2025-03-12T14:19:39Z Read in app Sophia Guiter, a participant in Balyasny's fall 2024 stock-picking competition, landed a summer 2026 internship at the hedge fund. Balyasny Asset Management This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? $23 billion hedge fund Balyasny has adoped a new approach to recruiting young talent.A stock contest serves as an early application pool for the firm's internship program.A former participant and two firm execs explain how to snag an invite and make a good impression.When Sophia Guiter arrived in New York City last October, it was her first time in the Big Apple.Despite the allure of Broadway, Times Square, and the city that never sleeps, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, college student had a bigger mission: making an impression on executives of the $23 billion asset manager Balyasny. She and two of her Marquette University classmates were set to compete in the firm's first-ever US stock pitching competition the next day.Guiter's focus paid off: Her team placed third, and she scored an interview that led to an internship with Balyasny's proprietary research team, set to start in 2026.Balyasny, meanwhile, has now adopted the competition as a regular part of its recruiting pipeline. It held a second stock-picking contest at the end of February and plans to host two such competitions a year in the US from now on.While only the first-place winners receive a $10,000 check, the top two teams, plus other standout students, are granted hard-to-get interviews for Balyasny internships. For example, six out of 15 participants from the February contest were interviewed for Balyasny's 2026 internship program."It's basically an early application pool for us, and we would love to be able to fill a good amount of our summer internship class via the stock pitch competition," said Hannah Dinardo, the firm's head of campus recruiting.Balyasny is just one of many "buy-side" firms ramping up campus recruitment that is, getting talent in the door earlier through internships versus waiting until they've had job experience. In the past, hedge funds and private equity firms recruited almost exclusively from investment banks. But campus recruiting has become increasingly important to the sector, which has ballooned in size in recent years due to growing interest in their investments."Having a cohort of young talent I don't want to say that it's inexpensive, but it's an earlier investment," explained Steve Schurr, a Balyasny portfolio manager who conceived of the stock-picking competition as a talent pipeline. Today, most of Schurr's 10-person team counts Balyasny as their first job out of college, he said.Guiter, Schurr, and Dinardo sat down with Business Insider to give their advice on how college students interested in a finance career can get invited to the competition and make an impression on the asset manager's top execs once there. Steve Schurr, senior managing director and portfolio manager at Balyasny, (left) in conversation with participants from the fall 2024 stock pitch competition. Balyasny Asset Management Inside the competitionHere's how it works: Balyasny recruiters, including Dinardo, identify campus clubs with students they can invite to submit stock pitches, which act as applications to the competition. The firm prioritizes sophomores.Pitches are reviewed blind, meaning the school names are withheld until the final selection round. Then, five schools are invited to and hosted in New York to participate in an in-person competition.At the event, student teams present their pitches to the judges who are also portfolio managers and the other teams for 10 minutes, followed by a seven-minute Q&A.In addition to traditional Wall Street target schools, Dinardo says the firm also aims to include lesser-known universities like Marquette University a small private school in Wisconsin. (The winners of the February competition hailed from The University of Alabama.)"It's such a great way to evaluate students' skill set through their work product and to really see how they're thinking about markets, how they're thinking about stocks, and just see them in a totally different light versus just a one-to-one interview," said Dinardo. "You're able to also, from a recruiting perspective, see how they stack up against their peers."Get strategically involved on campusKey to scoring an invite is being in the right college clubs."The competition as a whole has been really helpful for us to better understand where we're spending our time on campus and which groups really align well with what we're looking for," Dinardo said.She advises students whose groups aren't yet on their radar to hone in the club's educational program and mission."Think about the curriculum of the club. Is it a group where students by their sophomore year are going to be prepared to compete and participate in a competition like this?" she said, adding: "Are they well versed in diligencing an idea soup to nuts and from start to finish being able to build out a stock pitch and an investment pitch?"In choosing which clubs to work with, Dinardo also looks at a club's relationship with its members, preferring a loyal base versus a handful of students aiming to fill out their resumes."A one-semester engagement opportunity on campus to build out your resume and get on an email distro list. I would say that's typically what we try to avoid," she said.Put in the hoursIt can be hard to juggle classes, jobs, friends, and other club commitments, but Guiter advises students prioritize the stock-picking competition if they want to succeed."We were putting in over 80 hours a week, especially that last week," Guiter said. I mean, we'd wake up in the morning and we would work on that until we went to bed. We were really focused on it and really wanted to stand out to the judges and come as prepared as possible."She had never worked so hard on anything in her time as a student."It was definitely the most I've ever juggled on my plate at one time, but worth every minute of it."Practice getting 'grilled'Rehearse presenting your ideas and answering questions as much and as often as possible."Don't show up and have only practiced your pitch like, three times," Guiter said.She and her team did multiple run-throughs in front of their entire investment club and professors."We'd go up during class or have Friday pitches where people would come, and they would just grill us," she said. "There was a time where it went on for an hour and a half."Ahead of the competition, the top five teams get a 45-minute pitch revision session with members of Balyasny's analyst development team to prepare for the final event and get a better sense of the types of questions they might be probed on. Bill Wappler (left), partner and director of research at Balyasny, with other members of the Balyasny judging team. Balyasny Asset Management Think of ways to be differentBalyasny doesn't give students tight parameters for picking a stock, just a market cap amount. So when thinking about which equity they'd showcase, Guiter and her team went for something they thought would be a less popular choice: a healthcare stock."We wanted to branch out from the tech and AI space because we figured a lot of our competitors would choose a stock within that space," she said. "We wanted to differentiate within a market that has a lot of research that we could build off of."Indeed, the skill set required to be a successful equity investor is "evolving rapidly," said Schurr."You need to have a high degree of creative intelligence. You need to be a really independent thinker, but you also have to have an adaptive mindset," he said.Guiter and her team used ChatGPT to assist with the extensive research project and show they could harness technology."We analyzed how often management fulfilled their promises by analyzing 10 years of earning calls," she said.Focus on processLooking back, Guiter said her group should've included more details about the time spent on the project as well as their research approach when delivering their 10-minute pitch. It's something she now encourages other students to do.Indeed, Shurr (who was a judge at her competition) said he is looking to hear about research processes and conclusions that say something interesting. Even if the judges don't agree with the stock call, this will give them insight into the process.Schurr added that successful teams "did a deep amount of interesting and variant work and could articulate their thoughts quite well about the nature of the business and where they believe the perception was misplaced," he said. "And they could show their work."This focus helps him and other PMs determine the competition winners and identify which students to invite to Super Days."Really what you're trying to do with this is not identify one great idea, you're trying to identify someone who has an innate strength as a sleuth to go and dig for information in a unique way," he said.