 Hello everyone and welcome back to High Finance Graduate. In this video, we are going to talk about how you can break into investment banking in three simple steps. So for those of you that are interested in investment banking or considering a career in investment banking, then you might want to pause your funny cat video and take a break from the new Taylor Swift album, Tay Taken Wait, and take out your pen and notepad because this video can arguably change your career. And not only that, but we are also going to be talking about the alternative career opportunities which you have. So if investment banking is your plan A, but unfortunately not everyone is going to be able to break into investment banking, we are also going to be talking about what to do for your plan B, for your plan C, and some of the career alternatives provide the same level of compensation that investment banking provides, the same level of career prestige and the same exit opportunity. So before we begin, for those of you that prefer to read on how to break into investment banking, then go on ahead on our website where you can see a full-length article which I've written on how to break into investment banking in three steps. Now initially, I did not want to make this video because trying to break into investment banking is going to be very different for everyone, depending on your current situation. So have good on your grades, have good on your work experience, your extracurricular activities, as well as where you are in the world. If you're in Australia, then there are no socio-recruitment processes, but if you're in Northern Europe where there is a very strong bias towards finance candidates, which does not exist across the pond in North America, but over there you will find on-campus recruitment events, you'll find super days, and there is a strong alumni culture which you can tap into for networking events, which does not exist in the UK, where the only way to break into major banks are via online recruitment portals. Again, depending on where you are, depending on your current situation, it's going to impact how you break into investment banking. So when I first made a video on how to break into investment banking, it was over three hours long, and during edit, I had to stop because it was really boring. So instead, I decided to make a series on how to break into investment banking, and this being the first video, which is going to be the anchor, which is going to outline the three main ways or the three steps which every single one of you needs to take in order to break into investment banking. The subsequent videos after this are going to cover profiles. So how do you break into investment banking if you have poor grades, if you don't have any work experience, but nonetheless, the three steps which we are going to talk about in this video is how everyone should approach breaking into investment banking. So let's get started. Step number one is the requirements. There are seven basic requirements bankers look for whenever they are recruiting for a new intern and list an associate. If you do not fulfill these basic requirements, it's going to be very difficult for you to break into investment banking. Now, we are going to cover all seven of these later on. Step number two is the pre-recruitment preparation. We're just going to call it prep. Preparation is essential. Essentially, if you can do a good enough job here, a monkey with half a brain cell with just OK grades or just OK work experience can pretty much beat a candidate from the best university with some of the best grades. So it's going to be very important that you spend a lot of time here. And essentially, we are going to be spending a lot of time on the pre-recruitment preparation because it's how you're going to easily break into investment banking. So now finally, step three, which is the entry route. Now, depending on how old you are, how good your grades are, how much experience you have, you're going to have to approach investment banking in a specific way. So if you're still a student, then you're going to have to go for an internship or if you've just graduated. But if you just graduated with an undergraduate degree or a master's degree, or if you have less than two years worth of work experience, then you can go for an analyst role. Or else you're going to have to go for the associate role. But each one of these routes are slightly different. And sometimes you might have to prepare for them in a different way. So essentially, step two and step three are in a loop. So now let's get started with step one. Let's talk about the seven specific criteria which you need in order to break into investment banking. Number one is a track record of achieving or winning. And it doesn't have to be from an academic background. It could be from anywhere. It could be from a professional background. It could be from sports. It could be from anything. Whether you have a scholarship or whether you maintain a 4.0 GPA, whether you've been given an award at work, or whether you've won some random tournament in Europe about some random sport. It doesn't have to be academic related. It could be anything. The idea here is we want you to demonstrate that you can achieve. We don't want someone in the interview to tell us that they are going to be the best candidate. They are going to be the best analyst. They are going to work the hardest. We want someone with a proven record of achieving. Second is good grades. Now, a lot of candidates are confused by what we mean by good grades. And we look at grades not to measure your intellect, but to measure your drive. The reality is if you're from a finance background, then it's easy for you to ace a finance class. But how do you perform when it's a non-finance class? Or how do you perform if you don't get along with the professor? Or how do you behave if you don't get along with a group that you've been assigned with? And in order for you to maintain a high grade or high grade point average, means that you performed really well, even in classes that you didn't necessarily like, even with professors who you didn't necessarily get along with. And that's exactly what we look for in investment banking, because you're not going to enjoy every project you work on, but we still need you to perform really well at every single task. Number three is