If you’ve applied for a graduate position in an investment bank starting in 2012 and you haven’t received an offer yet, you probably won’t get one.

The deadlines for most graduate applications have either passed already or will pass soon. Even though some banks’ deadlines aren’t until the very end of November, most offers have been made already.

“If you were going to get a full time offer for 2012 from an investment bank, you would probably know about it by now,” says the head of graduate recruitment at one European firm.

In general, she says the delay between application and offer is inversely related to a candidate’s desirability. The best candidates will go from application to interview to offer in no less than four weeks.

Not all graduate places have been filled however. The head of recruitment at another bank says graduate recruitment this year is being slowed by the fact that the bank is busy making existing staff redundant. Because of this, he says they haven’t had a chance to interview some of the people they’d like to hire full time in 2012. “Most of our offers have gone out, but we expect to make the final few just before Christmas,” he says.

Internships have been assigned too

While deadlines for graduate roles are typically in late November, deadlines for summer internship applications are often in early January.

However, most banks interview candidates for summer internships on a rolling basis. With intern applications already open for several months, many intern interviews have already happened and many intern places for 2012 have already been allocated.

One bank says it’s already allocated half next year’s summer intern places. Another says it’s allocated two thirds. “Most people understand that you have to start applying for internships early,” says one head of recruitment. “If you haven’t applied by this point, I would argue that you haven’t taken your intern application very seriously.”