How to Apply to Baird

11 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 46 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Baird is an employee-owned, Milwaukee-headquartered middle-market investment bank and wealth manager with roughly 5,000 associates and approximately 400 billion dollars in private-wealth client assets.
  • The ATS is Workday at rwbaird.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Baird, fed from the bairdcareers.com marketing site. Upload a PDF resume, clean the parsed fields, and reuse one candidate profile across applications.
  • Expect a fit-heavy, multi-round interview process culminating in a superday. Behavioral depth and team chemistry weigh as heavily as technical precision, especially in IB and Private Wealth.
  • Honest framing: deal flow is middle-market, not mega-cap, and comp tops out below bulge-bracket peers. In return you get flatter politics, genuine ownership, long tenure, and a top-tier Midwest culture.
  • Tailor your resume with numbers, keywords, and the right licenses (SIE, 7, 63, 79, 66, CFA, CFP), and send individualized thank-you notes within 24 hours of every round.

About Baird

Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, known universally as Baird, is an employee-owned, Milwaukee-headquartered financial services firm with roots going back to 1919. Its flagship offices at 777 East Wisconsin Avenue sit on the edge of Lake Michigan, but the firm is a genuinely national (and increasingly international) platform: roughly 5,000 associates across more than 100 U.S. offices and additional locations in Europe and Asia, with a headline private wealth platform of approximately 400 billion dollars in client assets. The business is organized into four principal units. Global Investment Banking is the best-known externally, a top-ranked advisor to middle-market companies on mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, and debt advisory assignments. Baird Private Wealth Management is the retail-facing engine of the firm, a national network of financial advisors and teams managing client wealth through a relationship-first, fee-aware model. Baird Asset Management and Baird Equity Capital Markets round out the platform with institutional investing, fixed income trading and research, and equity research that consistently places in Institutional Investor rankings relative to firms many times its size. Leadership under CEO Steven Booth has preserved the firm's defining trait, which is 100 percent associate ownership through a partnership-style structure that distributes equity broadly rather than concentrating it in a small executive group. Baird is one of a small number of firms that has appeared on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year since it became eligible, and it regularly shows up on Best Places to Work for Women, Parents, and Diversity lists as well. From a hiring standpoint, the honest framing matters. Baird is not Goldman, Morgan Stanley, or JPMorgan. Deal sizes are smaller, the bonus ceiling in banking is lower than bulge-bracket peers, and the center of gravity is Milwaukee rather than Manhattan. What Baird offers in return is a tighter culture, a flatter politics, genuine employee ownership that translates into long-tenured careers, excellent middle-market deal flow, and a reputational halo in the Midwest and in industrials, healthcare, consumer, and technology verticals that punches well above the firm's size. If you are optimizing for prestige, bulge-bracket peers will rank higher on a League Table basis. If you are optimizing for the combination of quality deal work, career longevity, and actually liking the people you sit next to, Baird is one of the strongest platforms in the country and an uncommonly durable employer.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Start at https://www

    Start at https://www.bairdcareers.com/ which is Baird's careers marketing site. The 'Search and Apply' entry point routes you to Baird's Workday tenant at rwbaird.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Baird, which is the actual applicant tracking system of record.

  2. 2
    Create a Workday candidate account

    Create a Workday candidate account. You can authenticate with email and password or, in many cases, use LinkedIn single sign-on, which will pre-populate work history fields from your profile. Double-check every field Workday imports; LinkedIn dates and titles often need cleanup.

  3. 3
    Filter the requisition list carefully

    Filter the requisition list carefully. Baird posts across Investment Banking, Private Wealth Management (including branch-level Financial Advisor, Client Specialist, and Wealth Strategist roles), Asset Management, Equity Capital Markets, Technology, Operations, Marketing, Compliance, HR, and internships. Use both the location filter and the business-unit filter to avoid wading through postings across 100+ offices.

  4. 4
    Upload your resume as a PDF

    Upload your resume as a PDF. Workday's parser will extract education, employment history, and skills into form fields. Then reopen each parsed section and correct it by hand. A parser that mislabels your internship title or swaps employment dates can cost you the screen before a human ever sees the application.