extracurricular activities and work experience. Here we're looking for candidates with more than just the basics. We don't want a candidate that just did the basic, that just went to university and did their degree and they left. We want a candidate that also took part in extracurricular activities and not just took part, but also took a leadership role, a position of responsibility because then it shows that you're able to juggle or handle multiple things at once because in investment banking, you're going to be working on multiple projects at once. And we need to know that you can excel at each of these tasks individually as well as combined, even when you're under pressure. Fourth is demonstrating your interest in investment banking. Now, there are multiple ways which you can do this, but arguably the easiest way is to demonstrate to the interviewer that you are aware of the investment banking lifestyle, that you know about what investment bankers do on a day-to-day basis, the actual work, the actual deliverables, and you can easily do this whilst answering interview questions. And the way you get this information is by, well, essentially by watching these videos on this channel or by going on our website or getting the investment banking recruitment guide, which we have. Number five is intellectual capacity. Now, the job of an investment banker is not difficult. It's not brain surgery. The reality is you can train a monkey to do what an investment banker does and that monkey will probably do it even better because that monkey isn't going to complain every five minutes. Now, you might get a banana thrown at you sometimes, but I guess that's just the cost of doing business with monkeys. But that said, investment banking is not difficult. The hardest thing about investment banking is being able to perform at a high level for a prolonged period of time. That's it. So what we mean by intellectual capacity, we're looking for candidates that can perform for a prolonged period of time. And what we mean by this is, are you able to perform analytical work for a long period of time? So has there been a time when you had multiple coursework during alongside exams and did you have a deadline in your personal life as well? So something like that, so something stressful that caused you to work for prolonged period of time and you were able to excel at those tasks. Number six is technical knowledge. Now, the best way to demonstrate your technical proficiency is by acing the technical section of your interviews. Now, we are going to talk more about this in part two of the preparation, but essentially you are going to have to answer technical interview questions in order to pass your interviews. Now, I've highlighted the technical knowledge because it's very important that you ace the section. What separates successful candidates from non-successful candidates is often the technical knowledge. Number seven is communication skills. Now, this is arguably one of the most overlooked section of the interview. Whether you like it or not, you are eventually going to have to communicate with clients. And this is arguably far more important for the associate roles and the analysts and interns, but nonetheless, you are eventually going to have to communicate with clients and we need to be able to trust you that you won't embarrass us. So we need to know that you can coherently articulate yourself during the interviews. And again, during the interviews, we don't just check for technical knowledge, but we also check that you can communicate to the point where if we leave you in front of our client, you're not going to be this awkward little specimen that's just going to embarrass us. We need to know that you can have a conversation. So those are the seven requirements. I've pretty much written a full-length article detailing all of this, as well as a video coming out either before this video or after it, which I go into a lot more detail on each of these seven requirements which bankers look for in a new intern, analysts and associates. But essentially, assuming you have all of this, we're now going to move on to section two. So now let's begin with section two or step two, which is your pre-investment banking recruitment preparation. Now, the more time you spend here, the easier it will be to actually land a job in investment banking. And like the saying goes, if you fail to prepare, then prepare to fail. So let's prepare so you can avoid failing. And let's start with the first part, which is getting relevant work experience, how to get relevant work experience and what type of work experience count for investment banking. The type of work experience which bankers look for whenever they're interviewing a new candidate is similar type of experience that you would get working at the role which you're applying for. So if you're trying to break into investment banking, then ideally, previous work experience working on live transaction at an investment bank would be ideal. But that's not the only area which will give you that type of experience. You can also get similar type of work experience working on financial models, learning about the investment banking lifestyle and learning about the responsibility in other areas of finance. For example, you can get the same type of experience working in private equity where you'll be surrounded by ex-investment bankers and you'll get a lot of financial modeling work experience. Alternatively, you can work in corporate development because often, a lot of the corporate development teams are clients of investment banking. So you're gonna be able to see how the other side operates as well as get experience to live transaction and financial modeling. Other areas which has huge overlapping skills are equity research, hedge funds, asset management where you can learn financial modeling. But just be careful that those areas are very much investor-minded driven as opposed to transaction-driven like private equity or corporate development. So in areas which has a lot of overlapping skills, make sure you get those skills and make sure you communicate that well on your resume which is what we're going to look at after this. But nonetheless, there are other areas which you can get those skills. You can also get a lot of experience in valuation at a big four and VC funds, specifically late stage VC funds