been in your shoes little cubby. I made it to the final round for a sick M’nA’in on the Buyside job one time and they made me model this that and the other thing as a test of sorts. I did it, and didn’t get the job. I bet the Top 2 MBAs I was going against didn’t get put through such a grinder.
Ask yourself how bad do you want this? I imagine that is the test here. More than just being a big balla shot calla, do you really want to do the work and perform the job? This is not a jab at you, they see hundreds of resumes most of which are probably dreamers who just watched Wolf of Wall Street and now want to pick stocks and slay box.
As far as good or bad? Hiring is a PITA and turnover sucks, so they want to ensure that you’d fit in well with the team. I wouldn’t look at coming back in as good or bad. Maybe another team member is suddenly available when they were not prior.
As far as the contract, it’s a safeguard. You can try them, they can try you, and you can cleanly part ways should the fit not be there. Again, this is not a jab at you, but simply the misguided candidate pool. Itera himself says he gets 1000 resumes for a job opening and the 10 he finally filters down to don’t fit for one reason or another. It’s not a line of Top 2 MBA/CFAs with 12in BSDs, it’s too many people who don’t have a clue yet click apply anyway. Any reputable shop would not do a contract without pay nor would I entertain that.
Tread lightly, but I’d strong arm any attempt of them to push you to work for free. I mean, how are you going to eat while you work there?
Keep in mind you simply WANT a job while they NEED someone in that empty chair. Don’t forget that. 99% of candidates of quality would not work for free. The desparate bottom of the barrel dreamers may work for free, but then the firm is getting what they pay for.
^^ thanks for your insight CFAvsMBA, very informative and it’s appreciated.
yeah, I get all that. i don’t want to seem like I feel “entitled” in any way; I’ve made it clear on here and to the employer via resume, that I don’t have prior work experience in finance. i made it clear in my interview with the analyst last week when he brought up salary, that pay wasn’t my primary concern and being challenged, learning and growing within the industry was.
it’s also a fact, that if a reputable firm offered me a 3 month contract to work in ER for FREE, i’d strongly consider it - 1. i’m not seeing a whole lot of other nibbles, and that experience would be invaluable towards landing full-time job imo, and 2. the access to new contacts, and experience, again, would be invaluable towards landing a full-time gig.
BUT…i think i will be pissed off if I complete this assignment, prep for the interview, and in meeting i’m told the contract is without pay. I may cut the interview and leave. Because I think that would be pretty snakey imo, to notify me of that detail AFTER spending days working on and prepping for an interview. As desperate as I truly am to get my foot into the industry, I don’t know that it’s enough to dismiss being taken advantage of or “duped”. That kind of detail should be made clear up-front.
This is all speculation on my part, there was no indication that it would be no pay contract, I just do know that there was a guy that did work on a short contract in summer for no pay, which gives me these thoughts.
Take a step back and think about where were you 2 months ago? you probably didn’t have a whole lot of options and a contract with carrot to full time would have looked really good at that point. Now you’re in final round and you wouldn’t even consider it, it’s all perspective. I was in a similar position recently so I know the feeling well. Take a step back and think about it before walking out. These roles don’t come around often.
I don’t think they’d make you work for free anyway, and lets be honest, if they offered you this, maybe 2 of the other 4 guys got the offer too, and one of you is going to take it, while the they wait for the top candidate’s response. In any case I dont’ think it will be for free, but I strongly suspect it will be on much lower wages. Is this a big bank on the street or a buyside shop? Again, can you afford to live like that for up to one year? turning a person onto full time takes a while at a big shop, they can hmm and haw all they want - with this economy, it could be a long wait.
I would keep going, I dont’ think they would waste your time like that and if they did, maybe then you really need to think about whether you want to work for them. At the very worst you spend a week preparing and getting more experience prepping for interviews.
No. Despite how useless HR is, it won’t take a year to fill an open seat if they have the candidate they want. While they are hmming and hawing, others are picking up the slack resentfully. Either run the team shorthanded or hire someone; don’t straddle the fence because that uncertainty just kills morale.
And the economy is fine. 8 years ago the ecomomy was bad, but with the Dow ripping all time highs, we still have the naysayers saying, “In this economy…” Good ol Fox news broadcasting yet another crisis in the making everyday since go live.
I agree with your last sentence and I’m a big proponent of not working for free.
Please keep in mind the above is localized advice for Torontonians.
Having worked at a fair share of Canadian and American banks, I respectfully disagree. My experience has been (in Canada) that teams will often work short handed, and managers are hesitant to hire when expanding and fire when contracting. Thus they only hire when the long term outlook is good and the seat is sustainable. We run much leaner teams up here, in my experience - we also dont’ care about morale as much either, since there aren’t well paying jobs growing on trees here. I’ve seen young grads and friends strung along countless times. It’s an employers market here.