  5. 5
    Complete the voluntary self-identification disclosures (EEO, veteran status, dis

    Complete the voluntary self-identification disclosures (EEO, veteran status, disability). These are not scored. They are federal reporting fields and are segregated from the review packet recruiters see.

  6. 6
    Answer the firm-specific screening questions

    Answer the firm-specific screening questions. For investment banking and capital markets roles, expect questions about licensing (Series 7/63/79/SIE), authorization to work in the U.S. without sponsorship, geographic flexibility, and program-year fit (analyst vs. associate, summer vs. full-time).

  7. 7
    Attach a targeted cover letter when the posting allows one

    Attach a targeted cover letter when the posting allows one. For campus recruiting and IB roles in particular, a 250 to 350 word letter that names the specific group and explains why Baird (not 'why investment banking') is consistently a differentiator.

  8. 8
    Submit and note the requisition ID

    Submit and note the requisition ID. Workday emails a confirmation with a job ID of the form R-XXXXX. Keep it. Recruiters reference that ID in every subsequent communication.

  9. 9
    For campus candidates, monitor your school's on-campus recruiting platform in pa

    For campus candidates, monitor your school's on-campus recruiting platform in parallel. Baird recruits actively at core schools including Notre Dame, Indiana University, Wisconsin, Michigan, Northwestern, Chicago Booth, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis, and a tier of Big Ten and strong liberal arts programs. Many first-round interview slots are allocated through Handshake or Symplicity rather than Workday alone.

  10. 10
    For experienced hires, plan for a four-to-eight week cycle from submission to of

    For experienced hires, plan for a four-to-eight week cycle from submission to offer in most cases, longer for senior banker or research analyst roles that require multiple group meet-and-greets. Silence past two weeks is a reasonable trigger to follow up politely with the recruiter named on the Workday confirmation.

Resume Tips for Baird

recommended

Lead with numbers

Lead with numbers. Baird is a numbers firm. For banking candidates, every deal bullet should include transaction size, role played (sell-side advisor, buy-side advisor, joint bookrunner, co-manager), industry vertical, and the analytical work you personally produced (DCF, LBO, comps, merger model, management presentation section).

recommended

For private wealth, asset management, and operations candidates, translate work

For private wealth, asset management, and operations candidates, translate work into dollars, clients, accuracy rates, and scale. 'Reconciled accounts' is not a bullet. 'Reconciled 320 client accounts weekly across two custodians with a 99.8 percent match rate and escalated 14 breaks that recovered 42 thousand dollars in client assets' is a bullet.

recommended

Put your education block high for campus and recent-graduate candidates

Put your education block high for campus and recent-graduate candidates. GPA (if 3.5 or higher), major, minor, expected graduation, and relevant coursework (financial modeling, corporate finance, accounting, econometrics) should be visible above the fold on page one.

recommended

Certifications matter and should be listed explicitly: SIE, Series 7, Series 63,

Certifications matter and should be listed explicitly: SIE, Series 7, Series 63, Series 79, Series 66, CFA Level progress, CPA, CFP, CAIA, FRM. Put pass dates. If you are a 'CFA Candidate' put the level and expected exam window, not just the acronym.

recommended

Name the ATS-friendly sections Workday expects: Summary (optional), Experience,

Name the ATS-friendly sections Workday expects: Summary (optional), Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications, Honors, Volunteer. Avoid two-column resumes for this employer. Workday's parser handles single-column layouts cleanly and mangles side-by-side ones.

recommended

Mirror keywords from the job description into your Skills and Experience section

Mirror keywords from the job description into your Skills and Experience sections where they are honestly true. For IB, expect: financial modeling, valuation, DCF, LBO, comps, pitch books, CIMs, management presentations, Capital IQ, FactSet, Bloomberg, PitchBook. For Private Wealth: client service, financial planning, eMoney, MoneyGuidePro, CRM, Salesforce, compliance.

recommended

If you are a career changer, devote the top third of the resume to a crisp posit

If you are a career changer, devote the top third of the resume to a crisp positioning statement plus three or four 'transferable proof' bullets. Baird reads career changers seriously at the associate, VP, and director level, but the resume has to make the bridge for them.

