September 15, 2025 • 37 mins
In the second episode of our application-season mini-series with the LSE Alternative Investments Conference (AIC), I’m joined by Yuga Kozuki, Co-President of the LSE AIC.
Yuga shares how he secured speculative roles across venture capital, M&A, and hedge funds using cold emailing strategies, automation tools, and the power of student societies. We also dive into handling pressure, reframing rejection, and using AI as a coach and mentor throughout the process.
This episode is packed with practical hacks and mindset shifts to help you navigate application season with resilience, focus, and confidence.
Perfect for any student exploring different finance paths and looking for fresh, actionable ways to stand out.
(00:00) Introduction to Alternative Investments
(01:37) Navigating University Life and Societies
(04:37) Managing Stress and Pressure
(10:05) Building Resilience Through Rejection
(12:21) Value of Networking in University
(15:47) Mastering the Art of Cold Emailing
(26:19) Interview Process for Speculative Applications
(29:53) Leveraging AI Tools for Productivity
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker podcast.
And this is the second episode of our miniseries in
collaboration with the London School of Economics Alternative
Investments Conference. And I'm joined by Yuga Kazuki.
He's the LSEAIC Co President. And we're going to unpack the
unconventional methods students can take to secure internships.
(00:22):
And I know Yuga, you've landed speculative roles in the likes
of VC, M&A and major European Investment Bank and the hedge
fund in the past summer or so. So I, I know you've got lots of
great practical tips that you'regoing to share, everything from
cold emailing strategies, automation tools that can make
(00:44):
outreach really scalable, how students can really access and
leverage societies, which can open many doors.
And your approach to handling pressure and also rejection,
which is obviously a huge one with application season fully
underway right now. But more so, something when we
spoke a few weeks ago was about how AI can act as a coach, a
(01:05):
mentor and a teacher in the process.
So really interested to see how you're using that kind of
technology in a really productive way as well.
So lots of actionable insights ahead.
But first of all, yoga, how are you?
I'm doing really well. Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be on this podcast.
I've actually been a listener and a fan of Market Maker for
(01:27):
quite some time now, but it feels a bit weird now being a
guest on this podcast. But thank you so much for your
time. Yeah, absolute pleasure to to
have you here. Perhaps we could start at the
very beginning, understand a little bit of the journey before
we get right into those kind of actionable tips and strategies.
You said to me before that when you first arrived at the London
(01:47):
School of Economics you were notquite sure, not quite sure about
finance, which path to pursue. So just wanted to get your, your
kind of breakdown of how have you gone about then that first
year of university study to try and, you know, define your
options a bit better? Yeah, for sure.
So as you said, when I first came into LSCI, had no clue what
(02:09):
I wanted to do. And I remember the first day of
university, there are a lot of people, especially at LSC where
through family connections or through, you know, there are
other connections. They, they somehow managed to
get a private equity internship during high school.
And for me, it definitely wasn'tthe case last summer before for
university, I was AI was a summer camp coach teaching
(02:29):
sports to, to little to little children.
And then when I thought about the three years of university
that you have in, in UK schools,you have I, I want to say three
major internship opportunities. You have your spring weeks in
your first year, you have your summer internship in your second
year. And then you got, you have your
graduate program. And when you look at finance, it
(02:50):
is such a broad and diverse field where even if you take IB,
there are a lot more than three,you know, types of roles or
three, three branches you can gointo.
So I thought to myself, if I just do these regular
internship, this is not enough for me to actually find what I
want to do. And especially coming from a,
from a background where I wasn'tsure what I wanted to do, I
(03:13):
realized that I needed a lot more experience.
So essentially what I did was I tried to put my foot into as
many doors as possible. And the first way I did this was
through student societies. So in my first year, I held
positions at a total of 6 student societies in my first
year, it spanned anything from consulting, venture capital to
(03:35):
student investment funds. The three of them I'm still
active in in it in it now the I think the, I think the first one
being Co president of AIC and through, you know, through these
societies, you speak to people. And for me, one thing that
helped me figuring out what I want to do is actually figure
out what did not suit me. And, and some things that maybe
(03:58):
and I didn't enjoy as much, for example, the, the consulting
experience, I think I found out that, that it wasn't for me.
And I think it's really important to figure out what you
don't want to do as, as, as equally as important as to
figuring out what your, what your true passions are.
And then, yeah, as you said before I spoke to these people,
I found out about code emailing.I just went, went, went on a
(04:21):
code emailing. I think this was the end of end
of December my first year and then I was lucky enough to to
get 3 internships again as you said from between VCMNA and
hedge funds and. Then can I just ask about the
when you're, you're saying sick societies, a lot of people
(04:42):
listening and be going, wow, howmuch, how do you how do you
spend your time in terms of being able to manage those
relationships, those interactions?
So any practical tips on how to be super productive?
Particularly there's a lot of people who are just starting
university as well, so who couldset some good habits straight
off the. Bat yeah, yeah.
So in my first year, because I did a lot, there were definitely
(05:05):
moments, especially in first term where I felt completely
overwhelmed, very stressful. And I think I would categorize
stress in two different buckets.So 1 is when you worry about
some outcome. Maybe you have sent an
application or you just, you just finished a project for a
sin society and you're worried about the outcome.
And the second bucket is when you're overwhelmed with the
(05:27):
overall workload. And I think for the for the
first bucket, I felt that it wasvery important to figure out
what I can control and what I cannot control.
For example, if I'm worried about an upcoming deadline and I
need to do more work on it, that's something I can control.
I can, I can block out more timeon my calendar and improve the
(05:47):
quality of my work. However, if I've submitted a
project and you know, I'm worried about the grade, me
worrying, I can't change the grade, I can't change the
project anymore, it's already submitted.
So for me, it was really important to think about whether
it's worth my energy worrying about something that I cannot
control. So I think being able to dissect
(06:08):
what you can control and what you cannot was is very important
for you to to keep keep sanity in your mind.
And I think for the for the second bucket where you feel
overwhelmed, I think it's crucial to visualize your
workload. So in my first year, I put a lot
of random tasks just into my Google Calendar.
(06:29):
For example, if there was a weekly math problem sets, I
would already book out, say 2-2 hours of Friday mornings every
week so that I know that that's when I have to do things.
And then sometimes it came to a point where I just had so many
things in my plate that just if I'm, if I'm just trying to
memorize it, I wasn't aware of what I had to do, what I had to
(06:51):
do first. There were just too many things.
And so when you get a calendar notification of say, oh, you put
in to do this application a weekago, that kind of makes the
process very, very efficient. You don't have to waste time
worrying about what do I have todo now is you just look at your
calendar, see the time is blocked out and you go straight
into it. And I think in terms of managing
(07:13):
stress, so I've played tennis quite competitively since the
age of 8. And not only through sports, but
putting yourself in an environment where stress is sort
of normal or more stress comes out a lot in those environments.
I think putting yourself in those shoes is very important.
(07:35):
If, if your life doesn't revolvethat much around stress when you
go into these, I think career paths, especially finance, it's
very stressful. And if you haven't built a habit
of dealing with stress, acknowledging when you feel
stress, you can, you can easily get very overwhelmed.
So whether it be staying competitive through sports or
(07:57):
you know, keep keeping busy withwith personal project and trying
to put yourself in a little bit of pressure.
I think a little bit of pressureis always good for, for anyone.
So I think being exposed to stress on a regular basis is
very is very important. So I would encourage everyone to
to be able to stress whether it be through sports or another
another method. Yeah, when we last fight, you
(08:17):
had a really good analogy of theactually turning pressure upside
down. And actually pressure, it can be
motivation if it's perceived in the right way.
