Intern program creation
Hello WSO,
I'd like to sound out some suggestions for creating an internship program. The MD is taking on his nephew for a month or so and would like a work program to keep him occupied.
The nephew has only just started college and is quite limited in terms of his ability and financial knowledge, so I can't make the assumption regarding modelling knowledge and ability. At the same time, I don't want to throw him a bunch of modelling training interspersed with coffee runs.
For those of you who've completed an internship at an early level and with limited knowledge, what were some of the tasks or projects that you actually enjoyed doing and actually found rewarding?
I was in a similar situation my freshman summer, here's my advice:
First, let him know that this is not a formal internship with a future job at stake, he can relax a little. That doesn't mean not work hard, just that his main priority is to learn and soak up as much knowledge as he can. He's very lucky to get any exposure to IB at a young age.
For projects, ask him what areas of the business interest him the most - pitching, modeling, valuation, etc and brainstorm what sort of things you could have him do to start getting familiarized. I interned in ER my freshman summer and I let my Analyst know that I wanted to learn modeling and valuation. One project I did was spread the entire S&P 4/5/600 in excel using FactSet, calculate different comps, and then write up a report on sectors and industries that could be concluded as undervalued based on my data. It wasn't that difficult, the hardest parts were learning Excel and FactSet as I went along, but it was definitely helpful.
For modeling, my Analyst gave me some copies of his models and told me to try and recreate them for small, asset light companies. Even if he doesn't fully understand how the statements are related he'll get a pretty good foundation for understanding the line item format.
All else, you can always give him a couple books/reports and have him spend 2 hours a day just reading. I particularly enjoyed doing that. Make yourself available to him for questions, too.
Thanks @"Stryfe"
I remember getting assigned company profiles (to complete on my own, using a template, and later checked by an analyst) and enjoying completing them during my first IBD stint.
wait are you serious? someone actually enjoys making profiles???
My point was if the guy does not have much of a financial background company profiles would be a good start to break him into IBD work.
I'd agree with the above, putting together profiles could certainly be a good task for him.
The comments regarding letting him know it isn't an official internship and the more relaxed approach as a result of this would certainly be worthwile too in my opinion. You could possibly send over some materials in advance of him joining which he could read if he so wished. I'm thinking along the lines of internal training manuals, Pearl & Rosenbaum etc. If he is as keen as one would hope, he would no doubt want to be up to speed in this respect.
In my first internship, I worked on industry analysis sections of pitch books and I found that quite interesting and ultimately it was hopefully useful too. Then if he is capable of stepping up and working on updating trading and transaction comps then you can let him go ahead and do so.
He will learn the most though by being open to any questions - on my first internship I was told that the only stupid question was the one that was never asked. Whenever we have interns here, I try and take the same approach as ultimately I learnt from others being the same with me.
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