what is going on people welcome back to another video so earlier on um yesterday actually I was talking to one of the students or members in finance FastTrack Academy which is a free community to help you break into the industry first link in the video description and he came to me and he said yo AEL basically um I've been banging out applications I've been applying to lots of different firms across divisions front office mostly uh IBD Asset Management sales and trading all of that and it's November now I started a few months AG go but
I'm not getting any uh offers I'm struggling I'm not getting through to like interview stages or I'm not hearing back and so he wanted some advice and so I'll share with you what I shared with him uh and some it might be harsh you might find it harsh you might find it useful um but essentially this is what I think if you're in that position if you're struggling to secure offers or interviews then you need to kind of adjust your approach so these are a few things that you should do first things first so he
was um he had a good application because I knew his SE I went through CV it was good cover was good and he was getting through to the tests he was doing all right in some of the tests but some of the tests like the work simulations he wasn't doing too well on so he was scoring high in the numerical reasoning logical reasoning and all of that so that's good if he wasn't I would tell him you need to bang out about 100 practice online psychometric tests once you do 100 it's like practicing past papers
for your studies the more you do the better you get so that's what I would tell him so I told him essentially you need to go and practice as many using job test prep assessment day whichever whatever platform you can universities typically give you free access to these types of tests uh practice work simulation tests I told him practice 100 200 the more you do the better you get it's always basic advice but most people don't do it so once he does that I told him look you need to identify which applications are still open
it's November now November December most applications start closing for summer internships for example which he was applying to so you need to identify which ones are open create a long list use The Trackers that are available online Bristol tracker lsse tracker whichever it is and um create a list and then don't apply to front office roles your priority right now should be your going into your final year or third or final year your priority should be to secure something anything like my strategy in uni was first things first secure an offer easiest offers to get
back office or like big four like e PWC Del um KPMG so I secured my PWC offer I secured operations in NatWest or RBS previously so those back office offers for internships allowed me Spring weeks converted to internships allowed me to go into second year bang out front office applications cuz I could be a bit risky so I told him yo Beggars can't be choosers you you're not in a position to apply to just front office roles you need to secure something so you need to prioritize back office middle office roles going forward uh and
Consulting cuz you would just want to secure something once you do that once you get an offer then you could be a bit more ambitious and apply to front office roles second thing I told him your strategy is a bit scaton scaton approach you're applying to everything anything and everything um and that's why you're not seeing any results he was still waiting or he's still waiting for tons of responses so you might actually get offers for interviews or assessment centers time will tell I'll keep you posted but um if you're applying to sales and trading
Asset Management Investment Banking private wealth management there's all like doing so many different types of applications there's only so much detail that your CV cover letter and application is going to be able to portray within each of those applications what I mean is if you only focused on one of those divisions Investment Banking or sales and trading or asset management or private banking for example you can just focus all of your time on learning about that one thing so Asset Management let's say you can go deep on that and then you could do all of
your applications on Asset Management whereas he was doing a bit of everything so he spread himself a bit th when you do that naturally it's going to make your application success rate lower and even if you get an interview you're going to go into those interviews not as knowledgeable or as prepared compared to a student or candidate who just doubled down on one thing so my advice to him and my advice to you if you're in this position is identify one or two divisions that you're keen on that you're interested in that suit your skill
set and your strengths once you identify those divisions um it could be a front office one and a back office one once you identify them the back office is usually a hedge right protection so that you can be you secure something cuz you don't want to graduate or get to final year with no experience or no potential full-time offer once you have those two then you double down on preparing for for all of your applications to be across those two divisions at boutiques at bulge brackets and you know any applications that are open you should
be doing about as many applications as you can it's a numbers game if I throw a DOT at a DOT board I'm not going to hit buai if I throw a 100 dots one or two of them will hit Bullseye same with applications the more you do the more likely you are to get an interview and then go and convert that into an offer so be strategic and how you're approaching your applications figure out one or two divisions you're interested in and go ham on those one or two divisions so action steps do as many
online tests the ones that you're struggling with do as many practi ones as you can the more you do the better you'll get you want to do it such that you get sick of it cuz you know the answer is inside out and then you want to figure out you want to create a list of applications that are still open and you you want to apply to one or two division only if you're struggling to get office so far and you've been applying to front office focus on back office and um do Consulting as well
also explore other Industries the key is you need to secure something you don't want your CV to be empty whilst everyone else has an internship also the that's another thing I told him yo you need to treat breaking into the world of banking and finance you need to treat your career search like it's an extra module or two part of your University so you know when you're in uni you've got lots of different modules in economics you've got macro micro stats uh and all this other stuff right you need to pretend you've got another two
modules called career search or internship search or Investment Banking and you need to carve out 5 10 hours every single week dedicated the more the better on these two modules to prepare yourself to break into the industry if you do that you're going to be one of the few candidates the standout candidates in these interviews that just naturally gets an interview goes in and impresses people another thing you want to focus on I forgot to mention in the previous video is commercial awareness don't like just start doing commercial awareness practice when you get into VI
office this needs to be second nature you need to basically form a habit it needs to be something that every day you wake up and you spend 5 or 10 minutes instead of scrolling through insta and Tik Tok you want to be reading the financial time you get free access from your University Financial Times um The Economist Bloomberg whatever it is 5 or 10 minutes now I'm not saying read stuff that is boring and dry and stuff that you're not interested in what you want to do is focus on the things that you're genuinely interested
in so if you're interested in Tech or you're interested in markets go to that section of the app and read one or two stories that's going on in the global environment or markets or geopolitical landscape to do with that and then just try and ask yourself oh what does that mean why do I find this interesting best hack I've learned is to go to the comment section in the Ft the financial times read an article go to the comment section and read the comments usually you get such diverse opinions lots of arguments lots of beef
lots of heated exchanges and then there'll be comments that get lots of likes um so you can get a general gist of you know people's opinions the vibe the um the general tone around this piece and you could use those comments to for your own ideas so then you can even copy some of these thoughts if you align with them and then take them into interviews take them into networking events and um relay them to people in the industry and then they're going to be like all right yo this student or graduate is switched on
they they they're bringing unique thoughts and ideas they've done their research this is a breath of fresh air cuz most other students aren't doing this and so it's small things like that that's going to set you apart if you're in that position where you're struggling to get offers do the things I've mentioned in this video watch it again when you watch videos this again I guarantee you you're going to learn something that I already said but you didn't catch it the first time around with a pen and a paper and you will learn more than
you did watching it the first time around that would be useful for you trying to think what else that's pretty much it let me know in the comments what you're struggling with if you need help you can get direct access to me using the first link in the video description below Finance FasTrack Academy it's the online community to help you break into the industry so I will see you in the next one peace boom