What did you mean by that? Yeah, so for me, it's something
that I started to realize probably through through playing
tennis, is that the physical sensation of feeling nervous and
(08:39):
feeling stressed, comparing thatwith the physical sensation of
being excited, you know, in bothcases, you know, you might feel
a little uneasy, your heart might be pumping a little bit.
For me, those physical sensations are, are quite, are
quite similar. So I began trying to sort of
trick my mind and telling myselfthat when I'm stressed, I'm
(09:01):
actually, you know, excited for,for what's about to come.
I'm excited for, you know, this,this deadline that's coming up.
I'm excited to produce a good result.
I'm excited to do this, this interview.
I'm excited to do this podcast. So maybe it's just a placebo
effect, but trying to trick yourbrain into into telling yourself
that you're actually excited forthis really helps to to calm
(09:21):
yourself down and think positively.
And although, like you said, you've had some great successes,
some great wins, just a quick word on rejection because I was
with a group of students on Tuesday and we're in the midst
of application season. And this one guy was telling me
he spent like a long period of time, was up late, got this
application away. And then he brushed his teeth,
(09:43):
went back to bed. He'd already had an e-mail
saying you've been rejected. And he was like, felt just
pretty gutted at that point because all that effort and
within 15 minutes it's like, Nope, sorry.
And that's it. No feedback or anything.
So what's your method? Because rejection is part of the
process for handling situations like that.
(10:05):
Yeah, I think again, it's similar to stress where you have
to expose yourself to rejection to almost get used to it.
So in my first year I'm not surehow many spring weeks I applied
to but I essentially only got only got 1 offer.
I was lucky enough to get one offer but all the 99% they were
all rejections and most of them were were rejection in the in
(10:26):
the first round. And we have to understand is
that there are 10's and thousands of people applying to
the same position. And most of the time, you know,
whether it be through luck or lack of experience, it's normal
that the majority of your experience through application
cycle will be a rejection. And that's just something that
you have to understand from AI think an earlier, earlier stage.
(10:48):
But again, I think, I think I want to, I want to come back to,
to playing sports or being competitive again.
Like especially in tennis, you lose, you lose nearly half of
your points, you lose nearly half of your matches just being
used to to rejection and taking that as trying to take that as a
learning opportunity. You know, just because one firm
(11:08):
rejection does, doesn't mean your value diminishes.
Most of the time when you get CVrejected.
For example, right now I'm looking at a couple CVS for AFC
subcommittee applications and it's very hard to understand who
a person is through their CV. It's just very mechanical
writing. Even if he asked for application
questions, unless you actually speak to the person in real
life, they're not going to know who you actually are.
(11:30):
So most of the time when you getrejected, it's not a reflection
of who you are, but just how they perceived you in that
moment when they were looking atyour CV for however many
seconds. So trying to take it personally
at the same time getting yourself used to that process I
think is very important. Yeah.
So resilience then is the art ofbouncing back.
(11:53):
But in order to build that muscle, you need to be in
situations, whether it's giving a presentation, whether it's
asking a girl out on a date, whether it's whatever it is like
the more you can get turned downalmost in lots of different
scenarios, sport being the analogy used.
Then actually you're just building up that tolerance, I
guess, which is a which is a lifelong skill.
(12:15):
Resilience is definitely critical for a long term
success. But let's move on then and talk
about, you know, you're, you're very much actively involved.
You know, AIC is like the largest student run kind of
event that happens globally. So this is a really, you know,
big deal. But how much of an impact did
(12:35):
that have compared to say the classroom learning in Europe,
one of the world's top universities?
So you've you've got that experience, but then So what
does being part of a society give you and a network of
students? What does that allow you to
have? So I think many people agree
with me when I say that maybe 70% of your value from
(12:58):
university, you know, comes fromthe people you meet and not
actually the course. I think if I only studied at
LSE, did nothing else, didn't apply the internship, didn't
applied societies, I will not bethe person I am today.
I think I would say I want to give 7080% of my personal
developments to society specifically.
(13:19):
I mean, a lot of it is, is AIC and that's because society is
the best way to, to speak to seniors, speak to second and
third years who have done internships, who have, you know,
previous, previous experience and who can actually teach you
how to, to navigate the entire uni, university and internship
process. And that's exactly where you'll
learn the most. And I think for any incoming
(13:41):
freshers who are, who are watching this, listening to this
podcast at any university, if you go to their student union
website, you're going to find a list of all the societies.
What I did was I just made a note of anything that sounded
interesting. Most of them, they're very
active on Instagram. So I'll go to the Instagram,
follow them and when they open subcommittee application, just
(14:02):
keep in touch with them, see what kind of events they, they
like to organize. And if it's, if you think it's
interesting, apply to their subcommittee positions.
And so give a quick shout out for any incoming LSE freshers.
The AIC, we open subcommittee applications earlier earlier
this week. So I, I would encourage everyone
to check it out through our, through our Instagram.
I think there should be a link link post or somewhere.
(14:26):
Yeah. And I and I was just thinking
like the the initiative that we're doing right now, which is
you and Raul, your Co president of the IC when you came to me
with this idea. If you think if, if it was just
any other normal LSE student, I get messages all the time
because you represent such a large event that you host in a
(14:46):
society you run on campus. And that in itself has
connections to the industry of which the, we as a, as a, a
technology Ed tech vendor to these firms.
So commercially, it's like putting yourself in a situation
where we can have interactions like this and then I can
introduce you to someone else. And so I, I totally get what you
(15:07):
say. It's almost like you've got to
create that network effect. You can be the capitalist
yourself to 'cause that ripple, so to speak.
Yeah. And yeah, I don't think people
are lying when they say network is is what's important.
And for me, I wasn't the type ofperson to to enjoy like doing
cold outreach to, to someone working at a bank and asking,
(15:29):
asking them for a coffee chat. I just thought I was a little
bit fabricated and maybe I'm a bit introverted, but societies,
you know, it's a, it's a fabricated environment for you
to meet those people with already experience.
So it just makes the process a lot easier.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And so let's let's get down to
then the art of the cold e-mail because this was fascinating
(15:52):
when you started explaining it to me because it's one of those
that I think a lot of students here, they hear like, OK,
application, jump through the necessary hoops, send it off.
And then you kind of get told you should network, you should
do some cold call kind of emails.
No one actually tells you, though a systematic process of
(16:13):
of doing that to a point where you're going to yield results
knowing that the conversion rateof that outreach is probably
going to be pretty low. So yeah, talk me through your
your tactics on how you approachit.
Yeah. So when I started call emailing,
I utilized a lot of this database tool, which is
essentially a very long comprehensive list of companies
(16:35):
of any industry, their employees.
And then they also have their e-mail.
And so did this tool was, it wasvery neat because they had
filters to target specific ranges of companies and ranges
of people. So as I said before, when I go
into the LSE and when I started call emailing, I wanted to
(16:56):
explore everything. And when you're called emailing,
obviously, so you want to use a template, but you can't use the
same template if you're called emailing an investment bank as
opposed to a venture capital fund.
That's just completely different, right?
And that's just not going to be affected.
Someone's going to see, Oh, I like looking at public markets
when you're applying to when you're called emailing AVC fund.
(17:17):
And they'd be like that's they, they have no clue what they're
talking about. And So what with this tool, you
can filter with different industries.
So for example, I just made a long Excel list of people I
could contact in each industry. So I had one for asset
management, hedge, hedge fund, IBPEVC trading.
I even did some like fintech startups, for example.
(17:39):
And essentially you want to be very precise.
