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there is an article titled Landing a Job as a Banking Analyst Quote:
Strong GPA, Relevant Work Help --
And So Do Alumni Ties
By MANEET AHUJA
Last winter, after six rounds of interviews, Alina Khaykin won a summer internship on Wall Street. The junior at New York University's Stern School of Business was one of only three Stern undergraduates in a pool of about 200 who were offered jobs as summer analysts in the equity-research division of Credit Suisse Group, the European investment bank.
Then, as the 10-week program wound down, Ms. Khaykin hit the jackpot: a spot in the analyst program after graduation. "Going in we were told the internship was essentially a 10-week job interview, so the environment was very intense," she says. "I followed the FILO policy -- first one in the office, last one out -- always."
Analyst programs offer entree into the banking industry. The going rate for new hires is $60,000 to $65,000, plus an $8,000 to $10,000 sign-on/relocation bonus and the possibility of a year-end bonus of $30,000 to $45,000. Most analysts stay at the job for two to three years. Then they are either promoted or move on to another bank, business school, a hedge fund or private-equity firm, or another career.
David N. Schwartz, the former head of investment-banking recruiting in London for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., says getting talented analysts is important for the industry. "You don't grow an investment bank simply by hiring the best at the top," he says. "You also grow an investment bank by hiring the very best at the bottom -- the engines that keep this industry running -- the analysts."
Not surprisingly, getting into analyst programs is highly competitive. Citigroup Inc. says it received more than 16,000 applications this past fall for analyst positions in its capital-market and banking divisions alone. Of those applicants, 2,200 students were interviewed for about 500 positions. Merrill Lynch & Co. says it got 20,000 applications for 700 slots. In a survey of employers published on the Vault.com Web site, an Ivy League-educated analyst at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is quoted as saying: "From my school alone we review 150 to 200 résumés for the summer analyst program, and will give about six to 10 offers."
To beat the odds, undergraduates who want to break into the industry often spend the years leading up to their junior year executing a master plan. In addition to maintaining a GPA of at least 3.5 on a 4.0 scale -- the unofficial cutoff at many top financial-services firms -- that can mean accepting grueling, unglamorous part-time jobs to gain the experience necessary to make it through the initial round of résumé screening.
With firms like Lehman Brothers and Citi now rolling out summer analyst internships for sophomore students as well, it is critical for applicants to get an early start.
"We introduced a new generalist program to target students earlier in the process," said Courtney Storz, executive vice president for campus recruiting at Citi. She says recruiters "were surprised to find that even at that level, many of the applicants had already had relevant work experience."
Reaching out to influential alumni also can be a way to boost your odds of getting noticed. Under pressure one year to reduce recruiting costs, Mr. Schwartz, then at Goldman, was responsible for implementing a human-resources department choice to remove a few schools from the "target" list. Among them: Boston College. When word got out to a few powerful alumni at Goldman, "they were absolutely livid and raised hell," he says. "Within minutes the school was added back onto the list."
Mr. Schwartz, who now runs the executive search-firm DN Schwartz & Co., said that "for a kid looking to break into the industry from a nonpowerhouse school, the alumni connection is the most powerful tool they can equip themselves with."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1205...?mod=Careers_1
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