5 Keys to Break Into Wall St From a Non-Target

Target school kids have it easy.

They get invited to interview solely because of the brand name on their resume.

As a non-target - you’ll never get invited by simply submitting your resume.

You have to earn first rounds by getting referrals through networking.

Then once you actually get an interview - it’s still an uphill battle.

Bankers see it as a risk taking you over a target school kid -

So you have to blow them away to convince them to give you a chance.

I broke into an elite boutique from a Midwest non-target nobody in NYC had ever heard of.

I couldn’t have done it without help from my senior mentor.

He had one of the best placements our academy has ever had - securing a spot in one of the most prestigious bulge bracket groups in NY - and showed me exactly what he did to break in.

Here are the five main keys of the strategy we both used to land our dream roles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• KEY #1 - WEEKEND TRIP

• KEY #2 - BEHAVIORAL PREP

• KEY #3 - CASE COMPETITION

• KEY #4 - STRATEGIC NETWORKING

• KEY #5 - EXTRA INTERNSHIPS

KEY #1 - WEEKEND TRIP

There were three kids in the class above me that successfully placed in NYC.

I asked each of them what the #1 key was to pull it off & they all had the same answer:

In-Person Networking.

Instead of going to Cancun over spring break like all their fraternity brothers, they booked flights to Manhattan & packed every weekday with back-to-back coffee chats.

They met up with each of their best networking calls to ask for referrals in-person.

Taking that extra step in the crucial weeks right before banks kick off interviews is an easy way to separate yourself from the pack.

The kids you’re competing against will blend together as just another voice on the phone...

So if you physically fly out there & shake each of their hands - it gives you a huge unfair advantage.

I took their advice & booked a trip to NY during my spring break sophomore year.

Here are the eight high-level steps I took to plan this trip & ask for referrals in-person.

• STEP 1 - SEND EMAIL REQUESTS 30 DAYS OUT

  Your goal is to convert the top 15-25 calls you’ve already done into referrals.

  In mid February, I sent follow-up emails to the 30 bankers I hit it off best with on the phone.

  I replied on the same chain as before & asked to meet up in-person.

• STEP 2 - SEND CALENDAR INVITES

  You should aim to have five chats on your calendar every weekday.

  15-20% of them to will fall since bankers have unpredictable schedules.

  I built in one hour of buffer time between each 30min chat.

• STEP 3 - BOOK ACCOMODATIONS

  I stayed at a $30 / night AirBnb in a sketchy neighborhood in Brooklyn.

  Don’t make that same mistake. Just book something decent in Midtown.

• STEP 4 - PACK NECESSITIES

  Before leaving home, print 30 copies of your resume on thick resume paper.

  Then before leaving each day, make sure to have pre-drafted thank-you emails ready to go.

• STEP 5 - SEND EMAIL REMINDERS

  Double check the time & location still works for them since you scheduled way ahead of time.

  Just send a follow-up on the same email chain either the morning of or day before.

• STEP 6 - EMAIL WHEN YOU ARRIVE

  Get to the coffee shop 30min early.

  As soon as you get there, follow-up on the same email chain with where you’re sitting & what you’re wearing so they can identify you when they arrive.

• STEP 7 - WALK TO THE COUNTER WITH THEM

  Don’t be caught scrolling through Instagram when they walk through the door.

  Keep your eyes peeled so you can stand up & shake their hand once they walk in.

  Then always walk up to the counter with them to order.

  It’s a chance to spark up some small talk that can deepen the personal connection.

• STEP 8 - ASK FOR THE REFERRAL

  You need to capitalize on the in-person opportunity & directly ask for what you really want.

  Bringing it up can feel awkward, so segway into it with some smooth talk.

  Around the 20-25min mark, I’d look for a chance to say

  “I’ve been meaning to ask too…since first rounds are coming up soon…do you happen to have any insight on when you guys might be formally kicking off? No worries if not…I just wanted to see if you had an idea of the timeline for your guys’ process…”

  If you already hit it off over the phone with them & successfully deepened the connection in-person - you can be confident they’re rooting for your success in their bank’s process too.

  At this point, my in-person chats typically told me when I should expect to receive that first round invite in my inbox.

KEY #2 - BEHAVIORAL PREP

As a non-target, you have to view yourself as the “personality hire”.