For example, you don't want to send a code e-mail to Citadel,
they're not going to reply. They have their own distinct
internship programs, but you want to be targeting these small
or medium sized financial services companies who don't
have a structured internship program but may benefit from an
(18:02):
extra, extra, extra pair of hands.
So for me in terms of the size of the company, I mainly went
for companies with less than 50 employees.
For example, I was based in the UK, so I, I filtered out for
company headquarters based in the United Kingdom.
(18:22):
And then you get because it's because it picks out on certain
keywords. I would put in keywords like
like venture capital or, or, or equities or commodities if I was
looking into as funds, for example.
And in terms of the people you target, most of the time I like
to go with managing partners or above.
(18:44):
Most of the time they're the ones who are, who know what
everyone's workload is and they know whether people need help.
So I mainly tried avoiding HR people as much as possible.
Most of the time I, my experience was that they're less
likely to, to reply and, and I think so.
And then what you do is you compile a list of people in
(19:08):
these firms that you could contact.
You bring out an entire list. And then when you're actually
sending these out, it's, it is anumbers game.
So, but I think the mindset to have is that there are
thousands, 10s of thousands of firms out there, even within
London or the United Kingdom financial services industry who
(19:30):
need an intern. And your job is just to send as
many emails as possible to find that firm.
All the firms, one they won't reply to, they'll say we don't
need an intern. That's that's completely normal.
I think I have to send, I want to say 300 to 400 called emails
before I got before I got my first offer.
(19:53):
And I think another, another fact you have to think about is
the time of day that you actually send those emails.
It's very important. For example, you don't want to
send. An e-mail on Saturday evening,
you know, it's, it's the weekendfor them.
And my experience is that these people were most likely to
(20:13):
answer you Monday or Tuesday morning, typically one day when
they check their emails. But like again, you can, you can
try it out for yourself and you can do an AB test.
You can send one batch Monday morning.
You can send one batch Wednesdaynoon.
You can send one batch Friday, Imean, for a Friday morning and
see what works for you. And this is all about just, you
(20:33):
know, playing with these parameters, seeing what works
and just you just keep sending emails.
You know, it's a lengthy process, but I think I can, I
can say for certain that if you,if you do at least, you know,
203 hundred, you're, you're likely to get to get some leads
and someone who's willing to listen to you.
What? What's the actual composition of
(20:53):
the e-mail? Like how much is like, it's
really interesting because it's almost like an art here.
It's almost like you watch theseYoutubers and they're explaining
like how to utilize the algorithm to make your videos go
viral. And it's like you do this.
It's all very, it's actually looks super off the cuff, but
it's all actually a systematic process to achieve results,
(21:13):
which is kind of what like it sounds like for you.
So yeah, just what does the actual e-mail look like in
length? What do you attach?
Do you attach your CV straight away and so on?
Yeah, yeah. So I think the you can do
different styles. I think everyone can do their
own thing. But what I did was, you know,
from the first intro, you alwayswant to mention your name, your
(21:35):
course, university. I think like who you who you are
is basically your university student looking for experience.
So you want to make that very clear.
And within the first paragraph you want to be very explicit in
that. I'm looking for a, say, unpaid
or paid internship experience atat your firm.
And then you go into your experience as well as why you're
(21:56):
interested in that company. So you might mention, you know,
previous projects you've done. If this just using a random
example, but if this firm like works in infrastructure, you
know, you have to, you need to give a raise.
And as to why you're interested in infrastructure, I think even
within, you know, the same P category, you have a variety of
(22:16):
different firms, you know, firmsfocusing on secondaries, maybe
geographically they're only focused in a couple of
countries. So you need to be very precise
at finding their, the unique selling point and trying to
relate as to as to why that why that resonates with you.
So I think once you introduce yourself and describe your
(22:37):
motivations for the, for our work experience, work
experience, the next two paragraphs, you don't want it to
be that long, but it's a mixtureof trying to appeal with your
experiences as well as why you want to work at that firm.
I would say it's, it's similar to a cover letter and you, yeah,
you do want to attach your CV. So I used to always say like I
(22:59):
would explain some of my experience.
So then you say like as you can see from the CV attached below,
for example, So you do want to attach your CV.
And one thing I think I forgot to mention is that obviously
when you find these people on your firms, trying to find some
sort of common ground with them is very important.
For example, if it could be nationality, they, they could
(23:20):
be, you know, they could come from the same country.
They could, maybe maybe they were in their same high school
or maybe they were, they're, they're the, they graduated from
your same university. You know, if you can find that
common ground, obviously they're, they're more likely to,
to look at your e-mail and mayberespond to you.
Yeah, just as a quick example, just last week I had a message
(23:41):
from a student in Canada and they they said, oh, I really
love the podcast. And they basically introduced
themselves exactly like you described in a really concise,
succinct way. And then they said, by the way,
could ioffer any contribution tohelp you with your research for
some of the M and A deals that you might cover on your show?
(24:01):
Absolutely happy to do that for free because it's just going to
help my learning. And I'm already looking at this
stuff. And it was almost like the value
add was just evident immediately.
And I was like, OK, let's have acall.
Had a call, came across really well and now he's already
contributing and he's actually writing some of my LinkedIn
posts that go on our corporate account and it's kind of a two
(24:24):
way street, right. So we've got an existing
established platform. So such as this episode with you
guys at LSCAIC want to help promote, but at the same time
being still, I guess, classifiedan SME, it's like we're never
going to have the resources we would like as a big company.
And you can add value immediately as a student.
(24:46):
You don't need to be an expert. So yeah, I hope people really
react to that in a positive way.But I guess you're saying like
the conversion rate sounded likeone in 300, let's say.
So I'm assuming then there's some sort of automation tool in
order to compose and manage thisprocess.
(25:08):
Am I right in thinking that? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So I said before, you want to build several templates
depending on the category of thefirm you're trying to target.
But within the same category, you can even for example, you
would have custom fields like like Dear Mr. X or Miss X that
that will, that will be a customfield.
(25:29):
The firm name will be a custom field.
And even the the USP, like what's special about that firm
That could also be a custom field.
So you know, in every like template, it can be like, I am
keen to explore your and then the custom field of their unique
selling point. And so, and once you have a list
of, you know, 50 to 100 emails that you can send, use something
(25:53):
called mail merge. It exists in multiple platforms.
You can even do it straight off of Gmail, I believe, or Outlook.
And it essentially just slots inthose custom fields, looking at
your Excel spreadsheet and sendsthem off en masse.
So it's a very practical and efficient tool for sending, you
know, hundreds of emails at a time.
(26:13):
And it saves you. It saves you an incredible
amount of time. And just finally, before we move
on, what's the general protocol then, because you're targeting,
let's say companies that don't have a big HR team or graduate
hiring scheme, so people are used to that kind of online
assessments, higher view that process.
What does it look like when you've done it in this other
(26:36):
alternative route? Yeah.
So I think first of all, most ofthe time you get rejected.
I think that's that's the same as regular interest experience,
but that's normal. But usually the next step is the
person that you e-mail would want to just hop on a quick call
with you to understand more about your motivations and also
who you are. I think for.
(26:58):
Yeah, actually for all of my speculative internships, I did 2
interviews or I called e-mail and did 2 interviews before I
got the ugly actual role for oneof them.
They actually asked me to do like a a tester task to, to test
my abilities. But most of the time they just
want to go in and go in a quick meeting with you, learn about
(27:20):
who you are. They might then refer you to
another person in the same team.Just so you know, two people can
can make that decision. Yeah, it's, it's usually one
call or two, maybe, maybe, maybethree, I'm not sure.
But yeah, straight to calls and then hopefully, yeah, they can,
they can get you some experience.
