What did I do in J.P. Morgan's "Inside the Industry" event?

I attended a two-day recruiting event of JP Morgan in Hong Kong. Here is some basic information about what did I do and some of my thought.

A brief introduction to this event

It mainly targeted the student studying abroad. It contains two parts: the introduction to JPM and case study.

The Introduction

At 10 A.M., 16th July, the morning session kicked off. There were four people introducing the four major pillars, Wealth Management, IBD, Asset Management and Market.

Wealth Management: A MD talked about how WM in the greater China region functioned after gave an overview of JP. Where were their hubs? and what solutions do they provided with?

IBD: The speaker shared what an analyst/intern typically did when dealing with a case, like what was the workflow. He also explained what were the different teams under IBD doing and what industries did JP cover.

Asset management: What is JPMAM doing. The feature of JPMAM (e.g. The platform they used; the products they like). The cooperation cycle of different teams.

Market: All the sharing was done in Q&A. This division is under IBD. It does Sales & Trading, research and structure.

My thoughts: Initially, I prefer AM and Market, but after hearing the presentation, I found WM and IBD more attractive. And the reasons lie in:

1. I thought AM was all about investment analysis, trying to create alpha for our institutional clients. However, it needs to care about how to design a product and how to sell those products to the distribution.
2. My math is not bad. I wanted to go for something more "quant." However, the director gave me a feeling that he cared more about numbers than people. This does not match my personality. I like to meet people and solve people's problems. However, maybe this feeling resulted from the not well-prepared presentation. (All in Q&A form is not so ideal in my opinion.) I need to double-check what will working in Sales and Trading be like.

Case Study

There were four cases corresponding to the four pillars. Attendees would do one or two cases.

I took part in the AM case. Yet, I asked some other people about what were the other cases like. And these were what I got: (I am not allowed to share too detailed info.)

IBD: It was about M&A. We need to choose a company to acquire. Use some financial numbers to tell the reasons.

Market: Stock pitch. Some pieces of news were given. According to these pieces, pick a company and do a pitch.

AM: Try to sell some JPMAM's product to distribution. There was a product pool and the "client" was designated.

WM: Propose a wealth management plan to a client. The background and the preference of this client were given.

My thoughts: The case study was nice. The attendees could know more about the tasks that would probably face if we really enter the company while the company could see who were qualified for being their interns by observing our performance during the case study. Nevertheless, there was some room left to be improved. The schedule: Before the event, we were told that the event was from 10:00 to 19:00. However, the case was normally less than half a day, which means we can go home earlier when our parts were done. This is fine, but I think this could be informed earlier so that I could plan my day a bit more. I just feel not so good when I travelled here from Taiwan and did less than I expected. Yet this is not a big deal. I enjoyed exploring HK very well.

Another point is that I think I should really train my group work skill. To stand out from the crowd, I have to know better when should I speak and how to lead a team.

Conclusion

Overall speaking, it was a really nice event. The workers here all performed professionally. All the activities were well-organized. By getting in touch with the insiders, you know what kind of people do they prefer. For example, by chatting with a Korean associate, you can peak the reason why they held an event for students studying abroad - they need people who can work in an international environment. For another example, you can see the different personality of different people from different departments. You can ask yourself: am I this kind of person? Ask this question to know whether you fit this department, whether you want to work with them.

The case study was also nice. The role-play way made me feel like I was really trying to sell our products. Moreover, the judges gave some useful feedback as well.

Most importantly, I made some friends here. I wanted to enter Hong Kong or Beijing and Shanghai job market in the future, so it is always good to have some friends there.

I know that my past experience and GPA might not support me to enter JPM. Nevertheless, attending these kinds of events can help me "stay in shape," not being so lazy, and also gave me more opportunity of entering a company, know what are they doing and know more people. Therefore, I would recommend everyone who is interested in JP to attend it next time. JPM in HK is awesome, and I am gonna keep enjoying the rest of the day in this amazing city. ??