and not early stage. At a late stage VC fund, you're going to get a lot of experience building financial models and getting in touch with investment bankers to take some companies public. So those are a couple of the areas which you can get relevant work experience. Now, we can also go one step further. If you're going to go into mergers and acquisition, you can also get a lot of work experience at a law firm working on the back end or the legal end of an M&A deal. But if you're gonna go into the restructuring team at an investment bank, you can also get relevant experience working in management consulting. So it really does depend on the type of role which you're applying for, whether it's M&A, capital markets, restructuring, leverage finance and the type of skills which is required in those roles. But essentially, all of the areas that I mentioned does provide a lot of overlapping skills and we have hired a lot of candidates from those backgrounds. So now let's talk about something which often gets overlooked by candidates. Some candidates have a lot of work experience on their resume, but they're not related. So for example, someone could have an internship at an engineering firm, then at an architectural firm, then at a software engineering firm and now they're applying for investment banking. Because this candidate is so scattered, it's a red flag. So sometimes it's even better to remove some irrelevant work experience from your resume as long as it makes sense. We want to see a clear progression of what led you to investment banking. Some candidates had previous work experience at an engineering firm where they met investment bankers which sparked their interest in investment banking, which is what led them to then apply for an investment banking role. So it doesn't really matter about your previous work experience as long as it is relevant and it has some type of link to what you're going to be applying for next. But ideally, if you can get a summer internship at an investment bank, that would be great. So now let's move on to the next section of writing an effective resume and cover letter. When it comes to writing your resume and cover letter, it's extremely important that you get this right. Because this is going to be the first impression that the hiring manager or the investment banker is going to get of you. So if there's no point making or just sending a regular finance resume, it has to be investment banking specific. The reality is, as investment bankers, we get resumes on a daily basis. We get resumes like strippers get dollar bills. So it's really important that you know how to differentiate it. When we walk into the office every morning, we get 10 new resumes in our inbox. By the time we come back from lunch, another 20 new resumes in our inbox. By the time we leave, we've already had 100 new resumes in our inbox. So if you don't make your resume investment banking specific by using specific words, a specific structure, we'll know because of how many resumes we've already gone through. So the question is, how do you make an investment banking specific resume? It's pretty easy. Investment banking resumes are not that complicated. Like I mentioned before, in the section of work experience, we want to see relevant work experience. So you have to communicate everything on your resume in a way which makes it relevant to investment banking. Now, I know that this is going to take a bit longer than a couple of minutes to explain. So I am going to make a separate video explaining this. I'm going to make a video for both candidates with investment banking experience and without any type of work experience. So I'm sure a lot of you can benefit from both of them as well as making an article available online. And if you stay until the end of this video, I'll show you how you can download a free investment banking resume template, which is ready to go. So stay tuned till the end of this video for that. Now let's move on to arguably the most important part of your preparation, which is learning how to answer the interview questions. This is the most important part of your preparation because this is what's going to separate you from progressing into the recruitment stages and eventually landing the role or you failing. You should treat your investment banking interview like it's the most important exam that you're going to have. And depending on whether or not you can answer the questions, will influence your progress in progressing in the recruitment stages and landing the role or you just being knocked out and failing. So it's really important that you know how to answer the questions. And what surprises a lot of candidates is when they learn that half of the people in investment banking are from non-finance backgrounds and they were able to beat finance candidates. So just because you're from a finance background, it does not mean you know how to answer all of these questions. So it's really important that you pay attention to how to answer these questions and the type of questions that you should expect as well as the answers that we expect from you. Your interview questions are going to be split up between two categories. Technical questions and non-technical questions. Non-technical questions are behavioral questions and competency-based questions. So for example, name me three strengths and weaknesses. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about the time when you demonstrated leadership. Tell me about the time when you overcame a problem and what did you learn from it? Those are easy. The more important questions for you to answer are the technical questions. And technical questions are broken up in a couple of different categories. Accounting questions, finance questions, valuation questions, mergers and acquisition questions, LBO, economics and brain teasers. Now in order for you to demonstrate technical knowledge, it's essential that you get all of your technical questions correct. The only way for you to properly know how to answer these questions is by learning financial modeling. Alternatively, you can also go and network with investment bankers and try to get them to coach you through all the questions and give you ideal answers. Alternatively, you can also check out our videos on investment banking interview questions and answers or take a look at our investment banking