Yeah, I know from personal experience that we've we've we
(27:42):
have hired similar to that previous person I said reached
out about the podcast. One of our existing employees
did exactly the same thing abouta year ago and he now works for
us. And I think at that point, it's
very much tell me about this person, I want to know about the
person. Because when you're a small
firm, a big difference is every single person and small
(28:04):
organization needs to be a producer.
That's where it's different whenyou sit in a big engine or or
cog in a big, big engine like a large organization.
So it all comes down in that environment to people.
Everyone in a small business does more than their job at
that. That's like default setting
because you have to, because everyone's involved and
everyone's growing it. So yeah, it always comes down to
(28:27):
personability. I would say the CV is is
important to a degree, but yes, there has to be technical box
ticked a little bit. But yeah, that that personality
shines through. Yeah, for sure.
For sure. All right.
Well, look, the last thing that you mentioned to me before off
off recording was about using AItools in a positive way.
(28:49):
And I deal with lots of employers and it's kind of two
challenges they're facing at themoment.
Challenge number one is this, this huge, monumental increase
in applications due to students using AI tools.
And everyone's become this like vanilla kind of template of what
they think these companies want to hear.
(29:09):
And so it's making screening processes incredibly, incredibly
difficult. So yeah, one of the things was
then about how do you use these AI tools in a positive way.
And the second point was about those same employers saying
students are actively using AI to prompt them in real time in
order to respond to questions when doing it in a very format
(29:32):
which. That's interesting.
Obviously can become hugely problematic when you get through
to final stage face to face interviews.
And so, yeah, I, I think there'sa lot of misuse of the tool at
the moment, but the matter of fact is the tools I think should
be used, they can be ultra productive to the whole thing.
So yeah, what's your your kind of use case and how you're
(29:54):
getting the best out of AI tools?
Yeah. So I would say the main use case
for me is treating say Chachi BTor any AIML tool as a teacher
who's ready to answer any of your questions at any time.
So for example, one of the ways I used it was say I had an
interview for, for, for some, for some firm that's coming up.
(30:16):
And you know, sometimes going totheir company page is quite,
it's quite tedious. They have, you know, multiple,
multiple times. It's hard to navigate like what
the actual unique, unique characteristic of that firm is.
So you can ask, you can just askyour TPT like Tommy, a high
level overview of this firm and tell me why it's unique and also
(30:37):
give me some recent headlines of, you know, projections or,
you know, big steps that they'vemade in the, in the past six
months. And then they're going to give
you a very succinct and, you know, easily under
understandable overview of the firm.
And then you can, you can, you can, you know, you can start
personalizing your either cover letter or your written answers
(30:58):
from the information you get from there.
And I think you know, these AI tools, they're very good at, you
know, dissecting like complex theories and complex technical
knowledge. So, you know, for example, if an
Inca refresher wants to know more about credit, you can ask
IGBT give me a one O 1 on creditand make it as simple as
(31:21):
possible. And you know, it's going to do a
very good job of, of making you understand the, the basic
fundamentals of say what, what credit is instead of going to
too much detail. And also one of the ways I've
been using it is so I, I think chat deputy also clawed.
I believe they have a tool whereit's kind of like Siri, where
(31:44):
you can just talk to them and, and they'll, they'll speak to
you. And surprisingly, they're like,
their conversation skills are very good.
So, and for example, you can usethis during during your commute.
I think. So one of the things I did was
while I was walking to to campus, I had an interviewer
like later on the day and I actually didn't have much time
to to prepare. But while I was walking to
(32:05):
campus, I would be speaking to chat deputy.
OK, tell me about this firm hasn't done any, any, any
activity. What's no typical questions come
up in these, in these interviews.
And then also you can just make a, a mental note or you can
speak in the chat DBT and you'rethe transcript, the transcript
of your of what you're saying isrecorded on your account.
So you can revisit that when you're actually, you know, right
(32:27):
before you take an interview andgive yourself a fresher into
what, what your thought process is.
So I would use it as a sort of teacher that's like by your side
all the time. Obviously a teacher is not going
to write an essay for you. A teacher is not going to give
you the answers, but the teacherwill give you guidance and
information. So I would think about it in
that way. Yeah, so it's like a a super
(32:48):
productivity hack. It's just there on tap and you
can be again. It's hands free almost.
You're just having this. What is if you can trick your
mind again to thinking it in that way, it's like how much
would a private shooter cost you?
It's probably like anything from3050 lbs an hour more than that.
And so you've got that on tap oryou could pay the £20 a month,
(33:12):
you know, open AI fee. But you've got that at different
levels designed to cater to yourstarting point of understanding.
Do you, do you ever use it at all for like more emotional
stuff? In a sense of I know my brother,
for example, he has it where it's set up where it will pull
down a quote of the day and thenit will e-mail it out to him.
(33:34):
So every day he gets an e-mail at 6:00 AM in the morning as a
motivational one for him to start his day.
Is there anything you could be think of like around that
aspects or? That's a very interesting use
case. I personally haven't used it in
terms of emotional support. I kind of find it because at the
(33:54):
end of the day, machine machine learning is pretty much millions
of parameters just giving you the most like likely answer that
would that is going to suit yourquestion.
So I mean, obviously, you know, getting a motivation code of the
day is nice. I've I've never thought of
using, you know, child deputy inthat way, but that maybe maybe I
can try it out. I mean, if you use like the the
(34:16):
voice, the the voice audio tool,the voices do actually sound
very realistic and most of the voices they're, you know, they
actually sound like quite, quitegenuine.
So I think I have a feeling maybe right before an interview,
it might help if if a student, you know, speaks Chad Steel a
(34:38):
little bit again, gets a fresheron the information that they
need to know about. And I think like speaking to
people does calm your nerves andyou know, maybe speaking the
chat chat DBT, it's very it's quite, it's quite similar.
So maybe you ought to have a similar effect of calming you
down, but I personally never useit when I try it out.
Yeah, a use case was, I remembermy, my wife was going through,
(34:59):
you know, the normal annual appraisal process and stuff like
that. And it was almost like you'd
actually banked up so much conversation with the, with the
AI tool that the AI tool was kind of like, come on, you got
this, you can. And it was like it was using all
this language and actually, you know, it did have some, you
know, quite, quite dramatic effects.
I think I'm just confidence and actually dealing with elocution
(35:22):
coaches. Something interesting you said
there was about sometimes ahead of an interview, it helps to
talk because actually ahead of an interview or pressurized
situation, what can often happenis you go into yourself because
you're mentally thinking about so much and you don't speak.
But the art of being able to speak well is like your mouth is
a muscle, you need to loosen it and let your let your words and
(35:43):
fluency flow. And that only comes through
actual talking. So there's a good hack when
you're feeling like vulnerable. So you don't want to actually
speak to someone. And also it's technical so they
might not possess that knowledge.
You could use the tool like you said, in an audio format to
assimilate. Let's just have a conversation
or a few few little warm up questions to get you going.
(36:05):
Yeah, for sure. Cool.
All right. Well, look, thank you so much
for sharing all all of this coolinformation with me.
Just remind me again, so what's happening with the AIC with the
link that we're going to share with this episode?
Yeah, So the AIC Alternative Investments conference, we
recently just released the subcommittee applications.
So for any LSE students from freshers to to masters all the
(36:29):
way to PhD, to be honest. Yeah, Please feel free to check
out our our Instagram. It's at LSESUAIC and I think I
think more broadly, even if you're not ALC student, if you,
you know, would like any further, further, further
guidance from me on anything that we've talked about in these
previous podcast podcast sessions, please for me to reach
out to me on, on on LinkedIn. I'll, I'll try and you know, I
(36:51):
don't know how many requests I'll get, but I'm really because
I learned so much from speaking to people when I was first here.
