How does the graduate recruitment process work for investment banks?

​by Girl Banker

This is a very popular question amongst students who want to become investment bankers. The process is very similar across different investment banks and works as follows:

1. An internship application is submitted, usually using a standardized online form (rather than your own stylized résumé/CV).

2. Once your application has been accepted, the interview(s) you are invited to will normally entail all of the following:

• An aptitude test online or on paper
• A case study and/or brainteasers
• A competency based interview
• A technical interview

3. Accepted to intern in the summer.

4. After the summer internship, you receive a hire letter or a letter stating that you will not be offered a full-time position.

The proportion of interns offered full-time contracts varies from year to year and from bank to bank; it is never 100%. Usually banks will recruit a few more people from outside the summer program but at the moment many are not doing this; banks are selecting the best summer interns and that's it, so getting an internship is critical to becoming an investment banker. 

If you’ve interned but have not secured a full-time job, you will have a better chance of securing an alternative entry-level position than if you hadn’t interned at all, so do not despair. Some banks may not have filled all of their positions from the internship program and will look to fill in those roles with people like you. 

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