which packs there are out there as well as if you look
further into them like say i click on this goldman one you can see some pros and cons of each one
as well as a bit of a brief description right so i thought that was quite useful especially
when i started off all right so suppose we know which investments you want to work at and now
we have to contact the right people right so let's hop on to linkedin and i'll show you how
i went about that so let's say we're looking to connect with people that work at morgan stanley as
investment banking analysts so let's search that then we can filter by people and we can actually
go much further in that say filter by country so wherever you're from let's say in new york city
in this case and you can filter by university and so on so you get the results here and it's really
that simple to find the people and from there you would just message them right overall i would say
that you want to try to find a connecting point with them so for instance if you went to the same
university they're probably more receptive to your message or maybe you're from the same hometown or
you have something in common really that's usually quite good in that you increase your chances of
them actually replying to you right and then once you have a good number of people you can create a
spreadsheet like this one here i know it's a bit nerdy maybe it's excessive and you don't need that
and i'll leave that in the description just in case you want it completely free obviously so now
that we filtered through the banks that we want to work at and we found some people let's look into
what message you should actually send them so here's a message template that i used it's really
nothing that's special not very fancy basically you want to say that hey you're interested in
xyz role which you're currently working on and i'd like to know a bit more about it and then
you might add another paragraph on your background right so say where you're studying or where you're
currently working at what your major is and yeah just a bit for them to know who you really are and
then in addition to that obviously this is just a template but maybe you can have another paragraph
letting them know that hey i noticed that you went to this particular university i did too i said the
same thing i thought we could get in touch so basically some kind of a connecting point right
it can also be that you went to the same high school or that you're from the same hometown
or whatever and as you can see it's quite to the point you don't really need to make it super long
or put some emojis things like that and just yeah make it simple there's no tricks to it really
and you might feel a bit weird for messaging strangers i did at least when i started off
i'd say it's something fairly common in the industry and from your point of view even though
they might not reply right or you might not get an answer from them there's really
nothing to lose right it's basically free to send out a message it just takes a bit of time for you
on the positive side on the upside if you will if they actually get back to you you get in touch and
maybe further down the line you end up with an interview well that's obviously a positive right
so you don't have much to lose at least that's how i saw it all right so suppose you send them
a message they actually go back to you and now you have a call set up where you have even better
coffee chat in person set up now what the hell do you ask actually ask them right well basically you
want to have what's called an informational interview where you basically ask them a bit
about their role raise what it's like what kind of hours you have maybe even how they got their
role and what kind of background they have and so on and so forth just really getting to know them
you know in a way kind of becoming friends so they know you and you know them and you both understand
what you're here for right and if you want to ask for a job straight up then obviously you
can i personally didn't i don't really recommend it as i find that just a bit rude especially on
the first call just to go ahead and ask for a for a job right so fourth section is the follow
up and here ideally you've let a couple of weeks pass since you last called them or last got in
touch with them and now it's maybe about a couple weeks before recruiting season actually starts and
here's what i think you should ask them here you can basically start off with telling them that
hey i'm applying to the bank that you're currently working at whatever bank that is and that it's my
number one choice and so i wanted to know how i can best optimize my chances to get the position
so basically if you cause a good impression they're basically going to understand that
well you would like to have an interview or something along those lines so they might be
able to recommend you as in get you in touch with the hr team so they can look over your resume or
something like that so yeah hopefully that's the ideal scenario where they just fast track you
to an interview if you will and obviously that doesn't always happen right maybe nothing comes
out of it and at least well you got some more insights into the actual industry and you have
a friend in there right so that's also positive and i just wanted to quickly say thank you for
subscribing if you already are and thanks for watching my videos last time i checked it was
around 4 000 subs at the moment i honestly didn't think it would grow this fast i don't really have
experience making videos before so it's been quite a yes yeah an upward learning curve if you will
so thank you for yeah for supporting the channel i'll hopefully be doing a q a video sometime soon
where i'll cover things like how i transferred to korean university how i got the internship
and so on and so forth so yeah stay tuned for that so that's the end of the video hope you enjoyed it
if you're gonna go networking best of luck with that and i'll hopefully catch you in the next one