Best Response

SA last year, coming in FT this year. This is from my own personal experience.

1) Don't be a tool. Some of the other interns where really pompous and arrogant. It shows. The other interns will hate you, your group will hate you and you'll get no offer.

2) Under promise and over deliver. This is a concept that interns have a really hard time understanding. When I was an SA and my senior asked me to learn this industry while he was gone for a few days on a marketing trip I would say ok and when he got back I would have a 40 slide pitch deck ready for him. He'll only glance at it for like 5 minutes when he got back but it leaves an impression.

3) Don't leave before your senior leaves. I know people say face time doesn't count, go home. Well take the safe route and sit your ass there. Your internship is like only 10 weeks. Suck it up, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

4) Be a human being. When you talk to people don't talk about finance or work. Talk about sports or if its a girl talk about movies or places to eat in New York or your plans next year to study abroad. Just make people know you and not get the impression that you do not have a personality.

5) Absolute must, don't make your team's jobs harder then it already is. Your going to fuck up, it'll happen quite often. Save like multiple copies and try to not ask the same thing twice. That would really annoy any of the associates I was working with.

This all sounds like common sense but its harder to do in practice. Good luck with your SA. Even if you don't get an offer your still leaps and bounds ahead of your classmates come fall recruiting.

 

90% of getting the offer is #1/#4 (these are the same thing). Just make people like you. The other 10% is #5.

Basically, as long as people like you and think you're cool, you just need decent work product to get the offer. When people like you they will overlook all your flaws and focus on your strengths. Perception is everything.

~~~~~~~~~~~ CompBanker

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

i disagree that 90% is getting people to like you. i think getting people to like you is a prerequisite--you can't get an offer without it. but in a tough market, if you don't do good work that people can rely on, it's not going to be enough. remember, some banks these days are cutting up to half their intern classes--and 50% of the interns aren't jackasses.

 

A few other points to add to the good points Bearing mentioned.

  1. Attention to detail – the work given to summer interns and first year analysts is often monotonous and dull, but you have to make sure to remain alert and pay attention to detail. If you have typos or otherwise fail to pay attention to detail then you will be essentially useless because they will have to look over your work very carefully and essentially do it themselves, which was exactly what they were hoping to avoid by giving you the work. Also, even if the task is as dull as getting lunch (which you will likely do frequently in sales and trading), if you aren’t even competent enough to order lunch, how can you expect to be trusted with more important tasks?

  2. Know when and how to ask questions – if you have a question you should definitely ask it, but don’t just ask questions for the sake of asking questions. If you could find the answer to your question by doing a simple research then the question is not worth asking and you will annoy the person you are asking rather than enticing them to engage you in conversation.

  3. Push the analysis to the next level. This is an alternative to delivering your assignments early. Think about other types of analyses that might make sense. What's the next step in the analysis? Do this and you’ll demonstrate that you are thinking strategically about your work.

  4. Build a broad base. Go out to lunch with as many different people as you can in your first few weeks. Target a new person each day and don’t exclude people in other groups and administrative staff. This will accomplish two things. You will get a broad perspective of the organization, and you’ll make friends you’ll really need down the road when you need someone to stay late to review your work or put your request ahead of others so you can make your deadline.

I pulled these from these 2 links Acing the Ten Week Interview http://bit.ly/10b3hw

Getting Off to a Good Start in a New Job http://bit.ly/zGHMB

Gotta Mentor Connect to the Advice & People You Need to Achieve Your Career Goals
 

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