I'm quite keen on on helping, helping people out who's coming
in. But yeah, thank you, Anthony for
for this experience. It's been, it's been a really,
really good time. Really enjoyed the talk talking
to you on this podcast. Yeah, amazing.
All right, you guys, thank you so much and thank you all for
listening. Till the next episode.
(37:12):
Stay tuned.
Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker podcast.
And this is the second episode of our miniseries in
collaboration with the London School of Economics Alternative
Investments Conference. And I'm joined by Yuga Kazuki.
He's the LSEAIC Co President. And we're going to unpack the
unconventional methods students can take to secure internships.
(00:22):
And I know Yuga, you've landed speculative roles in the likes
of VC, M&A and major European Investment Bank and the hedge
fund in the past summer or so. So I, I know you've got lots of
great practical tips that you'regoing to share, everything from
cold emailing strategies, automation tools that can make
(00:44):
outreach really scalable, how students can really access and
leverage societies, which can open many doors.
And your approach to handling pressure and also rejection,
which is obviously a huge one with application season fully
underway right now. But more so, something when we
spoke a few weeks ago was about how AI can act as a coach, a
(01:05):
mentor and a teacher in the process.
So really interested to see how you're using that kind of
technology in a really productive way as well.
So lots of actionable insights ahead.
But first of all, yoga, how are you?
I'm doing really well. Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be on this podcast.
I've actually been a listener and a fan of Market Maker for
(01:27):
quite some time now, but it feels a bit weird now being a
guest on this podcast. But thank you so much for your
time. Yeah, absolute pleasure to to
have you here. Perhaps we could start at the
very beginning, understand a little bit of the journey before
we get right into those kind of actionable tips and strategies.
You said to me before that when you first arrived at the London
(01:47):
School of Economics you were notquite sure, not quite sure about
finance, which path to pursue. So just wanted to get your, your
kind of breakdown of how have you gone about then that first
year of university study to try and, you know, define your
options a bit better? Yeah, for sure.
So as you said, when I first came into LSCI, had no clue what
(02:09):
I wanted to do. And I remember the first day of
university, there are a lot of people, especially at LSC where
through family connections or through, you know, there are
other connections. They, they somehow managed to
get a private equity internship during high school.
And for me, it definitely wasn'tthe case last summer before for
university, I was AI was a summer camp coach teaching
(02:29):
sports to, to little to little children.
And then when I thought about the three years of university
that you have in, in UK schools,you have I, I want to say three
major internship opportunities. You have your spring weeks in
your first year, you have your summer internship in your second
year. And then you got, you have your
graduate program. And when you look at finance, it
(02:50):
is such a broad and diverse field where even if you take IB,
there are a lot more than three,you know, types of roles or
three, three branches you can gointo.
So I thought to myself, if I just do these regular
internship, this is not enough for me to actually find what I
want to do. And especially coming from a,
from a background where I wasn'tsure what I wanted to do, I
(03:13):
realized that I needed a lot more experience.
So essentially what I did was I tried to put my foot into as
many doors as possible. And the first way I did this was
through student societies. So in my first year, I held
positions at a total of 6 student societies in my first
year, it spanned anything from consulting, venture capital to
(03:35):
student investment funds. The three of them I'm still
active in in it in it now the I think the, I think the first one
being Co president of AIC and through, you know, through these
societies, you speak to people. And for me, one thing that
helped me figuring out what I want to do is actually figure
out what did not suit me. And, and some things that maybe
(03:58):
and I didn't enjoy as much, for example, the, the consulting
experience, I think I found out that, that it wasn't for me.
And I think it's really important to figure out what you
don't want to do as, as, as equally as important as to
figuring out what your, what your true passions are.
And then, yeah, as you said before I spoke to these people,
I found out about code emailing.I just went, went, went on a
(04:21):
code emailing. I think this was the end of end
of December my first year and then I was lucky enough to to
get 3 internships again as you said from between VCMNA and
hedge funds and. Then can I just ask about the
when you're, you're saying sick societies, a lot of people
(04:42):
listening and be going, wow, howmuch, how do you how do you
spend your time in terms of being able to manage those
relationships, those interactions?
So any practical tips on how to be super productive?
Particularly there's a lot of people who are just starting
university as well, so who couldset some good habits straight
off the. Bat yeah, yeah.
So in my first year, because I did a lot, there were definitely
(05:05):
moments, especially in first term where I felt completely
overwhelmed, very stressful. And I think I would categorize
stress in two different buckets.So 1 is when you worry about
some outcome. Maybe you have sent an
application or you just, you just finished a project for a
sin society and you're worried about the outcome.
And the second bucket is when you're overwhelmed with the
(05:27):
overall workload. And I think for the for the
first bucket, I felt that it wasvery important to figure out
what I can control and what I cannot control.
For example, if I'm worried about an upcoming deadline and I
need to do more work on it, that's something I can control.
I can, I can block out more timeon my calendar and improve the
(05:47):
quality of my work. However, if I've submitted a
project and you know, I'm worried about the grade, me
worrying, I can't change the grade, I can't change the
project anymore, it's already submitted.
So for me, it was really important to think about whether
it's worth my energy worrying about something that I cannot
control. So I think being able to dissect
(06:08):
what you can control and what you cannot was is very important
for you to to keep keep sanity in your mind.
And I think for the for the second bucket where you feel
overwhelmed, I think it's crucial to visualize your
workload. So in my first year, I put a lot
of random tasks just into my Google Calendar.
(06:29):
For example, if there was a weekly math problem sets, I
would already book out, say 2-2 hours of Friday mornings every
week so that I know that that's when I have to do things.
And then sometimes it came to a point where I just had so many
things in my plate that just if I'm, if I'm just trying to
memorize it, I wasn't aware of what I had to do, what I had to
(06:51):
do first. There were just too many things.
And so when you get a calendar notification of say, oh, you put
in to do this application a weekago, that kind of makes the
process very, very efficient. You don't have to waste time
worrying about what do I have todo now is you just look at your
calendar, see the time is blocked out and you go straight
into it. And I think in terms of managing
(07:13):
stress, so I've played tennis quite competitively since the
age of 8. And not only through sports, but
putting yourself in an environment where stress is sort
of normal or more stress comes out a lot in those environments.
I think putting yourself in those shoes is very important.
(07:35):
If, if your life doesn't revolvethat much around stress when you
go into these, I think career paths, especially finance, it's
very stressful. And if you haven't built a habit
of dealing with stress, acknowledging when you feel
stress, you can, you can easily get very overwhelmed.
So whether it be staying competitive through sports or
(07:57):
you know, keep keeping busy withwith personal project and trying
to put yourself in a little bit of pressure.
I think a little bit of pressureis always good for, for anyone.
So I think being exposed to stress on a regular basis is
very is very important. So I would encourage everyone to
to be able to stress whether it be through sports or another
another method. Yeah, when we last fight, you
(08:17):
had a really good analogy of theactually turning pressure upside
down. And actually pressure, it can be
motivation if it's perceived in the right way.
What did you mean by that? Yeah, so for me, it's something
that I started to realize probably through through playing
tennis, is that the physical sensation of feeling nervous and
(08:39):
feeling stressed, comparing thatwith the physical sensation of
being excited, you know, in bothcases, you know, you might feel
a little uneasy, your heart might be pumping a little bit.
For me, those physical sensations are, are quite, are
quite similar. So I began trying to sort of
trick my mind and telling myselfthat when I'm stressed, I'm
(09:01):
actually, you know, excited for,for what's about to come.