interview guide and recruitment guide which pretty much breaks down all the questions and give you ideal answers for all the questions. But regardless of your background, whether you're from a non-finance background or a finance background, it's essential that you learn how to ace these questions because this is what is standing in the way between you and landing the job that you want. A lot of candidates from finance background, they tend to overestimate their knowledge or what they've learned and assume that they're going to get tested based on what they've learned. That's not correct. A lot of the times it's often the candidates who are from a finance background who have studied economics or finance that tends to struggle the most with this because it's candidates who are from a non-finance background. They are the one that tends to be far more proactive at learning and trying to figure out how to answer these questions. And this is why you see so many non-finance candidates in investment banking because they tend to pass interviews. Okay, some final thoughts about the interview questions and answers. You have to make sure that you're prepared for your interviews. There's no point in working hard to get an interview and heading off to your interview unprepared. You have to get all of the answers before you even set your first foot into that interview room. Now guys, breaking into investment banking is not difficult. Every year there are thousands and thousands of non-finance candidates breaking into investment banking and they're beating finance candidates. And they're doing it by taking the shortcuts, by getting the answers, by preparing for the interviews. Things that finance candidates don't do because they automatically assume because they're from a finance background, they're automatically going to have all of the answers. Okay, so now let's move on to networking. And networking is one of the ways which you can use to get some of the answers to the interview questions. Now I think networking has been completely misunderstood specifically for the investment banking recruitment stages. Networking is different depending on where you are. In some parts of the world, if you're in North America where there is a very strong alumni culture which you can tap into in order to actually get information sessions, to get advice, to even get a job interview, that's possible in North America. But in Europe, in other parts of the world, that's not really possible for bold bracket banks because the recruitment styles are completely different. In Europe, you can only break into investment banking but specifically for bold bracket banks, the larger bank, by applying online. Now some of that also happens in North America but North America has a specific situation which includes networking as a way to break into the industry. But nonetheless, you should always network regardless of where you are because the number one priority of networking isn't to land the job but is to help you in the process of landing the job. Your number one priority when networking shouldn't be to get the job. It should be to get advice and to get answers. And the reality is, if you're going to contact someone whether you know them directly or indirectly, they are far more likely to accept a meetup if it's just going to be about a quick chat, advice or just information. But if you literally call them up or email them and say, hi, can you give me an interview? Or do you know someone that is currently recruiting? They're not going to be friendly with you because you're already asking something from them and they might not have that. When it comes to networking, your number one priority should be about learning about investment banking, learning about the lifestyle of investment banking. How do they work into investment banking? What do they do on a day-to-day basis? What do they work on? What is a pitch? What is an information memorandum? What is a financial model? What do they do on a day-to-day basis? How do they use capital IQ? Why do they use it? How do they pitch clients for deals? You have to speak to them to figure out what investment banking is and that knowledge right there, that knowledge which you're going to get via networking is exactly the type of thing which you need to leak during your interviews because then that's going to show that you really have network with bankers and you really do know the lifestyle of investment banking and you know what is expected of you when you do break into investment banking in terms of deliverables and responsibility. So that's your number one priority when it comes to networking is to find information on investment banking, the landscape, the products and services and the lifestyle, which is going to help you tremendously when it comes to your interviews. The second priority, now this is a bonus, if they can get you an interview or if they know someone that is currently recruiting to pretty much put your name forward, but that's a bonus, that's a second conversation, that shouldn't be your number one priority, that shouldn't be your first conversation because no one wants to be asked for things, no one wants to be haggled, no one wants a random stranger who they've never known to literally ask them for interviews, things that they don't even know that that person can handle. So how should you approach networking? Now this is a bit easier for some people than others. For some people, again, if you're in North America, you have a lot more opportunities than you do in Europe or in the UK or in Africa and Asia, because in North America, where there is a very, very strong alumni culture, you can always tap into that. Outside of North America, you can always try friends and family and again, embrace nepotism. It doesn't matter if your brother, your sister, your family is an investment banking, reach out to them first. And if they are in somewhat of a related industry, try and get them to put you in connection with someone that is in the industry. Try your friends, try your professor. Some professors at universities were ex-investor bankers and they might still have connections in the industry. But that said, when you're trying to network, when you're trying to find someone, always try to find someone that you know personally because if you know someone personally, it's hard for them to reject you because