What kind of internship to look for in sophomore year to land a junior year MBB internship?
I attend a top target school and I'm trying to land a junior year MBB internship. Where should I be looking to work/intern for my sophomore year summer?
To add on to that, some of the top 4 accounting firms have summer internships that are open to sophomores. Would this be compelling work experience when I apply for MBB? Would it be conflict of interest?
Big names help, but depth of experience matters too. Granted, I'm still only in the interview stage, but I've had "Tier 2" internship experiences but gotten good reviews on my experiences since I had impressive roles. Mix of finance and policy work (not saying its the only path - just do stuff related to what you're interested in and it'll pay off)
In general, you're in good shape if you can get an internship at another major consulting firm (but most do not take sophomore interns) or in a role with relevant skills at a well known company (e.g. finance intern at a F500). One easy way to figure out which options are good is to create a spreadsheet and list every recent alumni from your school at MBB that you can find, and list out where they did their internships
In the absence of any other internship offers then the big4 audit offer wouldn't necessarily be bad, but I would not prioritize it as the work in audit is less relevant for strategy consulting vs many other types of work (I am assuming they are offering sophomores internships in audit not consulting -- if they're for their consulting arms then it's great relevant experience). You also want your internship to be something you might actually want to do if consulting recruitment doesn't work out. It wouldn't be a conflict of interest though in any way, not really sure what the concern there is
I’ve heard of a ton of kids getting Finance F500 gigs for sophomore summer and even freshmen summer. Do you know the process for this? Is it networking based or do these opportunities pop up during the year on target/semi-target websites or Handshakes?
On-campus recruiting (i.e. campus-specific job boards such as Handshake and on-campus career fairs)
The tedious part is figuring out which companies even accept sophomore interns. If you're lucky your career services will have some sort of lists or something like that, but the tried and true way is to spend an entire afternoon at the career fair talking to tons of companies to figure out who takes sophomores
As far as freshman go, I feel like most freshman internships I see are at smaller companies, again probably found through career fairs but there's a longtail of how to navigate that and I'd start with finding classmates who interned as freshman and asking them. Truthfully though you're not behind if you don't have a freshman internship
When I was a freshman, I would attend every career fair and talked to a ton of companies just for the practice (and to occasionally start building relationships where applicable). You also get tons of company swag which is nice
As someone who was asking the same question a year ago, I wanted to shed some light -
Strategy/Finance at an F500 is your best bet. My current internship is insurance/internal consulting at an F50, and it's been a great experience. Big programs like these are very structured and regimented, so there's a lot to speak on in interviews.
Do you meet diversity criteria? If so, pursue the Big4 soph. internships like EY Launch or Deloitte Discovery. I wouldn't recommend pursuing the sophomore internships at big4 for consulting unless you meet diversity criteria. My biggest mistake was spending the Fall networking around for those. I spoke with 15+ people across the big4 and struck out on all of them when in retrospect I should have skipped wasting time and just redirected efforts to network for F500 earlier.
Could you give a general outline of how you found F500 opportunities? Was there networking involved?
Accounting / audit isn't a conflict of interest in the slightest, but not exactly ideal. The main reason is that the work you do in audit just isn't transferrable to strategy consulting. As a result, your resume bullets will end up flat and your interview stories may not resonate.
Anything that is either hard to get (acting as a signal of your competency) and / or relevant to consulting will be good. Honestly, you can make a very wide range of options work as long as you make solid impact in whatever role you step in.
Hey - I currently have a freshman internship at a Big4 doing consultant work (kind of like Human Capital / HR work), so it’s not strategic consulting. Is this beneficial or relevant to pursuing MBB or even IB? Basically, will MBB or IB care / give a fuck that I did non-relevant consulting work, or is best to prioritize other internships/organizations?
Yes that is relevant experience especially as a freshman, but I'd try to find something even better next year
Yup, that's an awesome internship for freshman summer. I would recommend just building on that further in your sophomore summer. If you can do that, you'll be in fantastic shape for summer internship recruiting.
It's not as relevant for IB, but no one cares about freshman summers other than the fact that you got one and have had some exposure in a professional environment. Think of this human capital gig as a stepping stone to a sophomore summer.
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