Strategy to Crack a London Investment Bank (front office) Offer - Leo Mun’s success

Leo Mun’s journey was quite challenging from the get go since he wanted to crack an offer with an investment banking front office team, specifically in the UK. As one of our UK students, he was pursuing his degree at the London School of Economics.

Since London investment bank front offices do not prefer hiring non-native English speakers, we were concerned that it would hamper Leo’s chances of getting an offer. In spite of his outgoing personality, Leo’s target would be elusive even if we just focused on whetting his communication and technical skills. 

As he joined our 2-year coaching program, in the first year we encouraged Leo to kick start his career preparation early. We wanted him to network aggressively in addition to building up his technical knowledge on financial products with persuasive communication skills for sales and trading roles. We had him applying for almost all insider programs and he managed to secure two spring week offers. After spring week, our team worked with him to prepare for the fast track return summer offer. However, he failed to crack the fast track route since it does not guarantee entry to all students.

But Leo did not give up after the setback and instead kept working persistently, applying to about 50 positions, attending networking events, connecting with professionals on LinkedIn, requesting for their insights and advice. 

In retrospect, a well-thought out and sharp strategy suited to Leo’s unique case did the trick for him. He secured 2 front office offers, one in S&T and another in private banking with tier-1 banks in the UK. 

The key to break into UK front office roles is that you need to show an international mindset so that you can cater to not just Chinese clients but also clients from other nationalities. Therefore balancing networking with grooming technical knowledge and persuasive communication was crucial given that the ask from your personality is much higher. 

If you aspire for a consulting career and seem to be hitting a roadblock, you’ll need to assess multiple aspects of your application. We’ll show you how you can find the weak spots and turn them into your strengths.

Like this if you find it inspirational!

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