The most common networking mistake is not a bad email. It is a good email sent two months before an application deadline by someone who has never contacted a banker before, asking, in effect, for a relationship to be built at sprint speed. Networking is a calendar asset: its value comes almost entirely from when you started. So here is the playbook by year, including the years everyone pretends not to be in.
First year: conversations with no ask
Nobody expects a first-year to know anything, which makes it the single safest year of your life to talk to bankers. Use the immunity. A handful of conversations a term, alumni only, framed as pure curiosity: what the job actually is, how they chose their market, what they wish they had known. No CV, no process talk, no ask, because you have nothing to ask for yet and that absence is exactly what makes the conversations easy to get.
Two things compound from here. You learn the industry's vocabulary early, so that by the time interviews matter you sound native rather than rehearsed. And every person you speak to now becomes, in two years, a warm contact of long standing instead of a stranger, which changes everything about the application-season maths.
Penultimate year: the working season
This is the year networking becomes an operation and it should start 8-12 weeks before applications open, which in most markets means the summer before. The sequence: warm circles first, alumni above all, then second-degree introductions, then events, then pure cold outreach as the fallback channel, exactly the priority order the Playbook sets out. Volume looks like steady weekly sends across the season rather than a burst: enough conversations that by the time you submit, several teams contain someone who recognises your name.
Timing inside the season matters as much as volume and the When to Email Bankers article on this site maps the calendar, including why August starts are quietly wasted. Run every call off prepared questions, as covered in the coffee chat questions article, thank inside 24 hours and update your best contacts every few weeks with real progress only. That cadence, sustained for one season, is the entire visible difference between candidates who 'networked' and candidates whose applications arrived pre-endorsed.
Final year without an offer: the harder conversation
If you reach final year without a seat, the conversations change register and you should let them. You are no longer a student exploring; you are a candidate with a specific, honest situation and bankers respect the direct version: here is where I am, here is what I am targeting, here is what I have done since we last spoke. The structured process has narrowed, so the network points at the rolling one: off-cycle seats and boutiques, where a warm introduction genuinely moves outcomes, as the off-cycle article explains. This is also the year the earlier cadence pays or its absence hurts most, because contacts with history will make calls for you that new contacts will not.
Post-graduation: the version nobody writes about
Graduates without a seat often stop networking out of embarrassment, at exactly the moment it matters most. The frame that works: you are not a student asking to learn, you are a professional-in-waiting with a plan, some evidence and a specific ask for advice on the next move. Alumni still reply. Off-cycle desks still hire. The Starting Late article's rebuild sequence applies with the networking layer running through all of it and the candidates who get back in are, almost without exception, the ones who kept sending the two-line update when it was hardest to write.
The whole timeline in one paragraph
Start with no ask, years before the ask exists. Turn the contacts into an operation the summer before applications. Let the register mature as your situation does. And never let silence set in after a setback, because the network you maintain through the bad season is the one that ends it. The complete system, from the first email to the follow-up cadence, is in the free Networking Playbook at rtmentoring.com/#guide and it is deliberately written to work at every one of these stages.
FAQ
When should I start networking for investment banking?
First year, with no ask attached: a handful of alumni conversations per term. The working season starts 8-12 weeks before applications open in your penultimate year.
How many bankers should I speak to before applying?
Enough that several target teams contain someone who recognises your name: steady weekly outreach across a season rather than a last-minute burst.
Is networking still worth it after graduating without an offer?
More than ever. Alumni still reply, off-cycle desks still hire and the framing shifts from student exploring to candidate with a plan and evidence.
Former Executive Director in TMT Investment Banking at Nomura and M&A banker at BNP Paribas. Top-rated mentor with 300+ sessions. About
