The hiring decisions are usually made in the first half of the year. The new associates and some of the analysts that are employed by SG Cowen begin internship in the summer and subsequently receive full-time employment. So the hiring process should end by the summer.
The hiring process begins in the autumn in order to have enough time for presenting the company at different business schools and participating in the on-campus recruiting programs. SG Cowen decided not to focus on the top schools, because the competition for the talents is very high there. So instead the company works with less popular schools. At first SG Cowen conducts a presentation and announces the first interview dates so that the candidates had time to prepare. The interviews are organized in two rounds and the best candidates are invited to the Super Saturday event, which is the last and the most difficult stage of the hiring process.
SG Cowen’s representatives take part in the informational interviews where the candidates can learn more information about the company. The banking professionals from SG Cowen who are alumni of the universities are also involved in the hiring process.
During the Super Saturday interviews the SG Cowen’s representatives also play an important role and take the decision whom to hire.
SG Cowen applies the following criteria when taking the hiring decisions:
A good candidate should have the capabilities of a long-term banker which include the love for work and “loving the hunt”, that is being able to compete and receive pleasure from the intensive work. Moreover, there should be a proper culture fit. Most of the employees work in the East Coast. So those candidates who are from the other regions are usually asked how they would feel working far from their home. Also the candidates should be properly dressed and should not ask the questions about the difficulties of work at SG Cowen. Therefore the main task is to find the candidates that would act like a firm and know what is expected from them.
There is a special criteria sheet that the interviewers have to use in order to assess and compare the candidates.
The criteria that the interviewers apply are very good in terms of correspondence of the candidate to the SG Cowen’s corporate culture. The interviewers, who are SG Cowen’s executives and managers, select the associates that will work in their teams. As the result, they are responsible for the hiring process and cannot blame the HR for the wrong decisions.
However, judging from the case study the hiring procedures are not formalized enough. The criteria sheet is not the best tool, because some interviewers do not want to use it and instead they rely more on their opinion and vision of a good candidate rather than the company’s vision. Therefore, they may take a decision being focused on the performance of their team instead of thinking about the integrity of the whole company.
At the same time, the criteria that SG Cowen set up are very important. The company needs the people who will strive for excellence when providing the financial services. The risk of making a mistake is reduced, because the interviewers have to make a collective decision and explain why this or that candidate should receive a chance to work for SG Cowen.
There are several good candidates in the case study and the interviewers have a to make a difficult decision. In my opinion, two best candidates would be Natalya Godlewska and Andy Sanchez. Among these two, the best candidate would be Andy Sanchez, because he has excellent entrepreneurial skills and has already realized several business ideas. Moreover, he is a very personable and dynamic person which is very important in the communication with the customers. He took part in the informational interviews and was well-prepared for the interviews. In addition, he was very polite with the interviewers and other candidates during the Super Saturday event. It seems that he would fit SG Cowen better than the other candidates. He would receive pleasure from achieving the ambitious goals set up by a small company that works in Wall Street. He said that he was ready to leave his business and it looks like he is mature enough to work for SG Cowen.
The least favorable candidate would be Martin Street. He has very good qualifications, because he studies at Wharton, which is one of the best business schools in the USA, and he is a very dynamic and self-confident person.
Nevertheless, he does not have any business experience and it is really hard to predict how well he would fit SG Cowen. More importantly, it is not clear if Martin Street wants to work for SG Cowen at all. During the first interview he said that he was involved in some other recruiting events and it was very difficult to organize his arrival to the Super Saturday event.
The last interview did not help to identify how dedicated he would be to SG Cowen and he did not persuade the interviewers that he would still join SG Cowen if he received the offers from the other companies. Therefore SG Cowen that usually invests a lot of effort and probably financial resources into the hiring process that is conducted only once a year cannot risk. There are some other candidates that SG Cowen’s representatives should consider instead. The other candidates have some working experience and they can imagine what kind of work they will do at SG Cowen. Especially those candidates that used to work for small companies should be given a chance to work at SG Cowen.
Works Cited
Delong, T., Vijayaraghavan, V. SG Gowen: New Recruits. Harvard Business School. 19
