European target student does not manage to get an internship
Alright so I came here to seek advice and also vent a little to seasoned professionals.
I’m a French guy, I did prepa and then a top 3 business school. It was difficult for me to even get there because I was really misinformed, didn't even knew what prepa really was at first so I enrolled in a small prepa that had barely ever gotten someone in a top 3 school. I was very proud of that and wanted to use studying at a target to get into IB.
I have been working to get an internship for one whole year now, and I mean really putting time and efforts into it. I even invested some of my student loan to get into a known French "break into IB" program. I got absolutly nothing, zero, only two round of interviews in a corporate. Those went well but they did not take me. Now I am interning at a small no name auditing firm because I could not get anything else, and of course any bank or boutique I send my resume to see this and reject me. I done all the networking thing, technical training, all. People around me that get in all tell me that they got past the screening because of family or family friends, I do not have that. Also I don't look and act like a typical parisian if that makes sense, of course I dress nice and try to be friendly with bankers I network with, but they very rarely relate to me.
First question is am I already cooked ?
If not, what should I do ? What am I doing wrong ? And if I am cooked what do you think would be a good carrier option for me ? Again I got chasing IB because of prestige and not wanting to waste me getting into a target.
Bro, you only needed a first internship and experience. Doing an internship in a small audit firm will help you a lot to find an off cycle in IB. The usual path is Audit -> M&A (like BNP or SocG, and even Laz/Roth) -> PE or M&A Tier 1.
I am French (top 3 as you did), I can tell
I second this
When do you graduate? Take a gap year if possible and build up your cv. Also try to reflect because there must be something wrong with your cv if you are not screened in France by banks with a top 3 PGE
Well thanks for the comments. Having something at Soge or BNP would just be incredible at this point, let alone Rotschild or Lazard. Way more approchable firms have already rejected me, hell even in transaction services it doesn’t work out. And I am already doing a gap year, I graduate in 2026, the no name audit internship is my first gap year internship and here I am staying up every night to apply to all offers I can find in countries where I speak the language.
Of course you are right there must be something wrong but I remade my CV maybe 15 times now, following advice from different people and my sucess rate never went above zero except this one time.
Really I’m not here to complain or feel sorry, I just want ideas on what to do as I’m running out of them.
You probably know the answer but keep grinding, the first internship is the hardest. And so what you didn't get GS as a first internship because you didn't have the connections? You can't change that, no point in stating the obvious that classism and nepotism are common in white collar jobs. You will just have to grind more to get to the same place, c'est la vie. Go at your own pace and know that when you will have made it, you will truly have deserved it.
Your prepa wasn't that bad and you are not as much as an underdog story as you think you are.
what are traits of the typical parisian in this context?
Typical accent and expressions. Extensive use of english word. Running, extensive gyms and maybe football as interests. Often kinda cold and easily made uncomfortable. There is also the typical parisian slim look with the semi long hair. I’d say it’s definitly an agregate of things that makes these guys very homogenous in my opinion.
Check with someone that there's nothing wrong with your resume.
Knowing people helps but plenty of people got in without knowing anyone (besides the people you've networked with).
Usually, there’s a lot of nepotism involved during the first part of the gap year, even for HEC students. You could apply in transaction services (Big 4, Eight Advisory, Accuracy) for the first six months and then aim higher for the second part. It worked for me.
Yeah I actually tried that and I did not pass the screening either. At eight I was told time and time again that they only took P2 students. For others I can’t figure out why I did not pass the screening, even though I networked for Big 4.
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