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 rareliquid 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 rareliquid 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
Alright 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
but we were really the main ones running all of UC Berkeley
JP 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 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
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 JP Morgan there was a recruiting team for UC Berkeley one for USC,
Stanford, Harvard and 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 JP Morgan 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 JP Morgan 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 Superday and then for the New York Superday, we could also
only send five, so around 10 candidates for the two major
offices in the US SF and New York out of the 150 to 200
applicants After thatm pretty much our work was done
All the Superday 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
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, 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 JP Morgan 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 insider secrets of how the recruiting process for banking u
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 forty percent weight of importance and
there are three natural cutoff points At JP Morgan 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
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, 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 Superday
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 JP Morgan
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 JP Morgan 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 Superday
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 hobbies or interests that you both have
That's what I really focused on during when I was networking for
JP Morgan 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 humble you know, right?
It's just kind of like what you 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 JP Morgan" or "Why investment banking"
and I would say that this would generally have around 10 percent of
importance in first round interviews and later on in Superdays, 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 Superdays 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 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 Superday interviews you know during that conversation
if we had talked to an individual person who
you know were 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 Superday 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 Superday 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 Superdays and we're not gonna
you know move heaven and earth just to interview this one candidate so
usually there are set Superdays and the candidates who are interviewed at each
one of them 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 or for example
a lot of the candidates that I know who really did well in recruiting
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]