Also, we’re talking about the Canadian economy here. It’s not that hot, and all the sell side groups have been shedding jobs in the past months. It looks pretty rosy in the USA, I do agree with that.
you’re right, a month or 2 ago, I would have maybe had a much more positive outlook. just to be clear though, and reiterate what i said in my last post, and you even echoed towards end of your post - it’s different to work for free when you are fully aware of that fact going in, than to be asked to spend a week of your time (where you won’t be able to look for salaried work/other opportunities) to prepare/do work for firm, and THEN be told it’s a non-paying contract…the latter giving me a foul taste in mouth and telling me something about the company and how they operate…
this is not one of the big banks, it’s a smaller boutique on the street but i believe a reputable one, with i-banking/research/instituional/private wealth services etc.
i’ve been living with my parents, and they have a running tab of every dime they’ve let me borrow - i’m certainly blessed to have them, and they’ve just given me the go-ahead to seek this opportunity and they will continue to help me out, so the pressure is relieved a touch, if it does happen to be low/no pay. fwiw, the guy that had the ‘no-pay’ contract in summer was being paid $500 a month (essentially no-pay…). i’ll continue to update this thread in the coming days/weeks. thanks for the advice guys.
You go in there with that negative mindset and it’ll shine right through. I promise you a good interviewer will pick up on that and nail you. I suggest shifting your attitude far in advance of that meeting. As well, you sound absurdly entitled… “How dare someone that took the time to arrange another interview for me after I got cut ask me to do another report!” And saying you’ll walk out on the interview? Come on. Appreciate that someone is giving you another shot when you clearly didn’t make the first cut. In this day, that’s a big f***ing gift horse, stop checking its teeth. You’re a dime a dozen kid with no valuable experience begging to get your foot in the door. Stop pretending you’ve got value. You will one day, but now, you need to fight for every inch and take what you can get. There are 500 kids on this forum scratching and clawing for the jobs you’re fighting for. You don’t think just one of them will put in the effort to land this spot?
i appreciate the advice, but it seems you didn’t quite read all of my opinions/feelings on the matter, or maybe misinterpreted it.
again, zero problems working for free to get my foot in door. i would have problems, and see it as shady, for an employer to run you through full-time salaried position, and then transition you to contract, ask you to spend 20+ hours prepping for interview/completing report, IF they don’t dislcose the very pertinent detail of “zero pay”. do you understand that stance? i admit, walking out was an overreaction and i corrected that later…
for an employer to do the above, is to make you spend 20-30 hours working on something for them on false premise of pay, when you could have spent 20-30 hours of your time in a different manner potentially toward an actual paying job. disclose disclose disclose. that is my only issue. regardless of what kind of world we live in, i believe a candidate should have information as key as the above before they dedicate days of their time…anyone who thinks otherwise is the entitled thinker imo… (“oh it shouldn’t matter whether this job is paying or not, that kid should be greatful we give him the opportunity of volunteer experience, regardless of what bills he has coming up…”) …no.
if that sort of behaviour from an employer shouldn’t piss someone off, there’s something terribly wrong. that was the only premise i used the behavior you criticized of me.
The employer hasn’t said its unpaid. Keep upbeat. It’s probably paid, this is Canada and a legit firm. And if it takes 30 hours and you don’t land it, that sucks but its a learning experience. You can’t be pounding the pavement for 60 hours a week so it certainly won’t take away from your ability to chase other opportunities. And if it turns out the position is unpaid, then come back here and we’ll all join you in your misery.
Go easy on this guy. It is his first interview. Interviewing is kind of like dancing; you get better with practice. However, some people are naturally gifted. This contract stuff sounds shady. I would be very clear upfront of the terms of the contract and post-contract options.
I have had a long interest in M&A and a spatter of interviews in different firms. Interviews that started out when I graduated college for positions as the overworked analyst to a quite different position after working for a few years. The last M&A position I interviewed for was this M&A associate role. It was a small M&A group in a large financial firm. The position hadn’t even hit the market yet; my Columbia MBA friend was involved in this deal with the firm and was working with the head of M&A. He heard there was an associate position open and setup the interview with this guy. I looked him up on linked in and he had tons of deal flow experience. He was head of M&A for Merril Lynch prior to this firm. He was very friendly and informative. He brought up salary pretty early and we agreed upon a base. We were talking about bonus structure and he said I would get 10% equity (profit sharing) of the net of the group. My stomach jumped. I knew the group was small, but was curious as to how much this would be and as to last year’s profits and this year’s pipeline. He straight up told me the revenues and profits for the group for the past year and I about jumped again. I was salivating. Then, he mapped out the pipeline of deals predicted to close in the next year, painfully explaining each angle of each deal, the reasons for fees received, and reasons for different types of financing. He was going off on this whiteboard with meticulous detail. I thought I was in the door already. The office was large, but not overly large. There was another desk and computer and phone on the other side of the room. He said I would work in that desk next to him for the first year. I was pretty cool with that as I wanted to become a sponge. I said - so you want me to crank out a bunch of models for these different deals? He said no. All I had to do was call the people in the pipeline and other people for prospective new deals with a script that he would give me prior to calling. I thought the interview went really well. I had another interview with a senior M&A associate who was pretty cool. I asked him straight up about the compensation structure and he said it is legit - he did the phone gig for the first year as well. This was the largest preliminary offer I had ever seen. I thought I had it. I was salivating. I got a call from the head of M&A about two weeks later. This was after I sent him a couple emails. I literally thought he was calling me to come in the following Monday suited up and ready. He said they went with some internal hire from another department. Probably some MBA hacksaw.