if you've exhausted all of your current contacts, then you're then going to resort to cold calling, cold emailing. Then again, we have a database of over 10,000 boutique investment banks in our recruitment guide, which you can always use. But that said, because you're gonna be cold calling, the success rate is gonna be pretty low because these are people that don't even know you. It's much harder for someone that knows you to reject you than for a complete stranger to reject you. So again, always contact the people that you know first. So when you do manage to get in contact with someone, how should you go about meeting them? Now, number one, you should always try to move the conversation to a phone. If you've been emailing back and forth, try to get them over the phone and arrange for a quick coffee at a local coffee shop. It could be anything from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. It has to be on their schedule. Remember, they're pretty busy, so it's going to be on their schedule most likely. And then something else. Don't ask questions which are redundant. Don't ask them, how do I get into investment banking whilst you don't even have an internship or work experience in investment banking? Because the obvious answer is going to be go and get a work experience in investment banking. So there are some questions that you shouldn't really ask because they're pretty much self-explanatory and it's just going to show how unprepared you are. Okay, so say you've scheduled a few appointments. What kind of questions should you ask? Well again, ask them questions about the industry, about the lifestyle, what they expected, how they got on, what changes they see in the industry. But don't ask them for silly things like how do I get work experience? Can you give me an internship? Because it's just going to be a simple no. If you ask them how do I get work experience, you should already know that. If you ask them for an interview or an internship on your first meeting, it's going to be too much. You have to build that relationship and of course maintain it. Every couple of weeks, at least twice a month, get in contact with them. Update them on your progress. It doesn't have to be any major thing. It doesn't have to be an essay. Just drop them two lines and just say hi. I pretty much had two interviews this month. Everything's going great. Thanks for your advice. Oh and by the way, any update on your progress? Always ask them for things that they're working on so that when you are maintaining that relationship, when you are emailing back and forth, you have something to reply to. You can always ask them, how's your project? How is that deal that you worked on? What was that thing that you were trying to do? So ask them for things that you can always follow back on when you're emailing them back later. So that's the whole point of networking. Again, so let's summarize it. In step two, you have to maximize your work experience because that's something that Investment Bank has looked for whenever they're evaluating an intern, analyst, and associate and you need to get relevant experience. The more relevant the experience, the more attractive you are and the easier it's going to be for us to believe that you can handle the job. Number two, your resume and cover letter. Now again, it has to be Investment Banking specific, otherwise we're just going to ignore it. But again, I will make a video on that later on so always check that out. And number three, Investment Banking interviews. You have to prepare for your interview. There's no point going into your interviews unprepared or just trying to wing it. Make sure you have the answers before you even step foot into that interview room. It's going to make the whole process so much easier. Number four, networking. Network to get answers and information about the industry. Otherwise, you can pretty much get all the information in the recruitment guide as well. So now let's move on to step three, which is the entry route into Investment Banking. And this is very important because depending on your current status, on your education background, depending on how old you are, depending on how many years of experience you have, it's going to be very different. The route you take into Investment Banking is going to be very different. So that said, in this video, I'm not going to cover how you go about applying into each route because that doesn't matter. That's inconsequential. Because at the end of the day, the roles, they don't change. The responsibilities of the roles, they don't change. It's how you apply to them that changes depending on where you are. So if you're in North America, how you would apply for an endless role will be different to how you would apply for an endless role in Europe or in the UK. But the role itself doesn't change. The interview questions for the roles, they don't change because again, the role is identical. So therefore, the responsibilities, the tasks that you would do on those roles, they're going to be the same. So the types of questions that you're going to get during your interviews are going to be the same. They're going to be identical. Regardless of where you are in the world, the tasks and responsibilities that you're going to have as an intern, as an analyst, as an associate is going to be identical. So therefore, the questions that you get during your interviews are identical regardless of where you are. The only differentiating factor is how you apply into these roles. Do you apply online or do you apply via networking or that's the only difference. So now we're going to begin taking a look at each of the entry routes. So now let's take a look at the first entry routes into investment banking which are internships and by far this is the easiest way to break into investment banking because if you do manage to get a summer internship, almost half of the candidates on summer internships get returning full-time offers. So if you're on a analyst summer internship, there is a 50% chance that you will get a returning full-time offer without having to compete against everyone else for the analyst role, for the full-time role. And same thing for the associate role. If you're on a summer associate program, then there's a 50% chance that you will get a returning full-time associate role. And because these are internship programs, the