Hi guys,
I might be able to study for a full academic year at an US university as an exchange student. My goal would be an FO summer gig at one of the BBs in NYC.
Fortunately, with the OPT Visa I would not require any Visa sponsorship for that summer to work in the US. So I might actually be able to land a summer internship.
However, I seriously doubt I would get a return FT offer (even if I would be very good intern) because I would require full Visa sponsorship once I graduate from my non-US university.
Am I missing something here, or really I don't stand a chance at having an FT return offer with a full Visa sponsorship? It makes sense, as why would they want to spend a lot of time/money on sponsoring somebody foreign when you could just fill up the spots with those who wouldn't require sponsorship and would be just as good as me on the job?
Thanks a lot.
Short answer, you basically don't stand a chance. Extremely, extremely unlikely for a few reasons:
1) make sure you have your Visa facts right (not disputing you, just saying to check) - exchange students are usually on J1 visas that to my knowledge don't have the full OPT. You can work on a J1 Visa for a summer BUT if you're there for the US academic year and would hope to intern the following summer (ie after you're done studying) you might be out of luck Visa-wise.
2) as you said, there is no reason for them to hire you when they could take someone local, so you won't get looked at unless you're pretty exceptional
3) in the US networking is huge and a lack of a network to fight for you and get you a job will be a huge obstacle. In fact, as an exchange student many schools won't even let you use OCR (on campus recruiting) which is the traditional recruitment method for the BB firms.
Source: I went on an exchange to the US and faced the same problems - I was able to intern at a boutique (unpaid) and convert that to a BB offer in my home country, which you could also do, but it's very unlikely (I'm an optimist and I'd say next to impossible) for you to get a SA then FT offer from a BB as a result of your exchange.
Thanks for the detailed response, also for the others.
So I guess I was quite naive, sorry to hear it. But let's just give it a last show, say I still manage to get a summer internship at a BB (I guess for the summer internship program they would care only about whether I could work there for a summer WITHOUT Visa sponsorship, as a foreigner, so I would check out that box?). So once I spent the summer there, would my chance still be like zero when it comes to them handing out FT return offers? Solely because my full Visa sponsorship requirement for a full time position?
Yes, still bigger hurdles for you to cross - they have other interns who could get the FT offer without needing sponsoring. To my knowledge, in sponsoring visas, companies actually have to state why they are hiring a foreigner rather than a US citizen - hard to say you can't find someone else to do the job in banking when there are so many people that want the job.
But realistically, you are not getting that summer internship with a BB - don't mean to be harsh, but without contacts pushing you through, OCR etc it isn't happening. To clarify, I think you may actually still need Visa sponsorship to do an internship - at the very least the bank would have to sign off on your paperwork etc (but not actually sponsor) and if I'm right and you were planning to do the internship after the year of study, you may need full sponsorship because you don't have full OPT on J-1 visas.
Go on exchange for the experience, but not because you think you will get a BB summer internship - won't happen.
Probably not. Sorry to say man. Companies don't really sponsor unless they're hiring the next prodigy.
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