Prior to attending NYU Stern, Ashwin Advani (Stern, ‘20) didn’t have plans to pursue a graduate degree, but after exploring a few paths, he realized he wanted to build a future career with leadership opportunities, and decided to get an MBA. Upon landing at Stern, Advani decided to recruit for Investment Banking, and successfully earned both an internship and full-time offer in this field. In this interview, Advani shares his journey for how he made it to NYU Stern, how he overcame his weaknesses in the recruiting process, and his advice for prospective and future MBA students.
MBASchooled: What did you do prior to NYU, and why did you choose to come to business school?
Prior to NYU, I had a winding and non-traditional career, and I never expected to pursue a graduate degree. I had taken risks to make a few drastic career changes and, in the process, gained experience in management consulting, healthcare, international development, and with tech start-ups. After graduating from the George Washington University with a degree in International Affairs, I spent nearly five years in management consulting, working on a large federal healthcare project in DC. Once that project finished, I explored different volunteer opportunities and internships to figure out my next step, including working as a soccer coach at a local public school.
Eventually, I decided to move abroad to India to pursue my interests in public health and international development. I started with a trial internship that turned into a short-term consulting position, and ultimately, helped me gain acceptance into the AIF Clinton Fellowship program, where I supported local NGOs in the maternal/newborn health and gender-based violence space for a few years. I found that experience to be rewarding, but knew there was more room for me to grow professionally. I joined and became in charge of growth at an early-stage start-up in an unrelated field: e-commerce for furniture and interior design. After nearly two years building the start-up, and nearly five years working in India, I knew that I wanted to return home to the US and felt that an MBA made sense for me.
I primarily wanted to pursue my MBA for its long-term value in building a career with leadership potential and perpetual growth opportunities. In the short-term, an MBA could help me settle back into the US professionally, learn technical skills in finance and refine business skills I had developed informally. While I didn’t necessarily have specific medium or long-term goals, I saw value in expanding my network, the doors that an MBA can open in terms of professional opportunities, and giving me a better basis and pedigree to stand upon if I ever needed to pivot or work abroad again.
MBASchooled: What did you decide to recruit for, and why? How did you come to this conclusion?
I truly came to Stern with an open mind and thought I would explore opportunities with health tech start-ups. My focus for the MBA was never about the short-term, but I never considered investment banking to be a relevant option for me. Honestly, at orientation I quickly found investment banking as an appealing option to improve my financial skill-set, work in a dynamic learning environment, and have an impact on a large scale, potentially in healthcare. I realized that it was a unique opportunity given the timing to break into the field, Stern’s strength in industry, and how it could change my career trajectory. I justified the idea to attend my first information session with the thought that if I failed, I knew that I would learn a lot in the process and be better prepared for what I had planned to be a non-traditional job search in the spring semester. Throughout the process, I understood how investment banking fit with my existing skill-set and my long-term goals, and I felt incredibly lucky to have Stern as a unique platform to make the difficult pivot into investment banking. Looking back, I’m even more so grateful for the support from my Stern community that I’ve received to make those goals a reality.
MBASchooled: What were some of the highs and lows you faced in the recruiting process?
The low points of center around the black box of the investment banking recruitment process: you’re never secure in knowing where you stand, not knowing why you are making it to the next rounds, and never knowing why you get cut by certain banks.
As corny as it sounds, the highs of recruiting were the friends I made along the way, and the laughs that we shared about our frustrations, failures, and overall awkwardness of the process.
MBASchooled: What was the interview process like?
The recruiting process is a long rollercoaster and different for each bank and office, but the whole process feels like one big interview. The process starts with Corporate Presentations (inclusive of networking sessions) and Lunch & Learn sessions, moves to coffee chats and finally, invite-only networking events. Certain banks, teams, or offices might treat coffee chats like interviews or might operate on different timelines, but generally, for on-campus recruiting you receive interview invites in December. The first round of interviews take place over a two-day period on-campus for all banks for generally a first round technical/behavioral interview, from which you find out quickly if you are invited to the second round or super-day at the bank’s offices for interviews with senior bankers.
To prepare from a technical and behavioral standpoint, we formed small groups to nail down the material and tailor our stories, and used the resources from MBA2s and the Office of Career Development to get feedback on our progress (more on that in the next question). I am still truly amazed about how supportive the community had been to ensure that we would succeed in the interview, particularly from my fellow classmates who never made it feel as though we were competing with one another. I certainly would not have succeeded or been prepared for the interviews without the help of my Stern classmates and mentors.
MBASchooled: The IB recruiting process can be challenging. How did you manage these challenges?
Staying humble. Although I grew more knowledgeable and slightly more confident as the process wore on, I never felt comfortable and always felt that I had to prove myself.
Furthermore, I truly believe you can’t get anywhere in the process without help, and to me, that is where the NYU community shines the most. I found that in many forms: super supportive alumni that become my champions, Stern’s Graduate Finance Association (GFA) that prepared us for each step of the process, great MBA2 mentors that listened to us and provide invaluable support (shoutout to Steve Carey and Shamit Munjal), fellow classmates that want you to succeed more than they want themselves to succeed, and of course, the Career Development Office whose empathetic administrators kept us organized and focused throughout the process.
MBASchooled: As a career switcher, what parts of transitioning were the areas that you had to really strengthen? What were the parts where you felt more confident?
I knew that my greatest weakness was having very little prior experience in finance and accounting, but I also knew that Stern and the GFA provided all the tools, resources, and environment for me to learn the concepts, demonstrate growth in those areas, and solve questions and communicate the answers. I can’t say that I ever fully felt confident in becoming an investment banker, but I did appreciate that I could draw upon my diverse, significant, and non-traditional professional experience to stand out and build genuine rapport with bankers to demonstrate my strengths, cultural fit, and adaptability.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have, for those who are trying to use their time in business school to transition to a new career?
If you know exactly what you want to do as far as internship/full-time recruiting is concerned, then that is great and you can use the time before school to flesh that out and gain a better understanding of how to prepare yourself for the experience and improve your understanding of the industry. On a more existential level, my advice can be used interchangeably between career-switchers and candidates looking to build upon their career:
- Don’t be transactional. Help others even if you don’t see an immediate benefit to you, and be mindful of asking others for help (ie being considerate of their time, being fully prepared, etc).
- Keep an open mind and trust the process. The journey matters, and you never know what you will discover during the journey about yourself or your interests, especially when so much is out of your control.
- Challenge yourself for the short-term, but position yourself long-term. It’s important to be honest with your weaknesses, and understand how you can use your strengths to overcome the barriers to breaking into a new career.
- Your community (formal/informal networks from school and outside of school) are really what opens up doors for you and can serve as your champion when you are pursuing a career change, and help you best understand how to position yourself in a low stakes setting.
- Business school opens you to a world of opportunities but it is still up to you to take advantage of the opportunities, seek help, and improve upon your weaknesses and skill-set.