recommended

Use standard fonts (Calibri, Arial, Garamond, Times), 10

Use standard fonts (Calibri, Arial, Garamond, Times), 10.5-11.5 point, with 0.5 to 0.75 inch margins. Headers and footers are fine but do not put critical information (name, contact) only in them; some ATS parsers skip headers.

recommended

Keep to one page if you have fewer than eight years of experience

Keep to one page if you have fewer than eight years of experience. Go to two pages only if you have genuinely different content to put on page two.

recommended

Proofread for spelling of firm and client names

Proofread for spelling of firm and client names. Writing 'Robert W Baird' without periods, or 'Baird & Co' missing the ampersand period, will not sink you, but misspelling a client or sector term ('healthcare' becoming 'healtcare') on a banking resume will end the screen instantly.

ATS System: Workday

Baird uses Workday as its applicant tracking system, hosted at rwbaird.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com under the 'Baird' site slug. The public careers site at bairdcareers.com is a WordPress-hosted marketing layer that links into the Workday careers portal. Workday at Baird is the system of record from application through offer, onboarding, and internal mobility. Recruiters triage requisitions inside Workday using structured screening questions, and hiring managers see the same parsed resume and application answers candidates submit. There is no shadow system; what you put in Workday is what the hiring team sees.

  • Create your candidate profile once and reuse it. Workday lets you apply to multiple Baird requisitions from one account, which also preserves your application history and gives recruiters a single view of your interest across roles.
  • Upload a PDF resume, then inspect every parsed field. Workday parses aggressively and silently truncates bullets, misreads date ranges (especially 'Present' and month-only formats), and occasionally swaps employer and title. Fifteen minutes of cleanup is worth more than any cover letter flourish.
  • Answer the prescreening questions truthfully. Workday routes candidates who mis-answer work authorization, licensing, or location fields straight to an auto-reject lane at many employers, and the recruiter typically never sees the application.
  • Use LinkedIn single sign-on only if your LinkedIn is current and matches your resume. If the two tell different stories, the recruiter will notice and it will cost you.
  • Keep your Workday profile updated after submission. If you pass a new license, graduate, or finish a CFA level between application and offer, update the profile and email the recruiter. It is a signal of seriousness.
  • Workday's internal mobility portal at Baird is the same tenant. Current associates apply to internal roles through the same interface, which is useful context if you are hired: your profile becomes the durable record of your career at the firm.

Interview Culture

Baird's interview process is deliberately high-touch, deeply behavioral, and explicitly fit-driven, which is a direct reflection of the firm's employee-owned, long-tenure culture.

Across businesses, candidates should plan for three to five rounds. The first is almost always a 30-minute phone screen with a recruiter that confirms logistics, compensation expectations, authorization, and general fit. Round two varies by unit. For Global Investment Banking campus candidates, the second round is typically a combined first-round (two or three 30-minute back-to-back interviews) blending technical and behavioral questions conducted on Zoom or on campus. Technical questions for analyst candidates stay inside the standard 400-question IB guide territory: walk me through a DCF, how do three statements connect, accretion/dilution mechanics, EV vs. equity value, LBO returns drivers, and standard accounting trivia (working capital changes, deferred taxes, treatment of goodwill). Associate (MBA) interviews layer in case-style questions and deal judgment: you have a client with these characteristics, would you advise a sale, a refinancing, or a recapitalization, and why. Final round is a superday, in-person at the relevant office (Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, Charlotte, Denver, San Francisco, London, or Frankfurt depending on group) or virtual when travel is constrained, with five to eight back-to-back interviews spanning analysts through managing directors. The superday is where fit is really adjudicated. Baird interviewers are trained to probe for what the firm internally calls 'the Baird test': would I want this person on my team for the next ten years, not the next two. That is not a cliche; it is a real cultural artifact that traces to the employee-ownership model and the long average tenure. Expect behavioral questions that dig: tell me about a time you disagreed with a senior person, tell me about the worst teammate you have ever worked with and how you handled it, tell me about a moment you failed and what you learned. Hedging and rehearsed answers land poorly. Specific, grounded stories with unambiguous ownership (including of failures) land well. For Private Wealth Management, interviews weight differently. Financial Advisor candidates interview with a Branch Manager and typically two to three advisors in the office where they would sit; the conversation is heavily about book-building plan, natural market, five-year vision, and personal resilience in a business where the first three years are hard. Operations, compliance, and technology hires interview with the functional hiring manager, cross-functional partners, and often an HR partner. Equity research interviews are famously rigorous: expect to walk through a stock pitch you have prepared in writing, defend it under cross-examination, and discuss the sector landscape in depth. Across all businesses, Baird takes written thank-you notes seriously. Send individualized notes within 24 hours, specific to each interviewer's conversation, ideally by email. The tone of the process is friendly Midwestern directness: interviewers will be warm, but they will also tell you what they think, and they will expect the same from you.

