When is the best time to apply to investment banks to maximize your chances?

by Girl Banker®
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If you want to maximize your chances of getting into investment banking the best time to apply is roughly eighteen months before you need the full-time job! Let me explain...

You must do an investment banking internship the year before you graduate. In To Become an Investment Banker, I talk extensively about how you can go about finding yourself the perfect internship.

The top investment banks have 8 to 12 week internship programs every summer. This internship is essentially, a long interview. At the end of that period they decide who in that pool of interns has what it takes to hack the world of investment banking. It makes sense because a much more informed decision can be made after observing someone for a few weeks than through a series of short interviews.

Source: thejfblogit.co.uk

Those people that are chosen are offered a job to start the following year, when they actually graduate. 

So, if you’re reading this already in your final year and thinking of getting into investment banking when you graduate in the summer, sorry, but most of those jobs are G.O.N.E. You might still get a job but you’re shooting for a smaller pool of spaces.

The key here is to intern the year before you graduate; not two years before, not three years before - just the year before.

To give you a real timeline:

• If you graduate in the summer of 2014, do an internship in the summer of 2013;
• To get a summer 2013 internship, you will need to make an application between November  2012 and February 2013. Different banks have different deadlines.

I have prepared links that take you directly to the recruitment section of bank websites at girlbanker.com/banks.

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