Questionable Internship Worth Continuing at All? (possibly illegal)
Currently I am a student in my junior year, fortunate enough to have secured a decent internship for the summer at a company that I may want to work for post grad in an area that interests me. In the mean time while taking classes I have also been doing a part time internship with a small independent financial advisor for academic credit. It only takes about 8 hours of my time every week but I'm beginning to question the usefulness of the experience I'm acquiring.
Regardless of what I do I think I can squeak out getting my academic credit because the whole situation and professor supervising me is very lax. The financial advisory/private wealth management side of the industry isn't something that I think that I would like to pursue long term so this was simply a way to get some finance experience on my resume.
Essentially what I do every day I come in is cold call prospective clients and begin trying to pitch them on a financial product if they pick up. Usually one of the 10 or so properly licensed guys grabs the phone from me a bit after I've made the connection. However sometimes none of them are able to and I am expected to continue into a full pitch. While I am glad to get the academic credit (toward my major) I am not sure how this experience would even be useful to talk about in an interview and after I complete my summer rotation I'm not even sure it's worth putting on the resume. I also think what I'm doing is illegal, while I don't think I'm on the hook for it and it's definitely on the licensed guys at the firm instructing me to do so, it doesn't seem I should be selling illegal experience during an interview.
My questions are, if I can continue working at this internship when I return in the fall will it be worth it at all to get more experience in a situation like this? Also how illegal is what I'm doing here and is there any immediate danger? Should I include this on a resume at all? Please help me out if you are able to do so and thanks in advance.
Why can't you get the same credit for your summer internship? If you can get credit for your summer position then I would drop this ASAP.
If you're just cold calling people then letting the older guys sell securities it's not technically illegal. Shady as hell, sure. The feds aren't going to come knocking down your door though.
Uh, no. Knock it out of the park at your real internship and never look back.
The goal is to get these types of joke internships and summer jobs (i.e. lifeguarding, waiting tables, bartender, etc.) off your resume ASAP. Many of us had these types of jobs at some point. They are a stepping stone to get you from point A to B, nothing more.
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