Finished up my freshman year summer at a boutique m&a bank. I have started thinking about next summer and see the options for IB internships are very limited as a sophomore. Would it be bad if I end up working at another boutique for sophomore summer? Or should I look for something else. My ultimate goal is BB/MM for jr year summer.
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Can you shed some light on how you secured your freshman internship ? How did you prep ? How did you interview ? Would like to learn about your process to getting the internship.
It's literally just how much you network and reach out. Usually they don't ask any technicals at all and only why you're interested in interning. It's not a formal recruiting process for freshman internships, except some boutique banks (and a lot of search funds) might have a job posting on LinkedIn or Handshake, but even those are usually very mundane work. Some of them will ask you to do a case study or answer a few prompts or something like that, which is alright but be careful what actually work they'll make you do.You'll have to spent a lot of time going through people's LinkedIns and seeing where they interned freshman year, then send emails to ask analysts/associates about their advice/ career path, then ask if they have internships available at the firm and when they're recruiting.In my experience, the firms that reply when you straight up ask for an internship are the ones that give really meaningless work and little relevant experience.
I don't see a boutique sophomore internship ever being a negative. Structured sophomore programs are highly limited, so get what you can. Prominent banks will only ever take a few sophomores outside of diversity programs. HL LA, for example, had two RX sophomores this summer. The industry might evolve down the line, but second year summer opps are currently dominated by diversity / leadership programs. If you're interviewing by the spring you won't have gotten on the desk yet, anyway, so get an off-season boutique internship at a place you expect to see decent deal flow. It'll be more helpful in interviews to have experience than resume signal power. Assuming you're networking enough to get first rounds.
Would it be worth taking the boutique internship even if it’s unpaid? Or is that looked down upon
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