Monkey Business Read Online Free PDF Page B

You’re a great guy and we want to talk to you. Before we discuss what we
     have to ask you, though, do you have any other offers from any other investment banks?”
    They wanted to know if I had any other offers to corroborate their belief that I was a suitable candidate to work at their
     firm. If I had no other offers, then I was a dud and they, too, should think of me as a loser and not worthy of working for
     them. It was a weird, insecure game the investment banks played.
    “Yes, two others,” I said. I actually only had one other offer and one pending, but I wanted them to think that I was a desirable
     candidate. They took the bait and the heavy ammunition came out. The mating dance was stepped up a notch. And now they didn’t
     just want to mate, they wanted to make passionate love.
    “Well, we want you to work for DLJ. You’ll get paid the best here and you’ll be treated well. Come on, jump aboard. You’re
     our favorite guy. We can see you really excelling at DLJ. You remind me of Les Newton [a very young and very successful banker].
     Yes, you could move ahead quickly. We’re also thinking of paying more this summer. Maybe a stipend or a bonus at the end of
     the year.”
    More money. That was good, especially because I was paying for business school and I needed the cash. DLJ was an up-and-coming
     investment bank known for its aggressive style and above-market compensation. The top brass were young, and I figured that
     rapid acceleration through the ranks at DLJ was achievable. Unlike some ofthe larger firms such as Salomon, Lehman, and Merrill, DLJ was a lean, mean, overpaying hotshot machine. I thought that I
     would fit right in. “OK,” I said. I was in.
    That was it. It all happened so fast. It sounds sort of anticlimactic, but it’s the truth. I truly had no idea what I was
     in for even though I’d been an analyst before. With this one-minute conversation, I had sealed my fate for a summer job as
     well as for permanent employment after business school. I had made a career choice. I thought that I was on my way to heaven.
    Troob knew the game, that was his advantage. I didn’t, which meant that the path I took in order to catch the brass ring was
     a little bit more circuitous. While the usual suspects like Troob were getting slotted for interviews with every imaginable
     bank, the career-changers like me were fighting for the remaining scraps. We had to become banking whores—sending our résumés
     to absolutely every bank with the hope of landing that elusive summer associate employment opportunity. As for me, the distribution
     of over forty résumés and cover letters had landed me exactly three interviews: one with a money management firm and two with
     investment banks—First Boston and DLJ. The grand plan of heading back to business school, landing a great summer job, and
     then moving on to greater glories after graduation had begun to crumble before my eyes.
    By the time I rolled into my interview with DLJ, the crumbling of the dream was one step closer to being complete. I’d already
     punted on my first two interviews. The First Boston interview had taken a turn for theworse when it became clear to the interviewers that I had no idea what an investment banker actually did. I was promptly dismissed
     from their hiring roster. I’d always assumed that I could figure out that piece of the puzzle later on, but they saw it differently.
     Following that debacle, I concluded that my only shot at redemption would be to play it straight—admit that I was ignorant
     to the ways of Wall Street but was willing and able to learn quickly. I could tell them that I had the tools but not the instructions.
     I thought that I might be able to pitch naïveté as an advantage, a fresh perspective in a jaded investment banking world.
    It worked. At least for a while.
    I walked into my first-round interview with DLJ and, by a stroke of good fortune, happened to be face-to-face with two of
     the