Top grads are avoiding Wall Street

Wall Street.
Wall Street. art2002/iStock

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

The housing market is crazy, too

"Tired of sky-high prices and losing out in bidding wars, some buyers are giving up and putting their house hunt on hold," said Steven Kurutz at The New York Times. The first house on which Utah residents Rob Ettaro and his girlfriend, Kaliana Veros, made an offer was listed at $479,000; they made an offer $6,000 above asking. On the second one, they offered $60,000 over the asking price — competing with 53 other offers. Still another offer, $35,000 over asking, "no repairs, as is" got no answer at all. After 14 failed tries, they are now sitting out the market. The increase in buyers pausing their searches is finally cooling some prices. In the Austin metro area, where prices have gone up a stunning 43.9 percent in one year, one broker says, "The market is starting to stabilize. Not normalize. Stabilize."

Top grads are avoiding Wall Street

Wall Street is having a hard time recruiting young talent, said Marcus Ashworth at Bloomberg. Knowing that the ticket to just reaching "base-level mastery" at an investment bank requires "roughly three years' worth of 72-hour weeks," several banks have started offering $10,000 bonuses and other perks to entice prospective first-year analysts. But these companies are finding out that monetary bonuses and Peloton bikes "just won't cut it." Many young people have become less career-oriented, while others are sensing "the real action no longer lies in a dealing room but in a startup or in a major tech firm."

Rejecting internal job candidates

Recent estimates suggest corporate hiring managers receive 10 internal applications for every open job, said JR Keller and Kathryn Dlugos at the Harvard Business Review. Promoting from within sends a positive signal about the organization. But soothing the frustration of rejected internal candidates can be a challenge. One way is by having internal candidates interview with the hiring manager, and not just someone from HR. In our research, "we found that candidates who were rejected after interviewing with the hiring manager were half as likely to exit as those rejected earlier in the process." While rejecting internal candidates can raise the chance they will leave the organization, overall, hiring internally boosts retention. When employees see the company favor an external candidate, "they assume they will face external competition for similar jobs in the future."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

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