Lucky for you - most target school kids are robotic nerds.

Most of them are super sharp with technicals but a bit socially awkward.

In banking, sociability & having strong interpersonal / communication skills is just as important as being strong technically.

If you can show you have a superior ability to connect with people - it’ll easily set you apart.

Being more well-rounded than the target kids is one thing - but articulating it in an organized & entertaining way isn’t as easy as it looks.

You have to use storytelling & carefully plan answers to each of the most commonly asked behaviorals.

Here’s a list of a few of the most common questions you should rehearse.

• Tell me about yourself.

• Why do you want to do investment banking?

• Why do you want to work at [BANK NAME]?

• What is investment banking and what are the roles of an analyst?

• What are 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses?

• What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? What is your biggest failure?

• Why did you choose to go to [UNIVERSITY NAME]?

• How did you decide to major in [MAJOR NAME]?

• Why should we hire you over other candidates? What makes you different or special?

• What’s your biggest motivator?

They’ll also grill you on each of the experiences you have on your resume.

To make your responses entertaining - the key is to use a STORY for each to SHOW, NOT TELL.

You should structure each story using the STAR + R framework.

It allows you to support your answers with evidence & organize in a way that’s easy to follow.

Most kids are familiar with the basic “STAR” approach, but my “secret sauce” was adding the extra “+ R” (Relevance) to the end of every response.

Here’s what should go in each piece, including the extra “+ R”.

• S - SITUATION

  Spend 30 - 45 seconds giving context / background needed to understand the story.

  Don’t overdo this - just enough so they won’t get lost.

• T - TASK

  Explain the main objective of the situation in simple terms.

  This should only take 30 - 45 seconds.

• A - ACTION

  This is the meat & potatoes where you should spend the most time.

  For 1 - 2 minutes - break down your approach using detailed descriptions of the exact tasks you performed to achieve the objective.

  Over-simplify this & boil it down to 2 - 3 “buckets” of actions.

• R - RESULT

  For 30 - 45 seconds - explain how those actions let you achieve the goal.

  Then emphasize the specific traits & skills you developed from that experience.

  This should clearly explain the qualities you developed & how you grew as an individual.

• “+ R” - RELEVANCE

  Now spend ~30 seconds making the connection to banking PAINFULLY OBVIOUS.

  Instead of letting them imply the qualities you developed are relevant to banking -

  Make the connection OUT LOUD.

  You should EXPLICITLY say you “KNOW“ those qualities you developed -

  Are the EXACT SAME as what’s needed to be a rockstar investment banking analyst.

  This also lets you show you actually understand what an analyst does on a day-to-day.

KEY #3 - CASE COMPETITION

Having good grades on your resume isn’t enough.

Every target school kid has good grades too. Plus - their classes are harder than yours.

You need to go above & beyond and stack your resume with extra hands-on experience.

One of the best ways to do this is with an investment banking case comp.

I did four of these during college and took home first place in two.

Each is only two weeks long, so I’d try and do as many as you can.

They can be hosted by investment banks, campus clubs and other third parties.

ON-CAMPUS CASE COMPS

• Student Orgs - My first one was freshman year in of our school’s intro to m&a org. The second one I did was part of the application process for our banking academy. In both, we created & presented pitch decks backed by a few different financial models. At my school, other orgs like biz frats would also host them, but they wouldn’t necessarily be IB focused.

• Sponsored by Banks - Lincoln came to campus & hosted a two week competition for the 30 kids in our banking academy my sophomore year. This is also common at other schools. For example, I know William Blair hosts every year at Miami University in Ohio.

OFF-CAMPUS CASE COMPS

• National Investment Banking Case Competition (NIBC) - NIBC hosts a national competition every year in the fall. They have separate divisions for undergrads and graduate students and winner takes home $10k in prize money. This is also great exposure to begin networking since ~50 of the biggest name investment banks and private equity shops (e.g. JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, Moelis & Company, Lazard, KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle Group, etc) have employees there to judge and recruit.

• Harvard Global Case Competition - Though this one isn’t always investment banking focused, it’s still an impressive finance case experience to add to your resume. One of their recent cases involved IBM and the acquisition of Equinix. Winners of that one also bring home $10k. There’s also an in-person networking aspect to this one and past partners have included big names like Blackstone & Jefferies

KEY #4 - STRATEGIC NETWORKING

I had to do 78 networking calls to get my foot in the door at the elite firms on Wall St.

