GUEST COMMENT: What to do if you didn't get a full time offer from an investment bank

If full-time recruiting season is over and you don't have any offers, you should be panicking at least a little.

While summer interns who don't get return offers have a few months to fix the situation, if you're a final year student your options are more limited.

But that doesn't mean you have no chance of getting full-time offers - so here's what to do.

Worst-Case Scenario

You might think the worst case scenario is not getting a full-time job, but that's not true - there are two scenarios that are worse:

1) Putting yourself in a position where it's nearly impossible to break into finance in the future.

2) Moving into a job that's difficult to leverage for business school or eventually breaking into finance.

#1 happens most often when you get the brilliant idea to go to business school straight out of university... oops.

#2 is not the end of the world, but you still want to avoid it unless you absolutely, desperately need the income in the short-term.

If those are the 2 worst-case scenarios, then the best-case scenario is simple: whatever maximizes your chances of breaking in without limiting your options or wasting time on things that won't help you in the long-term.

Why you shouldn't go to business school straight out of university

It's a big mistake to go to business school with minimal full-time work experience.

How much do you need?

At least 3-5 years. People from business school join investment banks as associates and we basically threw out resumes of associate candidates who had less experience.

Yes, there are plenty of good reasons to go to business school if you want to use it for something else, but going immediately after undergraduate is a recipe for disaster if you want to get into banking from your program.

And be careful that your work experience is actually "full-time" - a bunch of side projects or travel combined with teaching English and intermittent work won't stack up to the guy who managed a $1 billion product line for 4 years.

The other big problem with going to business school right after undergrad is that if you don't get into finance when you're there, your future chances also drop dramatically.

Why you shouldn't get a job in the back office

For the last time, back office to front office moves - at least for investment banking - are rare and very difficult to pull off.

Yes, it may work slightly better in other fields and some people pull it off successfully, but you need to think about the probability.

What will give you a higher probability of eventually moving to a large bank's investment banking division - starting in the back office, or going to a boutique first and then making a lateral move?

Please, stop the insanity and go for front office roles at smaller firms rather than "taking what you can get" and making the back office your backup.

Why you shouldn't get a normal job

By "normal" I mean not related to finance at all - marketing, engineering, medicine, etc. Corporate development, wealth management, consulting, and the like don't qualify.

I would only "settle" for this if you've been out of school for months, have networked extensively, are doing all the right things, but still have no offers and you really need income in the short-term.

What you SHOULD be doing instead

Here are 5 viable options. They're not mutually exclusive, and there's no "best" option - everything depends on your own situation.

Master's in finance program

A common plan, and also not a bad move. It's good if:

· You're using it to move to a better-known school where banks recruit.

· You didn't do enough networking and need more time and better access to

recruiters. .

· You could also use some more impressive-looking internships. .

A Master's programme is a bad move if -

The reason you didn't get a job was your poor interview skills.

Keeping at it

This one gets overlooked, probably because it's not as "exciting" as the other options.

If you keep cold-calling and networking, you'll eventually get something - the only way to fail is if you give up first. Even if you graduate without a firm plan in place, that's still better than taking the wrong job.

You should think about this option if:

You have a decent amount of work experience but you lack a good network and need time to build it.

You don't mind going for smaller banks at first and then making a lateral move.

Set a target of making 10 calls per day, sending 10 emails per day, and so on, and never take "no" for an answer.

Mini-retirement

I'm referring to my suggestions on what to do with time off before you start working full-time: moving to another country for a few months and doing something interesting.

This one can work but it's more risky than the others since it puts you out of the game for quite a while - if you do this for an entire year after graduation, for example, it's tough to jump back into recruiting.

It's more viable if you combine this with the other options above - so maybe you apply to grad school, but take 1-2 months in between to go on an adventure.

That way you get a big boost to your networking and interview skills because you appear more interesting, plus you might get some solid leads if you go to a country with a major financial centre.

This is a guest post on eFinancialCareers, written by the author of Mergers and Inquisitions, a website dedicated to helping you break into investment banking, and to maintaining your sanity while doing so.