Finance & Consulting

Finance & Consulting Blog

Tips for Getting Into Finance

By James Argo '22

January 17, 2023

Tags Finance & Consulting

After graduating from Hamilton in May, I started my position as an Investment Banking Analyst in Goldman Sachs’ Healthcare Group. I interned in the group in the summer of my junior year, and at the end of the summer accepted a formal offer to return to the group full time, which is typically how the pipeline works in investment banking. Currently, I cover primarily pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients and assist in providing them advice on financings, mergers and acquisitions, and a variety of other transactions.

When I started at Hamilton, I was pretty sure I wanted to major in biology, and was entertaining a career in an area like genetics research. If I’m being entirely honest, I don’t think I could have given you even a basic definition of investment banking at the time. I had a fantastic experience studying science at Hamilton, but pretty quickly realized that I wanted to interact with the field more broadly. Concurrently, I was really enjoying my economics coursework, and realized that many Hamilton alumni who had studied economics ended up working in finance, and investment banking in particular. I attended a couple recruitment events held on campus by firms like Goldman Sachs at the end of my freshman year, and also had some informal coffee chats that led me to think that investment banking might be the right fit for me.

I did essentially no networking the summer of my freshman year, and worked at a car dealership. I did however make it a point to do some reading and researching myself to learn more about finance and the jobs that are out there. In particular, I read a couple of books that provided a basic overview of what investment banking is and gave a sense of what a day in the life of an investment banker looks like.

I started my sophomore year with more conviction that investment banking was something I might be interested in, but only formally began networking in the spring semester. Over the span of the rest of the semester, and into the summer after sophomore year, I probably spoke to close to 75 or 100 people working in finance, the vast majority of them investment bankers. About 75% of these people were also Hamilton alumni. The value of the Hamilton network is something I can’t stress enough and is something anyone should seek to leverage no matter what field they want to go into. Multiple alumni, a large number of them bankers at Goldman Sachs, mentored me through the recruitment process and helped me figure out whether investment banking was right for me.

Through these conversations I discovered a few characteristics of investment banking that differentiated it among other finance roles and convinced me it was right for me. If the below appeal to you, it might be a good fit for you as well.

1. You get to spend time really understanding businesses and sectors.
2. Even at a more junior level, it can be a very client-facing business, which gives you exposure to some very interesting meetings and people.
3. The deal-driven nature of the work can make it very exciting.
4. The work is often more varied than other areas of finance, and there is a mix of more quantitative and qualitative work.
5. You sit in a seat that is in the middle of a lot of areas of finance which is a great way to learn quickly.

I interviewed at the end of the summer of my sophomore year for a junior year summer internship in the Healthcare Group within Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking division, and quickly accepted the offer after I received it. I had a great experience during the internship and decided to accept my offer to return after graduation.

Investment banking recruitment can be a daunting process, but if you are dedicated to it, you can be successful. This is not an exhaustive list, but here are the top tips that I can offer:

1. Speak to as many people as you can and fully leverage the Hamilton network. Ask people you speak to to connect you with their colleagues and friends at other firms.
2. Cast your net as widely as you possibly can in terms of the firms you recruit with. These are very competitive processes, but if you are prepared and don’t get your heart set on one particular firm, you will likely be successful somewhere.
3. Particularly if you are early in your college career, try to keep your grades up as much as you possibly can. People discuss formal GPA cutoffs at banks, but being above these ranges will make you a much more competitive applicant. In a tossup between two otherwise similar applicants, the higher GPA might end up being the deciding factor.
4. Realize that demonstrating technical competence is important but should not be the only thing you focus on. You are expected to learn on the job and interviewers are looking for you to demonstrate a willingness and ability to learn. Arguably, the behavioral component of interviewing is even more important.
5. Don’t get down on yourself if you sometimes feel like you’re failing to gain traction in the recruitment process. Keep a positive attitude and push forward with more networking and learning.