Feedback: finance job-hunt tips - FT.com Emma Jacobs" December 19 feature, "The hard graft of finding a graduate job in the City," looked at two young men, Michael Olagunju (pictured) and Zain Abbas, who took to the streets holding placards in search of work. As someone that used to be active in recruitment for a bulge bracket investment bank, I have some direct knowledge of this area . . . entrance to the graduate training scheme was almost entirely dependent on working at least one, summer-long (paid) internship at our bank. We considered this to be a protracted interview process and the selection for internships was done as carefully as recruitment for the graduate training scheme. I suspect this is the reason why both of these maths graduates have struggled to find postgraduate employment in finance. Underminer I don't think family connections are important. But some connections are . . . Getting a graduate job requires early planning to get the right work experience, study at the right university etc. In other words you need to game the system long before your final year at uni. Some people learn this from family, some people from friends and some just figure it out.