requirements to break into them are slightly reduced and there's not that many interview stages. So for example, for an analyst recruitment process, typically you have to go for a super day which can be anywhere from eight to 12 back-to-back interviews. And if you're in the UK, you might have four back-to-back interviews and an intensive assessment center. But for the equivalent internship, you might have a maximum of four interviews in North America and the interviews that you might have in the UK, there might be two back-to-back interviews and it might be a bit less intensive. Now, there is a caveat to this because we know that almost half the candidates are going to be coming back as full-time analysts or associates. The types of questions that we do ask them are pretty similar. But if you do get one or two technical questions wrong, it's okay, we will give you leeway for that. But we won't give you any leeway for the full-time analyst and associate role. So it is slightly easier to break in at the internship level than it is at the full-time level. Okay, so what if you don't manage to get a summer internship? Because I know they are extremely competitive. During the summer period, almost everyone is going to be applying for them. If you don't manage to get on a summer internship program, then try and get on an off-cycle program. There are off-cycle internships, which occur during term time. Now for the summer programs, for the summer internships, because everyone's out for the summer, everyone's on their summer break, demand for them is extremely elevated. However, for the off-cycle program, because they occur during term time, demand for them is slightly reduced. So it's actually easier to break in at the off-cycle internship level than it is for the summer internship level. But the level of question that you are going to get during your off-cycle program is going to be slightly more intensive. Because if you're coming in at the internship summer level, then you are going to get training. Even if you come in at the analyst or associate level, you are going to get training. But if you're going to come in as an intern, an off-cycle intern, then you're not going to get that type of training. So we are going to expect you to be able to have a good level of technical knowledge on how to build financial modules, how to build teasers, information and random. So we are going to expect that you know a bit more than your typical summer intern or even sometimes the analyst or associate, depending on the type of off-cycle internship that you're going for. So off-cycle internships, there's less demand for them, but they do require you to be really well grounded on your technicals. But regardless, summer internships and off-cycle internships are by far the easiest way to break in because at the full-time analyst and associate recruitment stages, it's a lot tougher to break in and it's a lot more intensive. Now if you're in Europe, there are spring internships which are two-week programs and again, anyone can apply for them, but that's an exception. Another exception is in North America, there are off-cycle internships which are around 20 to 30 hours a week and candidates who are both in school can apply for them as well. So they can work as well as study simultaneously and that's a great way to demonstrate just how much you want to be an investment banker. But again, it is pretty tough to balance a working investment banking schedule and your education. So next, we're going to move on to the analyst recruitment route. The analyst recruitment route is arguably one of the most competitive slots on how to break into investment banking because demand at that level is extremely high. So who can qualify for the analyst level? So candidates that have just graduated from their undergraduate or their bachelor's degree, they can apply for the analyst role. Candidates who have also just graduated from their master's, they can also apply for the analyst role as well as candidates with less than two years worth of relevant work experience. So what I mean by that is if you have been working at a big four or you might have been in the valuation team at a big four, that's relevant experience because you know how to build financial models and you can pretty much use that knowledge, that experience as a way to break in at the analyst level. And again, regardless of what you have studied before, you can use that experience and leverage that experience to justify why you want to be an investment banker. So again, candidates from their undergraduate, candidates from their postgraduate master's and candidates with two years worth of work experience. Now again, you have to have graduated from your degree and have been working for less than two years. Anything above two years, then you're gonna have to go for the associate route. So now let's switch our attention and talk about the associate route into investment banking. And the associate route into investment banking is a bit special. It's not like an analyst program or even an internship program because internships and analyst roles are geared towards more students and recent graduates. But there are some people who want to be investment bankers or they discover investment banking later on in life. So there is a specific program for them which are the MBA route or the associate route into investment banking. In order for you to qualify to be an associate, you need one of two things, either two to three years of experience of being an analyst which will then be promoted to becoming an associate or you can get an MBA at a prestigious business school which you will then be able to apply for the associate program. So the associate route are more for candidates with a bit more of a mature background. So you have more than two years worth of experience. You've graduated and it's been more than three years or four years, in that case, the only route for you is the associate route. There's no other route. You are too old to apply for the analyst route and the only route which is viable for you now becomes the associate route. But in order for you to even go about the MBA route, you need two things. Number one, their pre-experience. So their pre-MBA experience. Now they don't need to have investment banking experience nor do they need to have finance experience but they do need to have