Finance Recruiting and the Pressure to Pick a Career at 18 

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A few nights ago, I was sitting in my dorm staring at the ceiling, crushed by an unidentifiable pressure. I had just folded myself into one of our room’s blocky wooden chairs to start work for one of my finance clubs when I found myself wondering how I ended up here.

I’m a freshman, two months into school and already a member of three finance clubs, and I know I’m not the exception. Talking with friends, I’ve realized I’m far from alone in feeling that people our age face undue pressure to know what we want to do, much more than previous generations did. For Pete’s sake, I know a freshman who already has a finance internship and works 20+ hours a week on top of classes and clubs. 

We’ve lost the plot. 

I applaud ambition and drive, but at some point, extra commitments stop being curiosity and start costing us our freedom. I enjoy studying markets and investing, and a career in banking interests me, but I believe the current culture of finance recruiting and the pressure on young adults to lock in a career before they’ve had a chance to explore is unhealthy. To understand why my generation feels pressure to choose a career before we’ve formally declared a major, we have to look at how the rising cost of college has turned career exploration into a luxury and recruiting into an arms race that no student can afford to sit out. 

When tuition and everyday costs climb, choosing financially high-return-on-investment (ROI) majors like finance feels less like pursuing a passion and more like a survival strategy. The cost of college in the 21st century has increased at a rate 41.7% faster than inflation, with the average cost of college tuition and fees climbing 93.2% since the 2005-2006 academic year. Degrees now cost six figures, and “exploring” majors has begun to feel like a luxury only some students can afford. Now, students who take out loans are more likely to choose substantially higher-salary jobs than low-paid “public interest” jobs, it is no surprise, then, that undergraduate business enrollment has ticked up in recent years, with finance and accounting enrollment rising 9.4% and 8.9%, respectively, over the past year.

With the cost of higher education at an all-time high and the Trump administration’s opposition to mass student loan forgiveness, it seems the trend toward enrollment in high-ROI majors is not slowing down. As more students crowd into finance, competition for the best candidates heats up, and firms race to lock in high-performing students earlier. 

Like fishermen rising at dawn to beat their rivals to the best catch, big banks have moved their recruiting earlier to lock up top talent before competitors can. For students, this means deciding early not just whether finance is the right path but which sector of it, since the most competitive internship applications open at least a year before the start date. 

To me, that’s scary. It’s frightening to think that less than a year ago, I was celebrating the end of senior year at prom, and in about a year, I will be networking and applying for internships that make a career in banking possible.

 I know I am not required to accept a return offer after my internship, but who would I be, a 20-year-old with little experience, to decide whether a career in banking is right for me? The prefrontal cortex, which manages emotions, self-control, and decision-making, continues to develop into the mid-20s. Banking’s prestige and allure are powerful, potentially making it difficult for young adults to distinguish whether they enjoy working in finance or just the idea of it, especially at an age when the brain is still maturing. 

Finance recruiting is a collective action problem, a situation in which every participant would benefit from a shared outcome, but each one’s self-interest discourages the cooperation needed to reach the desired result. In this case, banks would collectively gain from delaying internship timelines. A later start would provide firms with more than two semesters of coursework and real work experience to evaluate, while widening their talent pool to include strong candidates who discover an interest in finance after freshman year, not just those who rushed to start networking the moment they arrived on campus. Yet no individual bank can afford to delay recruiting while competitors continue to secure top talent early. Phil Colaco, CEO of Deloitte Corporate Finance, recognized the pressure of early recruiting timelines, lamenting, “I wish that wasn’t the case, but that is the world we live in.” Colaco’s comment demonstrates how the structure of the job market, rather than any single firm’s preferences, drives the practice of early recruiting. It also suggests how difficult it will be for the finance world to loosen its hold on our generation’s talent without coordinated collective action.

Honestly, I don’t think the unhealthy pattern of early recruiting is going away soon. Real change would mean making college less of a financial burden so students can explore their interests. It would also require imposing an industry-wide recruiting framework that ends the race among banks to open applications before their competitors. Both are uphill systemic battles. 

In the meantime, I believe the best thing students can do is stay aware of their own values and keep asking whether the path they are on, whatever it may be, is the right one for them, even if it is uncomfortable. By no means am I perfect. I am guilty of overcommitting to finance clubs and am still looking to apply for internships next year. But the next time I’m sitting at my desk wondering how I got here, I will pause and take that question seriously instead of pushing it aside. 

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This article was edited by Brianna Leathem Brazzini.