What Baird Looks For

  • Ownership mindset. The firm is associate-owned, and hiring is unapologetically filtered for people who will treat the work, the clients, and the firm's reputation as their own. Entitled, transactional, or mercenary energy reads immediately in interviews and disqualifies candidates who would otherwise be technically strong.
  • Intellectual honesty. Baird's research franchise and middle-market advisory practice both depend on telling clients uncomfortable truths. Interviewers probe for candidates who will admit what they do not know and show their work rather than bluff.
  • Analytical rigor appropriate to the role. For banking, capital markets, and research, that is modeling fluency, accounting precision, and clean written output. For private wealth, it is planning discipline and numeracy. For operations and technology, it is systems thinking and an evidence-based approach to problem solving.
  • Client-first instinct. The firm markets itself on the phrase 'Great Advice' and interviewers test whether candidates can articulate a definition of good advice that puts the client ahead of the firm's short-term economics.
  • Team posture. Baird runs a flatter hierarchy than bulge-bracket peers, and analysts interact with managing directors directly from day one. Interviewers look for candidates who can manage up, ask good questions, and push back appropriately without being either passive or abrasive.
  • Long-horizon commitment. Average tenure at Baird is meaningfully above industry norms. Candidates who frame the role as a two-year stepping stone to a hedge fund or private equity seat often do worse than candidates who speak credibly about a longer arc, even if everyone knows some analysts will in fact leave.
  • Midwest-compatible humility. The firm's cultural center of gravity is Milwaukee, and the whole firm, including bankers in Manhattan and London, operates with that tone. Loud, self-promotional, or status-obsessed candidates do not get offers, even when their technical work is strong.
  • Licensing readiness for licensed roles. For any role that requires FINRA registration (most client-facing roles in IB, ECM, PWM, and research), the firm expects that you can pass the SIE and Series 7 (and 63, 79, 66 depending on role) on reasonable timelines post-start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does Baird use and where do I actually apply?
Baird uses Workday as its applicant tracking system. The careers marketing site lives at https://www.bairdcareers.com/, and every application routes to the Workday tenant at rwbaird.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Baird. There is no separate parallel system. All applications, screening questions, offers, onboarding, and internal mobility happen inside that Workday instance.
Does Baird sponsor H-1B visas?
Baird sponsors on a selective basis, predominantly for experienced hires and for a limited number of campus hires in specialized roles such as research, quantitative capital markets, and technology. Most investment banking analyst and Private Wealth roles require authorization to work in the United States without sponsorship. The Workday screening question on sponsorship is binding; answering it incorrectly will route the application out of the active pool.
How does compensation at Baird compare to bulge-bracket peers?
Base salaries in Investment Banking are broadly competitive with the Street at the analyst and associate levels. Bonuses are typically tighter than top-of-market bulge-bracket outcomes in strong years and tighter still in weak years, because the firm shares economics more broadly across associates via the employee-ownership structure. In Private Wealth, compensation is a mix of base and production-based payout and is competitive with peer regional and national wealth platforms. Across the firm, the total compensation picture is strengthened by genuine equity participation for associates over time, which is uncommon in the industry.
What schools does Baird recruit at for its analyst and summer analyst programs?
Baird's campus presence is deepest at Notre Dame, Indiana University (Kelley), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michigan (Ross), Northwestern, University of Chicago (Booth for associates), Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis (Olin), and a rotating group of strong Big Ten, liberal arts, and regional programs. The firm also actively recruits outside its traditional core schools and considers candidates who apply directly through Workday without on-campus access; the bar is simply higher without a campus relationship.
