Ask a Bank Managing Director to Refer You
A senior managing director gets pinged by strangers every week and ignores almost all of them. The honest way in is to make the shared thing obvious first and the ask a 30-second yes.
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A plain LinkedIn search buries the people who would actually help you.
It ranks by prominence, so the most-followed, most-messaged names sit on top. FindWarmIntros surfaces the coworkers who share your school or a past employer - the people most likely to reply - and hands you a ready-to-send intro.
✍️ Ready-to-send intro“Hi - we both studied at [your school]. I’d love to hear about your path to a company you are targeting before I apply…”
… plus everyone else in your network who can put in a good word.
See who can refer you in - pick your target company:
Why a senior MD ignores most referral asks
A managing director or partner referring you is putting their name on you inside a firm that tracks who referred whom. That is real social capital, so a cold 'can you refer me' from someone they have never placed reads as high risk for zero upside.
The ones who say yes almost always share something concrete with you: the same analyst class years ago, the same school, the same prior firm. That shared history is the collateral. Without it you are asking a busy senior person to vouch for a stranger, which is why the generic LinkedIn note dies in the archive.
How to structure the ask so a yes costs 30 seconds
Every line should lower the effort and risk for them. Write the message so that the reply they can send is just the word 'done' plus a forward.
- Lead with the shared thread. First sentence names the exact overlap (Wharton 2016, ex-Lazard M and A, same squash ladder), not your resume. It tells them in one line why you and not the other 40 people.
- Name the exact role. Give the team, title, and req or job ID. 'Refer me somewhere' forces them to do research; 'the healthcare coverage analyst req 41822' is a decision, not a project.
- Attach the forwardable blurb. Two lines they can paste to HR or the hiring MD without rewriting: who you are, the one relevant proof point, and the role. Do their editing for them.
- Make declining easy. End with a line that lets them pass without guilt, like 'no worries at all if the timing is off'. It signals you respect their name and raises the yes rate.
Finding the MD you actually share something with
The whole approach only works if you write to the one senior person you genuinely overlap with, and at a place like Morgan Stanley or JPMorgan there are hundreds of managing directors. Scanning LinkedIn by hand for a shared school or a former employer is slow and you miss the good matches.
This is the part FindWarmIntros does for you. You give it the target bank, and it surfaces the actual MDs and partners there who share your school or a past firm, ranks them by how strong that overlap is, and drafts the intro that leads with the shared thread. You still send it yourself, in your own voice, so the collateral is real and the message stays honest.