Vault’s Verdict

Harris Williams is ideally looking for hardworking, intelligent, motivated, proactive, entrepreneurial, solutions-oriented candidates who are collaborative, down-to-earth, and easy to get along with. For students, the firm runs a top-notch internship program, providing interns with significant exposure to live deals, hands-on experience, a great mentoring program, and plenty of formal and informal events to get to know bankers across all groups. For its full-time junior professionals, Harris Williams offers extensive growth and development opportunities, including a strong training program, excellent formal and informal mentoring, internal mobility options (across business units and offices), quick promotion cycles for top performers, and help from senior bankers with the buy-side job search (for analysts looking to move to PE after completing their commitment to HW).

Although at times the workload can be intense, the hours long, and vacation difficult to take, Harris Williams places a significant emphasis on providing junior bankers with work/life balance. Juniors get one protected week a year and one protected weekend a quarter. In general, senior bankers are understanding of junior bankers’ lives outside of the office, and insiders rave about the collaborative, friendly culture at the firm. Meanwhile, compensation is generous. Salaries and bonuses are slightly above the Street average, and perks are plentiful. However, some insiders wish the firm would provide more in the way of wellness offerings.

The firm has been focused on diversity hiring in recent years and has been improving in this area but still seeks to improve. Harris Williams has a strong military veteran pipeline but is less diverse when it comes to gender and ethnicity. With respect to Harris Williams’ business outlook, the future is bright. The firm has been growing market share and working on larger and larger deals. It’s very well positioned to continue to grow. Its senior leadership team has the full confidence of the wider team. Harris Williams’ reputation in the marketplace is strong and getting stronger.