Freaking out about the summer
Hey-
I'm a first year at a target and I am freaking out about summer internships. I think M&A is so interesting and I would love to pursue IB. But I have no idea what to do over the summer.
All the opportunities offered by my school are highly selective (1-2 a year). I compiled a list of 100 small boutiques but I am worried that once the semester picks up I will have huge time commitments elsewhere and won't be able to focus on cold emails/meetings. And I know the probability of even getting an opportunity from cold outreach is so low.
I could do research but that is not a work experience and I think it would be looked worse at in recruiting next year, compared to my peers who all have formal finance internships for this summer.
I also don't want to go home over the summer for personal reasons. But I have housing available in two big cities. Generally, I don't know what to do! I've spent my entire break thinking about this and reaching out to people.
Any suggestions are welcome.
im in the same boat pm me
I'm a soph at a target, you're still super early in regards to recruiting, don't be too worried. I got my offer in April for freshman summer and many of my friends also got them later. It's pretty early still, and I'd guess most of your peers who all have "formal finance internships" for this summer have them through nepotism and family connections and probably won't be doing anything too crazy in regards to actual practical work experience, and I would guess banks also know these things. The vast majority of freshman internships aren't through structured programs, which also means they're at places that probably at this point have barely if at all thought about their non-returning summer intern needs/opportunities.
Regarding what you should try to do, have a more open mind than just boutique IB. Very few people I know went to boutique IB freshman summer; go for it if you're interested but it's by no means the standard route. A lot of people go to small PE/VC/search funds. HF is an option too, but spots that aren't bs/nepotism are pretty rare for freshmen. You say you like M&A, but one, explore other routes, and two, non-M&A experiences can certainly be relevant and impressive for M&A recruiting.
This was super helpful! Can you go into a little more detail on what types of firms/sectors that your peers worked in? And where do you look for these opportunities?
A lot of people worked at small VC funds, search funds, small PE shops, etc. Basically less competitive, less intense buyside. If you're wondering why these places are relevant experience to IB I can go into that, but hopefully you know/have the resources to find out.
I found mine through being recommended to a fund ran by a friend of my boss at a previous internship (that I originally just found on LinkedIn, though this probably isn't the most effort efficient route for you). A lot of people found theirs by reaching out to funds in their home town/home state (assuming you're not from like NYC). Even the most middle of nowhere home town will have some nearby LMM PE shop nearby that if you reach out to would probably love to take on a target kid who grew up nearby even if you have not much prior experience/knowledge just to help out a local kid + hopefully you can not be entirely useless. The more middle of nowhere you are from the fewer options you have for this, but also the more likely they are to help you out because they are aware of this. This approach may overlap with leveraging parents' networks if you've got connections like that.
A couple of places run formal processes looking for fresh/sophs in the spring (they might say they're only looking for sophs but apply anyways), and a lot of the top sophs already signed to somewhere in the fall, so you've got a shot there too, but those places will expect you to know a bit of something since you're competing with sophs in an open application. Finally, there's always the route of shooting for the stars and cold emailing good places that aren't officially hiring (if you want HF this is probably what you'll have to do) and really impressing them somehow.
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