How are interns/new hires allocated to sectors?

I'm going to be an equity research SA next summer and I was wondering if any ER-types who have made hiring decisions could chime in on how interns are allocated to sector teams.

I met a fair amount of current VPs/MDs from different sectors during my interview process (a lot of the superday group interviews felt very similar, just with people from different sectors). Does someone from a specific sector have to go "I want that one" for an applicant to get in, meaning new hires are already earmarked for a specific sector, or are interns hired first and later divyed up among the sectors?

I've heard people with medical backgrounds will pretty reliably end up in the pharma team, ditto for mech/chem engineers and autos/energy, etc. Since I'm an economics student and my CV is pretty heavily skewed in that direction, am I more likely to get put into the banks or insurance sectors? I was interviewed by people from both of those areas, although I met with about 8-12 different sectors total.

 

Allocation of interns is very random, they look at your CV and say "oh it would be a good fit here". Of course medicine students will be assigned to pharma/biotech but that is pretty much the only certainty you can get. My interviewer ended up being my line manager so there is also this fit aspect to consider. The only pure financial engineering background we had was not allocated to banks or insurance to give you an idea. It is not really a big deal, just do your best whatever the team you end up with. If they keep you, they look at which sector needs a grad and that is pretty much it, your preferences will never be asked and you can be sure you won't end up in the team you interned with.

 

My experience was slightly different from above, and it will likely depend on your firm. My preferences (location and industry) were asked from me and taken into consideration, but in the end, the decision will just be made on whatever is already open or happens to open up. It'll take some luck to end up with the exact industry you want but if one does open up and you let it known that you are interested, they'll probably try and accommodate.

 

The same stuff IB interns (which also don't have licenses) do, though the duties are a bit different. Typically an intern would be running comps, sitting in on meetings and calls, and usually doing a summer long project looking at either an industry sector or a specific company. At my last company, we had MBA interns prepare reports or two companies which we randomly assigned to them. The expectation would of course be lower for undergrads though.

 
models_and_bottles:

For undergrads my last firm did a "draft" where the team with the highest needs went first. New hires didn't get any say at all. I was always curious what round of the draft I was selected in...

How did they determine which interns were the most 'desirable' without meeting them? Just based off undergrad grades and CV material?

 
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