No Internship for Sophomore Year, What to do?
Hello, I am a sophomore at a well-known target school and I gave up a while back on trying to get a BB gig for this summer's internship. Most of the people at the firms I contacted told me that the positions for sophomores are primarily designed for diversity candidates and that I would have an extremely tough time landing an internship this year. Although I have over a 3.8 on my resume and some decent internship experience, I have yet to find to an internship for this summer. Most, if not all of the blame is on me because I was foolish enough to miss a lot of application deadlines that opened up earlier than I expected. I'm seemingly running out of options and will have to bank on finding a junior internship in the spring without letting on the fact that I have yet to secure an internship for the upcoming summer. Am I screwed for recruiting? Where should I go and who should I reach out to? Should I settle for something at UBS as an "office assistant" in their wealth management division if I could find such a thing? Do I pull the old, "I'm studying abroad this summer"? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. My apologies for any shitty grammar, I' running on almost no sleep this week during finals.
Got you man, I am running low on sleep as well. If you live close to NYC, try the small shops there, and also the small shops locally. Experience at a no-name is better than no experience at all. Interview for internships at those places, and then see what comes of that. If nothing comes of that either, then try for a desk job such as what you suggested.
I don't think you're foolish to not have an internship yet, most sophomore jobs are through informal recruiting and smaller companies hire interns way closer to the start date. Sure there are some BB jobs or official sophomore jobs, but as you said they are 99 or 100% diversity and I really don't think you've missed much.
This might sound counterintuitive but I would finish finals, send a few emails out before Christmas, and then take a solid week or two off of worrying about it. No one is hiring SAs or meeting for sophomore coffee chats over Christmas, so take a break while you can because recruiting is a long and draining process.
Come January 5th or whatever, start sending out emails hardcore. Make a Google doc over the break of every firm you've found, any alumni you could potentially contact there, and then fill it in with who you emailed, when, as well as your application/interview dates. Nice doc to have set up heading into your junior recruitment as well.
Do you go to school or live in/near a decent-sized city? Start searching there - look for smaller firms (preferably IB but really anything in finance is fine), that may not have a structured internship program, and see if they would chat with you or potentially want an extra hand over the summer. Email every alumni you can find (even those at BBs - they will be helpful next year, and they had to find a sophomore spot somewhere too) and see if they have any recommendations.
Junior recruiting is unlikely to be as frantic next spring with so many firms moving back to junior year. I would not panic about this until March.
Good advice here
I really appreciate you both for offering such advice. It goes a long way.
It goes a long way. If only GoldenCinderblock could say the same about his willy.
you're welcome
Honestly man, I wouldn’t worry just yet. I understand the feeling. I didn’t have a sophomore internship offer until April, but it ended up being Sales & Trading at of the largest asset managers in the world (think PIMCO, Vanguard, etc.) The opportunities are no where near gone, you just have to be proactive about identifying openings. A lot of the companies don’t give a single fuck about the accelerated IB recruitment timeline, and don’t even post their internships well into the spring
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