Graduate training programmes: an overview

When doing your research about employers, it is worth paying particular

attention to the quality of training they offer. The training you receive will form the

foundation of your career.

The first question to ask about training is a simple one: 'Does an employer

offer a graduate training course at all?' The answer will depend largely upon size.

"The large American banks make the biggest impression on a resumé. This is because

everyone assumes that people there have had good training and excellent experience,"

says Dominic Duffy at Longbridge, a headhunter.

Morgan Stanley, UBS Warburg, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank are among the large players that each take well over 100 graduate trainees in Europe per annum. Some take many more than that. Graduates entering these organisations can expect highly structured and well rehearsed training courses.

This is not to disparage the training offered by banks with smaller graduate

intakes. ABN Amro is recruiting dozens of graduate trainees in Europe in 2002, all of

whom will receive its programme of classroom-based training and on-the-job

rotation.

ING Barings' 16 London trainees will receive structured tuition. Bank of America,

which is taking 25 graduates in Europe in 2002, is offering a structured training

scheme for the first time.

Initial classroom training often takes place in the bank's country of origin.

Hence graduates at ABN Amro head for Amsterdam; most trainees at Goldman Sachs, JP

Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch are dispatched to New York;

Bank of America's new scheme takes place in New York and North Carolina.

Among the big US banks, only Morgan Stanley trains all its Europe-based graduates in

London.

Structured graduate training schemes typically come in two parts: a

classroom-based element lasting around two months, plus a system of job rotations lasting a

year or two.

There is great uniformity in the subjects included in banks' basic

training: an introduction to investment banking; financial modelling; accounting skills;

IT; team-working skills; and preparation for the numerous regulatory exams. Few

initial concessions are made to candidates with an MSc or Economics degree.

At most banks, job rotations and classroom-based training are tailored to

specific divisions. Trainees learn concepts relevant only to fixed income, equities,

or corporate finance, for example.

Similarly, trainees rotate between jobs in one division only. Tracey Bloomfield, Marketing Co-ordinator at JP Morgan emphasises that the bank effectively offers seven different programmes for seven different divisions. "If you are interested in being an investment banker, it is a very different training programme from the Credit & Rate Markets. Our training will provide graduates

with the skills needed within that specific business area.."

This presents a problem for anyone who is uncertain which division they want

to join. At many large banks, trainees may not move to a different division once they

have joined. "It is important that people research the firm and ensure they know

about and understand which business area they want to go into,' says Bloomfield.

For graduates who still don't know where they want to go even after reading

banks' descriptions of different business areas, there is another option. Smaller

organizations, such as CIBC World Markets (which is hiring 10 graduates in

2002), offer rotations across all business areas.

Some large organizations are more flexible than others. Citigroup, for example, allows around 10% of its graduate trainees to undertake rotations in divisions different from the one joined. "It can complement their skill set," says Lesley Wilkinson, head of graduate recruitment.

Most flexible of all is HSBC. In 2001, 75% of the 100 or so recruits to

HSBC's investment banking division were trained on its 'broad' programme, which

enables trainees to rotate globally between different business functions over a

two-year period.

Emma Jasper, graduate & MBA recruitment & development manager at

HSBC, says the breadth of the rotations enables graduates to make an informed

decision about their career:

"Most students coming out of university don't know in which business area they want to specialize. Broad rotations also provide trainees with a network of people and an understanding of our products and services across the bank."