How to Originate Networking Calls

In this post, we’ll explain how to effectively originate networking calls with investment banks. This process involves finding the right contacts, reaching out to contacts with the right messaging, and scheduling networking calls, also called “coffee chats”. We’ll cover how to have a productive conversation, and how to actually turn your networking calls into actual recruitment opportunities in later posts.

We’re often asked by candidates the following: when should I start networking? While there’s no definitive answer for this, it's best to start the networking process as soon as you become seriously interested in investment banking, and can answer at least a few basic behavioral questions. Do not wait until you have complete, relevant internship experience. While prospective candidates should be able to articulate their interest in investment banking and some version of their story, it's also an opportunity for them to learn about the industry first-hand in order to confirm if it might be a good fit.

Typically, waiting to network until after you have a finalized résumé and have prepared for technical and behavioral questions does not leave sufficient time to foster effective connections. Networking is a numbers game, and it might take a few months to make enough connections to give yourself a high enough chance to win an offer. While networking is a good opportunity to learn first-hand about investment banking from those who work in it, the main goal is to turn networking conversations into actual interview processes further down the road.

Finding The Right Contacts

For starters, as you think about who you want to reach out to, a solid framework is to prioritize the following in decreasing order of importance.

• Personal connections (family, friend, colleague, etc) of yours who work or have worked in IB
• Connections of your personal connections who work or worked in IB with which the immediate connection can comfortably make an intro (LinkedIn can show you connections of connections)
• Alumni from your university who work in the industry or product group that interests you
• Alumni from your university who work at firms that have industry or product groups that interest you
• Bankers with which you can make some connection (high school, hometown, college sport, etc) who work in the industry or product group that interests you
• Alumni of universities with similar caliber to yours (non-targets reach out to non-targets, etc) who work in the industry or product group that interests you
• Bankers with which you can make some connection (high school, hometown, college sport, etc) who work at firms that have industry or product groups that interest you
• Alumni of universities with similar caliber to yours (non-targets reach out to non-targets, etc) who work at firms that have industry or product groups that interest you
• Any bankers who work with an industry or product group that interests you

Of course, these aren't the only types of contacts you can target. But the overarching idea is to start with your current network, be efficient and prioritize industry or product groups that you're interested in, and focus on bankers you can make a connection with. The more a banker has in common with you, the more likely they are to relate to you and thus help you through the recruitment process. This is the core reason why we created RecruiterBase– for students to easily find the perfect networking connections.

You can also have success reaching out totally cold, and it's fine to be unsure of which team you want to join. Again, networking calls can help you drill down on this. Also, speaking to those who've worked in investment banking but do not currently work in investment banking anymore is very much so worth it, especially for those early on in their recruitment / networking journey. These people generally have more time on their hands, and are still able to speak about the industry and recruitment in an unbiased manner. Chances are they still have friends at investment banks that they can introduce you to if you make a good impression.

Our comprehensive investment banking contact database makes finding relevant contacts a breeze. LinkedIn, LinkedIn X-Ray, RocketReach, and other legacy tools used to find investment banking networking contacts can indeed work, but they’re highly limited. Not many people know this, but LinkedIn searches only surface profiles that are public. Of course, verified emails aren’t included, unlock RecruiterBase. Reaching out on LinkedIn can work, but bankers spend way more time in their work inbox. Most rarely or never check LinkedIn! Not to mention, it can be difficult to find investment bankers in specific product or industry groups. If you have an idea of the type of team you want to join, it’s not a good idea to waste time networking with bankers on teams that don’t interest you given they usually don’t have much connectivity to other places within the firm.

The best way to find contacts is to get on RecruiterBase and find investment bankers at firms and product / industry groups that excite you. Then, refine your search to find bankers that have a lot in common with you, such as university / high school, personal interests, greek life, sports played, business fraternities, ethnicity, hometown, etc. All of these are criteria with which you can search and filter on RecruiterBase

Organizing Your Networking

This step is not required, but for many candidates, it might be helpful to create a tracker for the contacts they want to network with and have had conversations with. For more organized candidates, consider configuring a spreadsheet like the below that shows basic contact info, status, and any notes that might be helpful:

Obviously, you can customize the columns and anything with respect to your tracker. Though this approach will help you plan outreach as well as follow ups. Eventually it will help you track with which banks you have strong networking ties that might help you enter formal recruitment and help push you forward in the process. High-achieving candidates might have trackers that are hundreds of rows long that they maintain and update throughout their entire finance career.