experience similar to what an associate is going to go through. So they need to be able to deal with a lot of stress. They need to have experience dealing with financial data. They need to be in positions of leadership. So their previous MBA experience, professional experience, cannot just be a series of junior roles. It cannot just be working at McDonald's or working at a retail store. It has to be a position of leadership and not just that. You also have to demonstrate that you achieved during your professional career, your short professional career, whether it's by being on track to receiving a promotion, whether it's being awarded multiple awards or accolades, you have to demonstrate that even though you no longer want to be in that career path but you still did very well in that career path. But now you want to transition and do an MBA to break into investment banking. So you need to have good quality work experience and especially at a senior level because when you go into investment banking at an associate level, you are going to be managing analysts and interns. So you need to have a position of leadership and not just junior positions. And then when it comes to the actual MBA program, when it comes to MBAs, the MBA program itself is not hard but getting into a good MBA program makes a world of a difference. Investment bankers, private equity firms, hedge funds, every major company out there, they only recruit from good MBA programs, from good business schools. And to figure out what are good business schools, then take a look at Bloomberg's ranking and financial times ranking. Investment bankers and pretty much anyone in high finance, we always refer to those two ranking when it comes to selecting business schools to have open evenings or to even recruit from. So if you're trying to pursue the associate route into investment banking, you have to make sure that you get on a good MBA program at a prestigious university and business school as well as having good work experience, prior work experience. Okay, so those are the three entry routes into investment banking, internships, analysts and associate routes. So depending on your situation, so if you're a recent graduate, then internships and analyst programs are what you should be targeting. But if you're a mature candidate, then you have to target the associate route by doing an MBA. But if you're a candidate from a non-finance background or if you're a candidate without much work experience or with poor grades, I am going to make a specific video profile targeting each one of those on how you should go about trying to break into investment banking. But just keep in mind that there are only three main routes into investment banking. The internship route, which will lead to becoming an analyst or associate or you can directly apply for the analyst role or the associate roles. So let me just take a moment and talk about the alternative career paths which are available to you right now. Now, a lot of candidates may have investment banking as their first choice, as their priority, as their number one career paths. But the options or opportunities which you have today did not exist five, 10 years ago. Now, typically candidates who are going to investment banking do two to three years as an analyst or an associate and then jump either in private equity that will exit into hedge fund, corporate development, ABC fund or whatever it may be. Investment banking was traditionally seen as a means to an end or a destination. And again, those destinations were PE, hedge fund, et cetera, et cetera. But now those candidates or those firms who used to hire ex-investment bankers because bankers, they already had the skills which they need in order to get going, those funds, those private equity funds, hedge funds, they're now recruiting undergraduates because they can now train them and they will cost a lot cheaper than ex-investment bankers. So you now have private equity funds, hedge funds competing alongside the investment banks for similar type of talent, which means that you have a lot more options available to you. So don't just take a look at investment banking. Take a look at private equity funds, hedge funds, corporate development teams. They're also recruiting for the exact same type of talent. But the only issue is investment banking because they are very loud during recruitment season. They have open evening, they have open day, they give presentations, which private equity funds, hedge funds, they might not do, it kind of silenced them out. But they're still recruiting. Just keep an eye out for them. And in some sense, because they are struggling to compete alongside investment banks, the much more louder voice, it can be even easier to break into those routes than investment banking. So I hope you've enjoyed this video and like I mentioned, this is going to be a series on how to break into investment banking. So I couldn't really cover everything in this particular video, although I tried to cover as many entry routes into investment banking and how you should generally prepare to go into your investment banking recruitment processes. In our next couple of videos, I'm going to be addressing specific scenarios. So how do you break into investment banking without any work experience or relevant experience? How do you break into investment banking? If you're not from a finance background or if you're a mature candidate. So check out those videos because I'm going to be addressing specific questions and scenarios in those couple of videos. Now, if you do want to learn more about networking, investment banking, to your questions and answers, we do have articles and videos on our site. And I will be making more specific and dedicated videos on some topic such as creating a specific resume for investment banking, networking in investment banking and answering specific questions and how to give ideal answers for them. Now, if you do want the advantage of knowing how to build a fully functioning financial model, then check out our financial modeling course where we take a complete beginner and take you through every single step, step by step as you build a financial model. We have tons of exercises on Excel and follow through guides. So definitely check out the links in the description below to learn more about those guides. So I'll see you in our next video.