Hey all,
I'm starting the second year of my finance degree at QUT in Brisbane and am looking for any advice on getting into investment banking at a boutique or bulge bracket for when I graduate. I have a 5.8/7 GPA (comparable to a 3.5/4) and just completed an internship at CBRE over the summer holidays and have another one with their debt and structured finance team possibly on the books for this year. Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers.
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Hi there
Most Aus IB full-time roles are filled from summer interns. I would focus totally on building an extremely strong profile to try and land an IB internship in Sydney or Melbourne. Try to pump that GPA, 5.8 won't get you any looks. Get involved with some good ECs. Your existing internship experience seems decent. Also there is some bias towards group of 8 unis, I only know one guy from QUT, who works at a market maker in Sydney.
There are a lot of students who have very strong profiles, and you need to at least match them to even get a shot at an interview, where you can hopefully demonstrate you have some character and are personable.
Being from Brisbane was a differentiating factor for me when I was interviewing. I studied finance at UQ, but haven't worked in Aus for a few years now.
Cheers for the reply,
Is it a similar story with roles in asset management or sales and trading in terms of needing a really high GPA and experience? Is there any other ways I can differentiate myself and stand out?
Kinda hard to differentiate your profile on paper unless you won some case competitions or have some really unique high impact extra curriculars. Having some good experience and high grades are box ticks to try and get to an interview stage, and that's where you can try and differentiate yourself from all the other cookie cutter finance nerds.
In your current situation, I would consider trying to land a corporate finance summer internship at one of the big4 in Brisbane as your next internship (obviously also target IB summer internships but this is more plan B talk) Then I would stretch your course load out, maximise your grades, and during your third year I would target IB summer internships. You should definitely be able to get interviews if your grades are strong and you have a previous big4 corporate finance internship.
Edit: AM and S&T is largely similar, probably slightly less competitive. You can also throw in big4 corporate finance and big4 bank insto on this sort of level. Basically all the keen finance hardos are applying to all of these programs. Don't underestimate the competition, but equally since you've already been on WSO at the start of your second year you're definitely in with a shot and have time to plan, prepare, and grind.
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