Investment Banking Networking Guides

Networking leads to interviews because it makes you familiar before your resume ever lands in the application pile. Plenty of firms keep internal trackers where bankers log which students they spoke with, how the conversation went, and whether the candidate came across as prepared, normal, and genuinely interested in banking.

If you work your way up to Vice Presidents or Managing Directors, those are people with the ability to push a resume forward. Junior-level calls still count, though. Analysts and associates are frequently asked for input when interview lists get built, and a few positive conversations can be enough to get your name mentioned.

Some banks also lean on school teams or alumni groups to decide who gets interviewed out of a given university. A few analysts and associates who went to Cornell, for example, may end up reviewing the Cornell applicant pool. At those firms networking carries extra weight, because the person on the other end of your call may be sitting close to the decision.

The second payoff comes once you actually have the interview. Your answer to "why us" is far stronger when you can name specific people you spoke with and explain what you learned about the firm, the group, or the culture. That lands better than saying you like the bank because it is prestigious.

Networking feels unnatural to most people and can seem daunting, especially since you probably do not have much in common with a 24-year-old analyst, let alone a 50-year-old director. Work up to it. Your first call should not be with a Managing Director who starts firing technicals at you five minutes in. It is rare for bankers to hound you with technicals on a networking call, but it happens. Begin with people you already know, like your parents' friends or alumni you are friendly with.

Personal connections are your best bet and will almost always take the call. Alumni are the next tier and will usually go further out of their way for you than a stranger would. Alumni response rates swing a lot by school and bank, but anything above 10% is considered good.

Once you have exhausted the alumni list, a Chrome extension that pulls emails straight from LinkedIn will let you keep going. Be realistic about what happens next: cold response rates at prestigious banks are atrocious, and you should expect something below 5%, probably closer to 1%.

One filter matters more than the rest. Only network with people working in locations you would actually accept. Building a relationship with the Chicago team usually will not help you land a New York offer.

Email is the gold standard here, since LinkedIn cold messages are usually ignored. There is no magic template, but the following guidelines will get you most of the way there:

1. Absolutely do not send the same email to every banker. At a minimum, personalize it to their bank or group. Mentioning shared ground such as school, sports, Greek life, or hobbies helps.
2. Attach your resume.
3. Include your availability in the email. A flexible schedule makes it much easier for a banker to slot you in.
4. Send on weekdays, ideally Monday through Thursday, sometime between 8:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. I recommend writing them at night and using Outlook or Gmail's schedule-send feature.
5. Do not email the same team repeatedly in one day. Four analysts in the Industrials group at one bank within 10 minutes is a bad look.
6. Send one follow-up, roughly a week later. Nobody wants to be spammed by automated follow-up software.
7. Reply as fast as you can, and when you do, ask for a phone number if it is not already in their signature.
8. Once you have agreed on a time, send a calendar invite. In Outlook that is as simple as inviting their email to a 15-minute event.

Once a banker agrees to speak with you, the main goal is to leave a positive impression. That does not mean sounding like an expert. It means being prepared, easy to talk to, and thoughtful enough that they would be comfortable taking another call or pointing you toward someone else.

Different bankers run these calls differently. Some want a casual conversation and have no interest in answering a list of boring questions for 15 minutes. Others are glad to talk about deals, groups, recruiting, and the work itself. Be ready for both.

Try to make it feel like a real conversation instead of a Q&A checklist. When they finish an answer, ask a natural follow-up rather than jumping to the next prepared question. If the conversation is dry, keep it around 15 minutes. If it is going well, let it run while still respecting their time.

Near the end, ask whether there is anyone else they would recommend you speak with. A fair number of bankers will introduce you to other alumni or colleagues, and that is one of the best ways to grow your call volume. It will not always work. Intro emails get ignored and some people will just say no. That is normal, and after a few calls the whole thing starts to feel much more natural.

Send a thank-you email within 24 hours of the call. Mention a few things you learned or something specific you discussed. These really do not need to be anything elaborate. Just be respectful and be brief.

If your calls happened between October and December, reach back out when applications open to re-spark the connection and improve the odds they remember your name. That second touch is usually what separates a contact from a name in someone's inbox from three months ago.

The honest answer is that the number is very vague. It is entirely possible to get interviews with no networking at all, though usually only with a very strong resume. On the other end, I have spoken to students with 15+ calls at a single bank, and anything above five is considered great.

Quality over quantity applies here as much as anywhere. One strong connection can push you over the edge in a way that five forgettable calls never will.

As a quick disclaimer, the more competitive the role, the more networking it takes. For Sales and Trading, Equity Research, and Corporate Banking, networking is generally less essential than it is for core Investment Banking.