None of the bulge bracket investment banks actively

None of the bulge bracket investment banks actively recruited at Haverford College. As a rising
junior, he had sent his resume to all of the top Wall Street firms, but Bear Stearns was one of
only two firms that invited him to interview. Most analysts in his class, who were nonbusiness
majors in college, had a similar recruiting experience. They were all very appreciative that Bear
Stearns took a chance on young people at a much greater frequency than other banks did. As
Greenberg implied, being a PSD was much more important to the company than graduating from
an Ivy League school.
The large investment banks recruited most of their classes from Ivy League schools, including
the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Harvard University,
and Yale University, because such banks looked to hire college graduates of a certain
educational pedigree. Conversely, Bear Stearns focused on recruiting PSDs, the vast majority of
which had graduated from schools outside the Ivy League. In 2006, only 10 percent of the 50-
person analyst class had graduated from an Ivy League school (see Exhibit 2). Bear Stearns’
philosophy was that non-Ivy League hires would be willing to work harder and assimilate faster
into the company’s culture. Based on the success stories of a number of senior Bear Stearns
leaders, non-Ivy League college graduates could thrive at the company and climb to the top of
the firm. Conversely, employee hires who ended up not fitting in with the Bear Stearns culture
quickly left the firm.
Bear Stearns employed similar recruiting efforts with associates (post-MBA positions) as well.
Lee, a current director with JPMorgan who had started as an associate at Bear Stearns, remarked
that Bear Stearns was the only bulge bracket investment bank to give him a chance to succeed on
Wall Street. As an ex-engineer who had attended business school, he was not the traditional
investment banking candidate. He vividly remembered walking into a Bear Stearns recruiting
event and receiving a ‘bro hug’ from a vice president of the company.
13
While he was surprised
by the vice president’s casual manner, he felt at ease with the employees at the event. “I come
from a nontraditional background, but I will be successful,” he recalled telling the Bear Stearns
people. The vice president immediately told him that “he was a Bear Stearns guy.” The firm
invited him for first-round interviews and later extended him an offer to join the firm. Lee
accepted right away.
Bear Stearns designed its interview process to weed out non-PSDs early on. During the initial
screening, the internal recruiting team invited only the top students by GPA from the non-Ivy
13
A ‘bro hug’ in the Bear Stearns culture is a combination of a handshake and a one-armed hug.

When Cultures Intersect: the Merger of Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Case-79
© T
HE
W
HARTON
S
CHOOL OF THE
U
NIVERSITY OF
P
ENNSYLVANIA
7
League institutions it targeted to interview. In contrast to the interviewing methods of other Wall