kryzak wrote:
congrats on the good work pelihu! Good to hear that age isn't an issue so far for IB!
The results have started to come back in as firms started releasing their closed interview lists earlier this week (varies by school of course). I can definitively confirm that age was not a factor at all. Like most people, I dropped a bunch of resumes, and so far 14 of the firms I submitted for have released their lists. I'm 13/14 including those rumored to be the most competitive (GS & MS), a pedigreed hedge fund and a surprise call from Google (I think 90% of our class submitted resumes to them). The only one I didn't get, so far, is a firm where I was forced to miss their last two big events due to schedule conflicts; I chose to attend events with other firms so I think they gathered that they weren't my top choice.
Anyhow, age never came up, but I think it's important to demonstrate experience commensurate with your age - kind of like how it works for b-schools admissions. If you're just plain older and don't have impact experiences in your background, that would be difficult to overcome. I do think as an older candidate you need to demonstrate that you can get along with 20-somethings because you'll probably be spending some late nights out grinding away with them. But really, this isn't any different than most other candidates because few are 'naturals' and most people must overcome certain things.
So, the battle is only half-won at this point because there is still work to do in order to land an offer but up to this point things couldn't be better. As someone suggested elsewhere, I will try to start a thread on recruiting and schmoozing. I definitely observed some missteps that caused people a lot of grief so it might be helpful to try to learn from them.