I'm excited for, you know, this,this deadline that's coming up.
I'm excited to produce a good result.
I'm excited to do this, this interview.
I'm excited to do this podcast. So maybe it's just a placebo
effect, but trying to trick yourbrain into into telling yourself
that you're actually excited forthis really helps to to calm
(09:21):
yourself down and think positively.
And although, like you said, you've had some great successes,
some great wins, just a quick word on rejection because I was
with a group of students on Tuesday and we're in the midst
of application season. And this one guy was telling me
he spent like a long period of time, was up late, got this
application away. And then he brushed his teeth,
(09:43):
went back to bed. He'd already had an e-mail
saying you've been rejected. And he was like, felt just
pretty gutted at that point because all that effort and
within 15 minutes it's like, Nope, sorry.
And that's it. No feedback or anything.
So what's your method? Because rejection is part of the
process for handling situations like that.
(10:05):
Yeah, I think again, it's similar to stress where you have
to expose yourself to rejection to almost get used to it.
So in my first year I'm not surehow many spring weeks I applied
to but I essentially only got only got 1 offer.
I was lucky enough to get one offer but all the 99% they were
all rejections and most of them were were rejection in the in
(10:26):
the first round. And we have to understand is
that there are 10's and thousands of people applying to
the same position. And most of the time, you know,
whether it be through luck or lack of experience, it's normal
that the majority of your experience through application
cycle will be a rejection. And that's just something that
you have to understand from AI think an earlier, earlier stage.
(10:48):
But again, I think, I think I want to, I want to come back to,
to playing sports or being competitive again.
Like especially in tennis, you lose, you lose nearly half of
your points, you lose nearly half of your matches just being
used to to rejection and taking that as trying to take that as a
learning opportunity. You know, just because one firm
(11:08):
rejection does, doesn't mean your value diminishes.
Most of the time when you get CVrejected.
For example, right now I'm looking at a couple CVS for AFC
subcommittee applications and it's very hard to understand who
a person is through their CV. It's just very mechanical
writing. Even if he asked for application
questions, unless you actually speak to the person in real
life, they're not going to know who you actually are.
(11:30):
So most of the time when you getrejected, it's not a reflection
of who you are, but just how they perceived you in that
moment when they were looking atyour CV for however many
seconds. So trying to take it personally
at the same time getting yourself used to that process I
think is very important. Yeah.
So resilience then is the art ofbouncing back.
(11:53):
But in order to build that muscle, you need to be in
situations, whether it's giving a presentation, whether it's
asking a girl out on a date, whether it's whatever it is like
the more you can get turned downalmost in lots of different
scenarios, sport being the analogy used.
Then actually you're just building up that tolerance, I
guess, which is a which is a lifelong skill.
(12:15):
Resilience is definitely critical for a long term
success. But let's move on then and talk
about, you know, you're, you're very much actively involved.
You know, AIC is like the largest student run kind of
event that happens globally. So this is a really, you know,
big deal. But how much of an impact did
(12:35):
that have compared to say the classroom learning in Europe,
one of the world's top universities?
So you've you've got that experience, but then So what
does being part of a society give you and a network of
students? What does that allow you to
have? So I think many people agree
with me when I say that maybe 70% of your value from
(12:58):
university, you know, comes fromthe people you meet and not
actually the course. I think if I only studied at
LSE, did nothing else, didn't apply the internship, didn't
applied societies, I will not bethe person I am today.
I think I would say I want to give 7080% of my personal
developments to society specifically.
(13:19):
I mean, a lot of it is, is AIC and that's because society is
the best way to, to speak to seniors, speak to second and
third years who have done internships, who have, you know,
previous, previous experience and who can actually teach you
how to, to navigate the entire uni, university and internship
process. And that's exactly where you'll
learn the most. And I think for any incoming
(13:41):
freshers who are, who are watching this, listening to this
podcast at any university, if you go to their student union
website, you're going to find a list of all the societies.
What I did was I just made a note of anything that sounded
interesting. Most of them, they're very
active on Instagram. So I'll go to the Instagram,
follow them and when they open subcommittee application, just
(14:02):
keep in touch with them, see what kind of events they, they
like to organize. And if it's, if you think it's
interesting, apply to their subcommittee positions.
And so give a quick shout out for any incoming LSE freshers.
The AIC, we open subcommittee applications earlier earlier
this week. So I, I would encourage everyone
to check it out through our, through our Instagram.
I think there should be a link link post or somewhere.
(14:26):
Yeah. And I and I was just thinking
like the the initiative that we're doing right now, which is
you and Raul, your Co president of the IC when you came to me
with this idea. If you think if, if it was just
any other normal LSE student, I get messages all the time
because you represent such a large event that you host in a
(14:46):
society you run on campus. And that in itself has
connections to the industry of which the, we as a, as a, a
technology Ed tech vendor to these firms.
So commercially, it's like putting yourself in a situation
where we can have interactions like this and then I can
introduce you to someone else. And so I, I totally get what you
(15:07):
say. It's almost like you've got to
create that network effect. You can be the capitalist
yourself to 'cause that ripple, so to speak.
Yeah. And yeah, I don't think people
are lying when they say network is is what's important.
And for me, I wasn't the type ofperson to to enjoy like doing
cold outreach to, to someone working at a bank and asking,
(15:29):
asking them for a coffee chat. I just thought I was a little
bit fabricated and maybe I'm a bit introverted, but societies,
you know, it's a, it's a fabricated environment for you
to meet those people with already experience.
So it just makes the process a lot easier.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And so let's let's get down to
then the art of the cold e-mail because this was fascinating
(15:52):
when you started explaining it to me because it's one of those
that I think a lot of students here, they hear like, OK,
application, jump through the necessary hoops, send it off.
And then you kind of get told you should network, you should
do some cold call kind of emails.
No one actually tells you, though a systematic process of
(16:13):
of doing that to a point where you're going to yield results
knowing that the conversion rateof that outreach is probably
going to be pretty low. So yeah, talk me through your
your tactics on how you approachit.
Yeah. So when I started call emailing,
I utilized a lot of this database tool, which is
essentially a very long comprehensive list of companies
(16:35):
of any industry, their employees.
And then they also have their e-mail.
And so did this tool was, it wasvery neat because they had
filters to target specific ranges of companies and ranges
of people. So as I said before, when I go
into the LSE and when I started call emailing, I wanted to
(16:56):
explore everything. And when you're called emailing,
obviously, so you want to use a template, but you can't use the
same template if you're called emailing an investment bank as
opposed to a venture capital fund.
That's just completely different, right?
And that's just not going to be affected.
Someone's going to see, Oh, I like looking at public markets
when you're applying to when you're called emailing AVC fund.
(17:17):
And they'd be like that's they, they have no clue what they're
talking about. And So what with this tool, you
can filter with different industries.
So for example, I just made a long Excel list of people I
could contact in each industry. So I had one for asset
management, hedge, hedge fund, IBPEVC trading.
I even did some like fintech startups, for example.
(17:39):
And essentially you want to be very precise.
For example, you don't want to send a code e-mail to Citadel,
they're not going to reply. They have their own distinct
internship programs, but you want to be targeting these small
or medium sized financial services companies who don't
have a structured internship program but may benefit from an
(18:02):
extra, extra, extra pair of hands.
So for me in terms of the size of the company, I mainly went
for companies with less than 50 employees.
For example, I was based in the UK, so I, I filtered out for
company headquarters based in the United Kingdom.
(18:22):
And then you get because it's because it picks out on certain
keywords. I would put in keywords like
like venture capital or, or, or equities or commodities if I was
looking into as funds, for example.
