Advice: Deciding between two 1st-year internships?

This is sort of a question between technical vs. personable skills in the finance industry, and which skill set is more highly valued by recruiters.

I'm a freshman at a target school and my desired career path is Investment Banking. I'm trying to build my resume this summer and was really fortunate to receive two internship offers. My question is, which one will be most beneficial in trying to land a top-tier internship in the future?

Option A (paid): Work for a small branch of a boutique Investment Bank. There are like 3 employees at the branch, constantly running Bloomberg Terminal and trading mostly fixed-income securities. It's a little beyond my scope of understanding but I learn quickly. My job would be to help them research trades and also optimize some tasks in Excel for them.

Option B (unpaid): PWM. The firm manages the portfolios of several wealthy clients. My job would be to shadow some of the employees of different departments and get an understanding of the firm. I think this would be more broad, and less technical than Option A. Students from my school have interned here before and enjoyed the experience. They usually leave you with a good letter of recommendation that you can use in the future.

What do you think? I'm leaning towards option A because I could add some skills to my resume that freshmen typically don't have (i.e. work with Bloomberg Terminal, Excel macros...).

3 Comments
 

Definitely Option A if investment banking is your goal. It also lets you see if if you'd like the work or not early on. Congratulations on getting an IB internship as a freshman!

 

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