SG
View from the Bottom: waiting in frustration
17 August 2009
In the latest installment of her popular “View from the Bottom” series, our columnist vents her frustration about banks and their tedious selection methods. The writer is a young Singaporean banker who worked on Wall Street and is now searching for a job back in Asia.
You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve actually had a few interviews recently. I tend to either make the final rounds, or some silly internal process simply brings everything to a staggering halt. With no shortage of young candidates in the market and no real urgency for banks to push for junior hires, it’s been slow going.
When I have got interviews, I’ve usually been selected for very specific reasons pertaining to my background that would enable me to hit the ground running and contribute from day one.
During one recent six-hour-long assessment day (which also involved several other hopefuls), I was given PowerPoint and Excel exercises, simulating exactly what it would be like on the job. The bank wanted to test candidates’ attention to detail, presentation and modeling skills. Interviews were conducted in between all these tasks.
During a separate series of interviews with another firm, one senior banker told me that the recent shakeup in the financial sector has been beneficial because it has allowed junior analysts to readjust their attitudes towards work.
In the boom years before the financial crisis, job offers were too easy to come by and career options were too plentiful, he said. Analysts’ attitude suffered as a result and their work was not of the same quality as when he was a junior in the 1990s.
However, I know for a fact that most of this banker’s junior team works 100-hour weeks and no other senior banker had complaints about them. But I simply responded by nodding my head, wondering whether such generational comparisons are fair, or whether he simply wants his analysts to earn credibility through deliberate hardship rituals.
In fact, kudos should be given to the junior members of his team who prepared the extensive “testing material” at my interview. All these detailed, on-the-spot assessments made me wonder whether we are seeing a new standard for interviews. It seems the team is more concerned about what the analyst can bring to the table immediately, rather than any longer-term expectations of career development.
Anyway, in the end, I managed to make the final round, which was a series of interviews spanning four hours. I heard that the first job offers were made just one day after my finals.
For me, however, the wait was much longer! I knew I wasn’t the bank’s first pick, but because I didn’t receive a formal rejection, I thought perhaps I was a back-up choice. After three weeks of waiting in frustration, I was finally told that the firm needed a term-sheet, fluent mandarin-speaking person for the desk. I’m back to ground zero.
Look out for a new column next week on how our writer is running out of career options.
Hmm, I think many can commiserate with your current predicament. It seems that employers are now presented with an "embarrassment of riches" in a way since the current applicant pools are overflowed with well-qualified hopefuls -- if only the employers had the money to hire them all.
Your honest assessment of your experiences make for an interesting read. Here's to hoping that your column will have a more uplifting note to give hope to the "hopefuls" in the near future!
Cliff 17 Aug 2009
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