And in terms of the people you target, most of the time I like
to go with managing partners or above.
(18:44):
Most of the time they're the ones who are, who know what
everyone's workload is and they know whether people need help.
So I mainly tried avoiding HR people as much as possible.
Most of the time I, my experience was that they're less
likely to, to reply and, and I think so.
And then what you do is you compile a list of people in
(19:08):
these firms that you could contact.
You bring out an entire list. And then when you're actually
sending these out, it's, it is anumbers game.
So, but I think the mindset to have is that there are
thousands, 10s of thousands of firms out there, even within
London or the United Kingdom financial services industry who
(19:30):
need an intern. And your job is just to send as
many emails as possible to find that firm.
All the firms, one they won't reply to, they'll say we don't
need an intern. That's that's completely normal.
I think I have to send, I want to say 300 to 400 called emails
before I got before I got my first offer.
(19:53):
And I think another, another fact you have to think about is
the time of day that you actually send those emails.
It's very important. For example, you don't want to
send. An e-mail on Saturday evening,
you know, it's, it's the weekendfor them.
And my experience is that these people were most likely to
(20:13):
answer you Monday or Tuesday morning, typically one day when
they check their emails. But like again, you can, you can
try it out for yourself and you can do an AB test.
You can send one batch Monday morning.
You can send one batch Wednesdaynoon.
You can send one batch Friday, Imean, for a Friday morning and
see what works for you. And this is all about just, you
(20:33):
know, playing with these parameters, seeing what works
and just you just keep sending emails.
You know, it's a lengthy process, but I think I can, I
can say for certain that if you,if you do at least, you know,
203 hundred, you're, you're likely to get to get some leads
and someone who's willing to listen to you.
What? What's the actual composition of
(20:53):
the e-mail? Like how much is like, it's
really interesting because it's almost like an art here.
It's almost like you watch theseYoutubers and they're explaining
like how to utilize the algorithm to make your videos go
viral. And it's like you do this.
It's all very, it's actually looks super off the cuff, but
it's all actually a systematic process to achieve results,
(21:13):
which is kind of what like it sounds like for you.
So yeah, just what does the actual e-mail look like in
length? What do you attach?
Do you attach your CV straight away and so on?
Yeah, yeah. So I think the you can do
different styles. I think everyone can do their
own thing. But what I did was, you know,
from the first intro, you alwayswant to mention your name, your
(21:35):
course, university. I think like who you who you are
is basically your university student looking for experience.
So you want to make that very clear.
And within the first paragraph you want to be very explicit in
that. I'm looking for a, say, unpaid
or paid internship experience atat your firm.
And then you go into your experience as well as why you're
(21:56):
interested in that company. So you might mention, you know,
previous projects you've done. If this just using a random
example, but if this firm like works in infrastructure, you
know, you have to, you need to give a raise.
And as to why you're interested in infrastructure, I think even
within, you know, the same P category, you have a variety of
(22:16):
different firms, you know, firmsfocusing on secondaries, maybe
geographically they're only focused in a couple of
countries. So you need to be very precise
at finding their, the unique selling point and trying to
relate as to as to why that why that resonates with you.
So I think once you introduce yourself and describe your
(22:37):
motivations for the, for our work experience, work
experience, the next two paragraphs, you don't want it to
be that long, but it's a mixtureof trying to appeal with your
experiences as well as why you want to work at that firm.
I would say it's, it's similar to a cover letter and you, yeah,
you do want to attach your CV. So I used to always say like I
(22:59):
would explain some of my experience.
So then you say like as you can see from the CV attached below,
for example, So you do want to attach your CV.
And one thing I think I forgot to mention is that obviously
when you find these people on your firms, trying to find some
sort of common ground with them is very important.
For example, if it could be nationality, they, they could
(23:20):
be, you know, they could come from the same country.
They could, maybe maybe they were in their same high school
or maybe they were, they're, they're the, they graduated from
your same university. You know, if you can find that
common ground, obviously they're, they're more likely to,
to look at your e-mail and mayberespond to you.
Yeah, just as a quick example, just last week I had a message
(23:41):
from a student in Canada and they they said, oh, I really
love the podcast. And they basically introduced
themselves exactly like you described in a really concise,
succinct way. And then they said, by the way,
could ioffer any contribution tohelp you with your research for
some of the M and A deals that you might cover on your show?
(24:01):
Absolutely happy to do that for free because it's just going to
help my learning. And I'm already looking at this
stuff. And it was almost like the value
add was just evident immediately.
And I was like, OK, let's have acall.
Had a call, came across really well and now he's already
contributing and he's actually writing some of my LinkedIn
posts that go on our corporate account and it's kind of a two
(24:24):
way street, right. So we've got an existing
established platform. So such as this episode with you
guys at LSCAIC want to help promote, but at the same time
being still, I guess, classifiedan SME, it's like we're never
going to have the resources we would like as a big company.
And you can add value immediately as a student.
(24:46):
You don't need to be an expert. So yeah, I hope people really
react to that in a positive way.But I guess you're saying like
the conversion rate sounded likeone in 300, let's say.
So I'm assuming then there's some sort of automation tool in
order to compose and manage thisprocess.
(25:08):
Am I right in thinking that? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So I said before, you want to build several templates
depending on the category of thefirm you're trying to target.
But within the same category, you can even for example, you
would have custom fields like like Dear Mr. X or Miss X that
that will, that will be a customfield.
(25:29):
The firm name will be a custom field.
And even the the USP, like what's special about that firm
That could also be a custom field.
So you know, in every like template, it can be like, I am
keen to explore your and then the custom field of their unique
selling point. And so, and once you have a list
of, you know, 50 to 100 emails that you can send, use something
(25:53):
called mail merge. It exists in multiple platforms.
You can even do it straight off of Gmail, I believe, or Outlook.
And it essentially just slots inthose custom fields, looking at
your Excel spreadsheet and sendsthem off en masse.
So it's a very practical and efficient tool for sending, you
know, hundreds of emails at a time.
(26:13):
And it saves you. It saves you an incredible
amount of time. And just finally, before we move
on, what's the general protocol then, because you're targeting,
let's say companies that don't have a big HR team or graduate
hiring scheme, so people are used to that kind of online
assessments, higher view that process.
What does it look like when you've done it in this other
(26:36):
alternative route? Yeah.
So I think first of all, most ofthe time you get rejected.
I think that's that's the same as regular interest experience,
but that's normal. But usually the next step is the
person that you e-mail would want to just hop on a quick call
with you to understand more about your motivations and also
who you are. I think for.
(26:58):
Yeah, actually for all of my speculative internships, I did 2
interviews or I called e-mail and did 2 interviews before I
got the ugly actual role for oneof them.
They actually asked me to do like a a tester task to, to test
my abilities. But most of the time they just
want to go in and go in a quick meeting with you, learn about
(27:20):
who you are. They might then refer you to
another person in the same team.Just so you know, two people can
can make that decision. Yeah, it's, it's usually one
call or two, maybe, maybe, maybethree, I'm not sure.
But yeah, straight to calls and then hopefully, yeah, they can,
they can get you some experience.
Yeah, I know from personal experience that we've we've we
(27:42):
have hired similar to that previous person I said reached
out about the podcast. One of our existing employees
did exactly the same thing abouta year ago and he now works for
us. And I think at that point, it's
very much tell me about this person, I want to know about the
person. Because when you're a small
firm, a big difference is every single person and small
(28:04):
organization needs to be a producer.
That's where it's different whenyou sit in a big engine or or
cog in a big, big engine like a large organization.
So it all comes down in that environment to people.
