College freshman to MD at Goldmans? Act early to secure your banking career

Our student columnist and budding banker, who is in his first year at a university in Hong Kong, tells us how his classmates are already competing to land a job at a big investment bank.

JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse: these are big names, offering tantalising prospects - $500k annual salaries, inflated egos, and global travel. Despite the financial crisis, students in Asia still dream about a career as a big-shot banker.

In Hong Kong, the region's time-tested financial center and trade hub, the lure of a potential career in the financial industry is constantly rising, almost untouched by the economic recession.

As a college freshman majoring in business administration, I'd like to share some of the some common paths my fellow students have taken in pursuit of this golden-collar dream.

The first step for any freshman is to major in a business-related subject. Finance, economics, quantitative finance, global business, risk management, top the most-popular list.

Academic supremacy then becomes an entrance ticket to your dream once you have entered university.

The intrinsically motivated students always devote much of their time and energy to academic study (where their comparative advantage lies). They also build up as many other relevant qualifications and credentials as they can in order to complement their degrees.

Other, less academic students, whose resolution for being an investment banker or a hedge fund manager is no less steadfast, strive to put their eggs into different baskets. During the first year of study, some will run a campaign and assume responsibility in the executive committee of one or more student societies in the business faculty.

The rationale behind doing this is quite simple: to polish soft skills that are highly appreciated by potential employers (such as communication and leadership); to establish personal networks in the business world and get acquainted with social elites who may elicit opportunities in the future; or simply to add more weight to their CV.

But seats in executive committees won't make everyone happy. Some students will also be proactive in gathering first-hand information about their desired industry and in accumulating their network through all sorts of workshops, seminars, recruitment talks, student-run societies, and firm visits organised by their university.

Some will participate in a variety of global and regional investment competitions (and other business-case competitions) as a testing ground for all the theories they have digested in class. Job portals and career databases are also frequently used by students.

One short-cut that is widely propagated by alumni and employed by many is an even more proactive approach: sending cold emails and making cold calls to department heads or HR personnel in financial institutions.