As a non-target, you’ll NEVER land a first round interview without a referral.

A banker has to push your resume to HR for you to get invited.

The problem is - nobody responds to your networking emails as a non-target.

The average non-target’s hit rate is under ten percent.

It takes target school kids a few dozen emails to land interviews whereas you’ll have to send over 1,000.

In my first month of networking, only 15% of bankers responded to my emails.

By month two, that number grew to 53%.

The first step in landing a referral is figuring out how to get bankers to respond to your emails.

Otherwise, you don’t even get the chance to wow them over the phone.

Here’s how I did it.

Most bankers only help out kids they have stuff in common with.

You should specifically target bankers with shared commonalities if you want them to respond.

Ivy league kids can just filter LinkedIn for alumni, but as a non-target you don’t have that luxury.

You have to get creative to find commonalities.

After setting broader filters for bank, city & job title, I always went to the search bar and put in whatever extra keywords I thought might be a good angle.

Here were six of the angles I tried that worked best for me.

• Hockey Players - I played competitive AAA hockey growing up and was on our men’s division one team at school. Under “Activities & Societies” in each banker’s profile, I looked for anything hockey related for both high school & college. Worked like a charm

  

• Geography - Being from a small town in Central IL made me a huge minority in the NYC finance scene. Even just being from the “Midwest” in general makes you a minority. I dug for where each banker went to high school & college and got as specific as I could in scope with trying to relate by location (i.e. Central Illinois, Illinois, Midwest, Chicagoland, etc)

• College Athletes - Anyone who played varsity or club sports in college understands the grind of being a student athlete and was always more willing to help me out

• Big Ten - I ended up talking to lots of bankers that went to Indiana, Michigan & Wisconsin. They loved talking Big Ten sports

• Business Fraternity - I was in Beta Alpha Psi and found some bankers that were in chapters at other schools

• Non-Target - Anyone that went to a “no-name” school understands all the extra effort that goes into breaking in. This one isn’t as close of a connection but can still work

Then make that commonality loud & clear in the subject line of the email.

From there, it will come down to your ability to show your personability over the phone.

Establish common ground early during small talk & keep it professional by setting an agenda.

Here’s a breakdown of the routine I used to nail these calls (link).

KEY #5 - EXTRA INTERNSHIPS

Top candidates now have 2-3 internships before sending their first networking email sophomore year.

Internships give you instant credibility with relevant, real-world experience.

I cold applied to hundreds on handshake freshman year and was rejected by every single one.

What I didn’t realize was that internships listed on those online portals don’t hire freshmen.

You have to seek freshman year gigs out on your own.

This involves cold emailing tons of smaller firms to convince them to hire you for little-to-no pay.

There are three types of relevant finance roles you should be targeting as a freshman.

• Search Funds

• Corporate Development

• Boutique Investment Banks

None of these firms typically run formal internship programs.

However - they all have tons of grunt work they’d love to pass off to hungry freshman.

They could also care less if your resume is empty since they have tight budgets.

You offering to help for free just for the exposure & learning experience is a no brainer for them.

Here’s a high level overview of each.

• SEARCH FUND

  → Essentially “one-man” private equity shop

  → Searcher typically post-MBA banker / consultant that wants to try running own business

  → Doesn’t want risk of starting from scratch so pools money from investors to buy one that already has customers & product-market fit

  → 24-month timeline & slim budget to find the perfect small, family-owned business to buy

  → Open to hiring eager freshmen to help with outreach & due diligence during intense search

• CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT

  → Smaller team within larger company that focuses on mergers & acquisitions

  → Identifying, analyzing & executing deals to accelerate business growth inorganically

  → Creating target lists based on company expansion strategy & developing outreach plan

  → Performing due diligence & projecting potential synergies

• BOUTIQUE INVESTMENT BANKS

  → Smaller shops with five or so bankers

  → Creating pitch books, CIMs & teasers to market businesses as sell-side advisor

  → Performing discounted cash flow, leveraged buyout, comparable companies & precedent transactions analyses

  → Assembling buyer lists & strategizing approach for targeted / broad process

  → Harder to secure these internships but most relevant by far if you can land one

Cheers 🥂

- Jack

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