Reaching Out to Contacts

For starters, cold outreach might feel awkward and uncomfortable. However, it is totally normal and most bankers receive multiple cold emails per week or even per day. They most likely sent a lot of cold emails themselves when they were recruiting, so they expect to get this outreach. With that in mind, they also know the difference between good and bad outreach. It is important to keep in mind that the best outreach messages also include unique, original content, and ideally (but not required) some kind of connection. With the degree of detail for each contact present in our networking database, finding bankers with which you can make these unique connections should be quite simple. Here is an example of concise, effective cold outreach email.

Of course, this is just a single example of an illustrative message that would be considered acceptable outreach. Investment bankers are incredibly busy, so concise messages that maintain a solid structure and format, and a connection typically will get the highest response rate. Also, do not email too many contacts from the same firm, at the same seniority level, around the same time. They might sit near each other and talk about you! This happens very frequently.

There is absolutely zero tolerance for typos in your message given the importance of attention to detail with respect to entry level investment banking roles. While it may be annoying, take the time to proofread your outreach carefully. Most email service providers like Gmail have a setting which gives you a 30 second window after sending an email to undo the delivery of the message. A lot of candidates find this very helpful so they can retract their message if they find last-minute typos. If you send an email with a typo, luckily there's not a high chance that the recipient will actually recognize the typo if it's minor. They will realistically take 2 to 3 seconds to look at your message, realize it’s a coffee chat and decide whether or not to speak with you. Still, don't send outreach with typos.

For initial outreach messages that don't get replies, it is important to send follow-up messages. However, you must find a balance between being persistent without being annoying. Persistence and determination are enticing qualities to exude. We generally recommend sending no more than three follow-ups, each in 3 to 4 day intervals. This is where having a tracker can be especially helpful. Keep your follow-ups very short, like one to two sentences and simply point the recipient's direction toward your initial message.

Some candidates also ask us whether in-person or Zoom / phone calls work best. Banker preferences on this front may vary. While in-person conversations might serve to be more memorable, it's obviously easier for most bankers to just take the call remotely. From the candidates perspective, both can be effective. To acknowledge different preferences in this regard, after you get a reply, consider requesting to "hop on a quick call" or "grab a coffee / lunch" and let the recipient defer to their own preference / convenience. Of course, this really only applies for candidates who live in proximity to New York, San Francisco, Chicago, or other investment banking hubs where meeting in-person is feasible and not too convenient.

Scheduling Networking Calls

As replies trickle in, it's best to schedule the coffee chat in the most concise way possible. If the bankers' reply includes a date or time, then offer to send a calendar invite for then. Don't actually send it without asking, given it's possible they might prefer to send you the calendar invite depending on their scheduling logistics or firm policies. It's still best to make the offer initially, however.

Sometimes a reply might just say something like "happy to chat" or "when are you free." For these, you can quickly send over a simple list of 3 to 5 availability windows, including dates and times. Make sure to put the times in the time zone of the recipient (which can be inferred based on the location they list on LinkedIn) while specifying the time zone as well. Unfortunately, a lot of candidates still get confused by time zone discrepancies, and even miss schedule conversations, which is an immediate turn off. To be efficient, in the same email that you include your availability, you can also offer to send a calendar invite for whenever you and the banker might align. Make sure to not send a calendar invite for longer than 30 minutes, unless specified by the recipient, as that is the standard length for a coffee chat of this nature.

Keep in mind once your call is scheduled. There is a high chance that the banker will reach out to reschedule it, and this might even be relatively last minute. When working on fast paced live deals, networking conversations with prospects tend to be low priority, which hopefully is understandable. Offer to be flexible as the schedule of your counterpart evolves and happily update the calendar invite if they become too busy to take the call during the initial slot.

Key Takeaways

• Networking is by far the most important part of your recruiting process and absolutely integral for breaking into investment banking
• Begin networking immediately upon developing interest in investment banking, as waiting until you have finalized résumés and complete preparation leaves insufficient time for building connections
• Prioritize contacts methodically, starting with personal connections, then connections-of-connections, alumni from your university in product / groups of interest, and finally other bankers with whom you share some commonality
• Consider using RecruiterBase to efficiently find relevant contacts and verified emails, as LinkedIn searches only surface public profiles and most bankers rarely check their LinkedIn messages
• Send concise emails that highlight unique connections like the example above
• Limit follow-ups to three in total at 3-4 day intervals, and avoid emailing multiple contacts at the same seniority level within a firm simultaneously
• When scheduling calls, specify time zones clearly if needed, keep meetings to 30 minutes, and graciously accommodate rescheduling requests