How competitive is the Baird summer internship?
Extremely competitive, especially in Global Investment Banking and Equity Capital Markets. The summer analyst program is the firm's primary pipeline for full-time analyst hires, with strong return-offer rates, and the application timeline runs roughly twelve to eighteen months ahead of the internship start. Private Wealth, Operations, Technology, and Marketing internships are also offered and are meaningful, though less volume-capped than IB.
What is the interview structure for a Private Wealth Financial Advisor role?
A recruiter screen first, then a Branch Manager interview in the local office, then two to three conversations with practicing Financial Advisors. For experienced FA candidates moving a book of business, expect additional discussions with regional leadership, compliance, and the national recruiting team. Plan to articulate a credible plan for the first three years, including natural market, introduction strategy, and personal financial runway.
How long does the overall hiring process take?
Campus recruiting runs on the standard IB calendar: first-round interviews in the fall, superdays in late fall, offers shortly after. Experienced-hire cycles typically run four to eight weeks from application submission to offer, with senior roles occasionally running longer to accommodate multiple group meetings and reference checks. Private Wealth and Financial Advisor hiring is often faster at the branch level but includes FINRA registration timing if you are not already licensed.
What licenses will I need and when?
Client-facing roles in IB, ECM, Private Wealth, and research require FINRA registration. Most new hires arrive without licenses and study for the SIE, Series 7, and follow-on licenses (63 and either 66, 79, or others depending on role) during structured study time in the first three months of the program. Baird pays for the exams and provides study materials. Failing a license can be a material issue; studying seriously is expected.
Is the culture really as 'nice' as the rankings suggest?
The Great Place to Work and Fortune 100 Best rankings are not marketing artifacts; they are derived from employee survey data, and Baird's appearance on them every eligible year indicates the culture is real. That said, 'nice' does not mean 'easy.' The work is rigorous, the hours in IB are the hours in IB, and performance standards are high. What is different is the absence of the political and zero-sum tone that dominates some peer firms. Directness is valued; cruelty is not.
Does Baird hire remote workers?
Most roles are hybrid, with expectations of in-office presence three or more days a week in the assigned office. Fully remote roles exist for a small number of technology, operations, and specialized positions, and are posted as such in Workday. Client-facing and deal-team roles are almost always in-office because of the apprenticeship nature of the work.
What should I do if I don't hear back after applying?
Wait two weeks from submission. If you have no update, send one polite follow-up to the recruiter listed on the Workday confirmation email, referencing the requisition ID. If you do not have a named recruiter, the Baird Talent Acquisition team can be reached via the Contact Us link on bairdcareers.com. Do not repeat the outreach; recruiters remember both the good followups and the pestering ones.
How should I prepare differently for Baird vs. a bulge-bracket interview?
Technical preparation is the same; the standard 400-question IB interview guides, a clean stock pitch for research roles, and strong accounting fluency all apply. What is different is the behavioral weight. Spend disproportionate time on 'tell me about a time' stories, why-Baird specifically (not just why IB or why finance), and genuine answers about the team environment you want. A candidate who nails a walk-through-a-DCF but cannot credibly explain why Baird specifically will lose to a candidate who is slightly weaker technically but clearly a culture fit.

Open Positions

Baird currently has 46 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 46 open positions at Baird

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Sources

  1. Baird Careers Official Site —
  2. Baird Workday Careers Portal —
  3. Robert W. Baird & Co. Corporate Site —
  4. Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For - Great Place to Work —
  5. Baird Investment Banking —
  6. Baird Private Wealth Management —
  7. FINRA BrokerCheck - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated (CRD 8158) —
  8. Workday Candidate Experience (CXS) API Reference —