How to be a good HF intern

Hey,

I will be interning at an HF this summer for the first time, on an equities desk at an MM, and have a couple questions.

What makes a great intern? What can I do to prepare in advance for this summer? Any thoughts/experiences are helpful. Thanks!

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Things that helped me when I interned at funds: always double check your work - you don't want to hand in work that has silly mistakes. Ask questions if you are stuck - there are no silly questions and everyone will help but at the same time you don't want to be annoying, ask only after you do your research and can't figure out yourself. Don't be annoying - keep your head down and do your work, don't walk in with an ego. Communicate efficiently - acknowledge every single email you get, a simple reply by just saying "thanks" is good enough. Work smart not hard - if you end up getting a lot of work thrown at you, triage and efficiently do your work.

You're going to have fun interning at a HF. Work will be hard but also fun at times. I had an amazing experience interning at different funds. Most of the funds I worked at didn't have any kind of a formal training program like banks so if your fund is like that, depending on what they've told you would be doing, you could sharpen up your modelling skills, read some books, keep up with the markets, or just have fun with your friends and family before you start working. That should be good enough. Maybe email your point of contact and ask if he / she has any suggestions - this usually works and shows enthusiasm.

 

Thank you for the advice! The fund I'm interning at has an onboarding/training process, but I've been keeping up with news and reading some economics in the meantime.

 

Agree with work smart. But also hard.

Communicate too. If something is going to take you a certain amount of time, say so and make sure that’s in line with expectations.

Don’t make stupid mistakes. Print out your model / work and look it over before you give it to a PM. I love to teach but I hate having to nitpick on stupid mistakes.

Give them the ability to teach you more valuable things than fixing your stupid mistakes.

 

Any advice on how to network with other people in the firm, who I'm not working with directly? I feel like this would have been easy to do if in person, just going out to lunch or something, but what about virtual?

 

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