Is it time to give up?

Finished another internship in banking a few months ago, by now I have 4 M&A/finance related internships (Big 4 , strong regional bank and international banks).
However, I have not been offered a full-time analyst position thus far.
I graduated 2 years ago and I feel I need a full-time job, but due to Covid it's even harder to get in as a ft analyst.
Should I just give up the (nearly unpaid) grind and go to audit or any other finance related job and just do an MBA after 2 years; or continue doing internships with empty promises and lengthen my resume with more internships where I get paid the equivalent of 2 sacks of peanuts per day.

TL;DR jobless after tons of internships, give up or continue?

 

Not gonna lie, prospects are looking kind of dim. If you had gone into a finance role after undergrad you could be just 1 year away from applying to b-school. I applied after 2.5 years full-time work experience then used T15 MBA to get into a BB. I'd say find a finance role that would benefit your "story" once you start recruting for banking and go from there. Best of luck.

 
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worked in an investment management firm as an Analyst. Worked with pension funds across multiple asset classes (PE, HF, RE etc.) Mostly manager selection but some quantitative analysis. We participated in some direct investments so got to interact with bankers and PE professionals but limited. So I used my desire to increase exposure to those deals as my reason to want to switch to IB.

 

I'm not sure continuing to do internships two years after graduation is a good idea. What have you been doing outside of the internships to improve your candidacy and secure an offer? I'm also not sure that going into a finance role is equivalent to "giving up the grind": they will help you build relevant skills while providing the possibility of lateraling into IB, particularly for someone who hasn't held a full-time position yet.

 

What have you been doing outside of the internships to improve your candidacy and secure an offer?

  • I was told if I performed well I would get an offer in the UK, after I finished it turned out to be that they would recommend me for another internship in the UK... I was hoping that this would be the final one but I managed to be deceived. As for the other banks / big4, I believed to be to good for them / could to better than joining them. But of course any ft role would be much better than continue doing internships, which is something I didn't realize as I was tunnel visioning the top tier banks only.
 

For now I am interviewing at an EB, yet another internship. However this time the conversion rate seems rather high than non-existent. The trade off is now between:

a) Work 3 years + 2 year MBA to become an associate by mid/end of 2025

  • Seems like the good/safe option, but I can't get a hold of interviews in consulting or other branches of finance (i.e. valuations, FDD)

b) Another internship of +/- 6 months and be an analyst by 2021 ~ associate by end 2023

  • Analysts have been there
 

Why are you so worried about IB, if you're not making money, why do it?

Take what you can get man, PWM/corp finance/whatever, because in the 2 years you have foregone a salary obsessed with IB you could have maid a significant amount in a more interesting field

Really though why have you kept this going for this long? Is it the prestige? Because the prestige of banking only exists because of the money associated with it

 

Was really just tunneling on big brand names, and I figured that doing internships and climbing up names was the best way to do it, so I thought. In hindsight it was really stupid, but where I am from, it's not uncommon to see people doing internships after they graduate.

 

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