Everyone in a small business does more than their job at
that. That's like default setting
because you have to, because everyone's involved and
everyone's growing it. So yeah, it always comes down to
(28:27):
personability. I would say the CV is is
important to a degree, but yes, there has to be technical box
ticked a little bit. But yeah, that that personality
shines through. Yeah, for sure.
For sure. All right.
Well, look, the last thing that you mentioned to me before off
off recording was about using AItools in a positive way.
(28:49):
And I deal with lots of employers and it's kind of two
challenges they're facing at themoment.
Challenge number one is this, this huge, monumental increase
in applications due to students using AI tools.
And everyone's become this like vanilla kind of template of what
they think these companies want to hear.
(29:09):
And so it's making screening processes incredibly, incredibly
difficult. So yeah, one of the things was
then about how do you use these AI tools in a positive way.
And the second point was about those same employers saying
students are actively using AI to prompt them in real time in
order to respond to questions when doing it in a very format
(29:32):
which. That's interesting.
Obviously can become hugely problematic when you get through
to final stage face to face interviews.
And so, yeah, I, I think there'sa lot of misuse of the tool at
the moment, but the matter of fact is the tools I think should
be used, they can be ultra productive to the whole thing.
So yeah, what's your your kind of use case and how you're
(29:54):
getting the best out of AI tools?
Yeah. So I would say the main use case
for me is treating say Chachi BTor any AIML tool as a teacher
who's ready to answer any of your questions at any time.
So for example, one of the ways I used it was say I had an
interview for, for, for some, for some firm that's coming up.
(30:16):
And you know, sometimes going totheir company page is quite,
it's quite tedious. They have, you know, multiple,
multiple times. It's hard to navigate like what
the actual unique, unique characteristic of that firm is.
So you can ask, you can just askyour TPT like Tommy, a high
level overview of this firm and tell me why it's unique and also
(30:37):
give me some recent headlines of, you know, projections or,
you know, big steps that they'vemade in the, in the past six
months. And then they're going to give
you a very succinct and, you know, easily under
understandable overview of the firm.
And then you can, you can, you can, you know, you can start
personalizing your either cover letter or your written answers
(30:58):
from the information you get from there.
And I think you know, these AI tools, they're very good at, you
know, dissecting like complex theories and complex technical
knowledge. So, you know, for example, if an
Inca refresher wants to know more about credit, you can ask
IGBT give me a one O 1 on creditand make it as simple as
(31:21):
possible. And you know, it's going to do a
very good job of, of making you understand the, the basic
fundamentals of say what, what credit is instead of going to
too much detail. And also one of the ways I've
been using it is so I, I think chat deputy also clawed.
I believe they have a tool whereit's kind of like Siri, where
(31:44):
you can just talk to them and, and they'll, they'll speak to
you. And surprisingly, they're like,
their conversation skills are very good.
So, and for example, you can usethis during during your commute.
I think. So one of the things I did was
while I was walking to to campus, I had an interviewer
like later on the day and I actually didn't have much time
to to prepare. But while I was walking to
(32:05):
campus, I would be speaking to chat deputy.
OK, tell me about this firm hasn't done any, any, any
activity. What's no typical questions come
up in these, in these interviews.
And then also you can just make a, a mental note or you can
speak in the chat DBT and you'rethe transcript, the transcript
of your of what you're saying isrecorded on your account.
So you can revisit that when you're actually, you know, right
(32:27):
before you take an interview andgive yourself a fresher into
what, what your thought process is.
So I would use it as a sort of teacher that's like by your side
all the time. Obviously a teacher is not going
to write an essay for you. A teacher is not going to give
you the answers, but the teacherwill give you guidance and
information. So I would think about it in
that way. Yeah, so it's like a a super
(32:48):
productivity hack. It's just there on tap and you
can be again. It's hands free almost.
You're just having this. What is if you can trick your
mind again to thinking it in that way, it's like how much
would a private shooter cost you?
It's probably like anything from3050 lbs an hour more than that.
And so you've got that on tap oryou could pay the £20 a month,
(33:12):
you know, open AI fee. But you've got that at different
levels designed to cater to yourstarting point of understanding.
Do you, do you ever use it at all for like more emotional
stuff? In a sense of I know my brother,
for example, he has it where it's set up where it will pull
down a quote of the day and thenit will e-mail it out to him.
(33:34):
So every day he gets an e-mail at 6:00 AM in the morning as a
motivational one for him to start his day.
Is there anything you could be think of like around that
aspects or? That's a very interesting use
case. I personally haven't used it in
terms of emotional support. I kind of find it because at the
(33:54):
end of the day, machine machine learning is pretty much millions
of parameters just giving you the most like likely answer that
would that is going to suit yourquestion.
So I mean, obviously, you know, getting a motivation code of the
day is nice. I've I've never thought of
using, you know, child deputy inthat way, but that maybe maybe I
can try it out. I mean, if you use like the the
(34:16):
voice, the the voice audio tool,the voices do actually sound
very realistic and most of the voices they're, you know, they
actually sound like quite, quitegenuine.
So I think I have a feeling maybe right before an interview,
it might help if if a student, you know, speaks Chad Steel a
(34:38):
little bit again, gets a fresheron the information that they
need to know about. And I think like speaking to
people does calm your nerves andyou know, maybe speaking the
chat chat DBT, it's very it's quite, it's quite similar.
So maybe you ought to have a similar effect of calming you
down, but I personally never useit when I try it out.
Yeah, a use case was, I remembermy, my wife was going through,
(34:59):
you know, the normal annual appraisal process and stuff like
that. And it was almost like you'd
actually banked up so much conversation with the, with the
AI tool that the AI tool was kind of like, come on, you got
this, you can. And it was like it was using all
this language and actually, you know, it did have some, you
know, quite, quite dramatic effects.
I think I'm just confidence and actually dealing with elocution
(35:22):
coaches. Something interesting you said
there was about sometimes ahead of an interview, it helps to
talk because actually ahead of an interview or pressurized
situation, what can often happenis you go into yourself because
you're mentally thinking about so much and you don't speak.
But the art of being able to speak well is like your mouth is
a muscle, you need to loosen it and let your let your words and
(35:43):
fluency flow. And that only comes through
actual talking. So there's a good hack when
you're feeling like vulnerable. So you don't want to actually
speak to someone. And also it's technical so they
might not possess that knowledge.
You could use the tool like you said, in an audio format to
assimilate. Let's just have a conversation
or a few few little warm up questions to get you going.
(36:05):
Yeah, for sure. Cool.
All right. Well, look, thank you so much
for sharing all all of this coolinformation with me.
Just remind me again, so what's happening with the AIC with the
link that we're going to share with this episode?
Yeah, So the AIC Alternative Investments conference, we
recently just released the subcommittee applications.
So for any LSE students from freshers to to masters all the
(36:29):
way to PhD, to be honest. Yeah, Please feel free to check
out our our Instagram. It's at LSESUAIC and I think I
think more broadly, even if you're not ALC student, if you,
you know, would like any further, further, further
guidance from me on anything that we've talked about in these
previous podcast podcast sessions, please for me to reach
out to me on, on on LinkedIn. I'll, I'll try and you know, I
(36:51):
don't know how many requests I'll get, but I'm really because
I learned so much from speaking to people when I was first here.
I'm quite keen on on helping, helping people out who's coming
in. But yeah, thank you, Anthony for
for this experience. It's been, it's been a really,
really good time. Really enjoyed the talk talking
to you on this podcast. Yeah, amazing.
All right, you guys, thank you so much and thank you all for
listening. Till the next episode.
(37:12):
Stay tuned.
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