Hassan Akram
Founder, Elite Careers Strategy and Who Gets In?
I advise candidates and families navigating some of the world’s most selective careers.
Corporate lawInvestment bankingPrivate capitalConsulting
- A recruitment and search career before the advisory work
- More than 10,000 applications and related candidate materials reviewed across recruitment work and ECS advisory
- Based in London, with documented outcomes in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore
Third-party publications shown for context only. No affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied.
The thesis
Elite selection is not a credentials contest.
Most of a selection decision is invisible from the outside. It sits in judgement, verification and live performance, and information about how it works is unevenly held.
Positioning is what an application signals before anyone has met you. Progressing tests technical work, commercial judgement and how somebody behaves while being watched for a day. Converting is a partner deciding whether they would put you in front of a client. Many of the candidates I see are failing at one of the three and preparing for all of them. I learned to see which from the recruiting side of the table, and Elite Careers Strategy starts with that diagnosis.
Track record
Published items are linked. Private files stay private.
- Reviewed
More than 10,000 applications and related candidate materials reviewed across recruitment work and ECS advisory.
- Outcomes
106 documented outcomes and selection progressions across 53 candidate journeys. Two on this page: a White & Case London training contract (anonymised), and HSBC and Blackstone for Karam Kahlon (named with consent). Outcomes are documented and held on file. Most families stay unnamed.
Evidence and cases- Invited sessions
Harvard Business School, the MBA class, invited by the student-run Venture Capital and Private Equity Club. Yale School of Management, invited MBA student-club session. MIT Sloan, invited student-led session. Festival of Education, Wellington College. No university affiliation.
- Writing
Featured in the Financial Times. Has written for The Times of India. Practitioner research published by ECS.
Founder, Who Gets In?, ECS’s research project on how highly selective employers choose early-career talent.
Who Gets In? research
Where it started
I grew up in my city’s most deprived neighbourhood, Derby 016A, which the 2025 English Indices of Deprivation place among the most deprived 1% in England: 74th of 33,755. I went to state school, achieved A*A*A at A-level, played cricket for Derbyshire as a teenager and studied History at UCL. Nobody I knew worked in law or finance, so I learned these systems from the outside first, then from the recruiting side. None of this information is secret. It is unevenly held.
Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Local Deprivation Explorer 2025, neighbourhood E01013480.
"The strongest career strategist I have encountered - anywhere in the world."
Kristin Irish
Former Head of IB Campus Recruiting, UBS Investment Bank, New York
Former Deputy Director of Career Development, Yale School of Management
Independent endorser - not a client of ECS.
Contact
For private advisory enquiries
Applications are reviewed for fit before an engagement is offered.
Elite Careers Strategy