The Way of the Wall Street Warrior

CHAPTER 4Failure as Fertilizer: The Power of Persistence

You've sent the email, what's next? Do you just leave it at that and wait? No! Have you learned nothing so far? Although landing a job might be your #1 priority, chances are that your email (which you spent so much time agonizing over) has been either quickly forgotten or has landed in the Junk box, never to be seen again. So what do you do? Persevere. Persevere. Persevere.

Herald Chen, who co-ran Technology at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and is a former Goldman Sachs banker, recalls that when he was in college, he had his heart set on landing an internship at General Motors (GM). He sent a postcard to the HR department, explaining that he was an immigrant and that his father had always bought GM cars, but when they broke down, the Chens replaced them with Toyotas. The clincher was in the next line where he wrote, “I want to work at GM to make your cars better.”

It worked. He got the job.

Here's another never-give-up story from Juan Alva, formerly of Goldman Sachs and now managing director of an alternative investment fund. Juan told me about a graduate of a midwestern university—which might as well have been University of Basket Weaving given Wall Street's preference to hire from the Ivies—who wanted to get into the investment banking division at Goldman. Now this was way before Google, so the persistent bugger called the main phone number at Goldman and continued to call every day, trying to speak with the head of ...