Boutique Unpaid IB vs. Corporate Banking

Hi, 

To start out, my ultimate goal is to work in investment banking, for a solid firm with good pay and strong deal flow.

 I'm currently set to graduate this semester from a non-target. I have 3.5 GPA, several internships in accounting, and one IB boutique internship. I'm doing the boutique IB internship right now for the fall and its unpaid, but offers pretty decent deal exposure e.g. creating CIM's, client calls, but barely any financial modeling. The MD says I can continue for as long as I want in this internship until I find a FT job. I've been looking for FT offcycle IB jobs and have been getting interviews, but no conversions yet. However, I have landed a few corporate banking offers that are quite solid. Though since my dream is to do investment banking, I am afraid that if I take the fulltime corporate banking offer, itll be backpedaling. But the pay is great and I heard many people lateral from corporate banking to IB. But will employers look down upon me if they see that I was in investment banking previously and then moved to corporate banking? Here are my options.

1. Continue Boutique IB unpaid internship and continue to network/apply until find an investment banking job(risky because its unpaid)

2. Accept one of the Corporate Banking Offers (lateral after a year or two if still want to do IB) ---- offers are from Citi, JPM, WF, C5(Scotia, BMO)

Thanks for the help guys

13 Comments
 

Corporate banking 100% of the time. That’s not backpedaling, that’s taking advantage of a an extremely solid job offer that will pay you good money and provide excellent experience. Backpedaling would be giving away your time for free at a dinky little shop and crossing your fingers the crapshoot of getting a legit gig works in your favor (unlikely, statistically)

 

Awesome, got it. And this would be applicable to all corp banking offers? Ofc granted its not a shitty no name corporate banking offer

 

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