Remote work at a small boutique as a volunteer while in college
Has anyone had any experience working with banks (definitely not BBs) remotely while in college as a full-time student? One of my buddies got an offer at a small boutique to work remotely but since he is a full time student, given his circumstance, he was offered a co-op opportunity without pay. He was happy to take it since he did not receive any offers for summer internships. This way he said he would be able to at least put some experience on his resume. This is at a bank in Minnesota while he is studying in Michigan. FYI, the opportunity was without pay.
Are such offers even floating in the market? If so, how are they? Would like to experience one myself too since I find myself in the same boat. Thoughts? Experiences?
Very hard to determine if these opportunities are worthwhile. Without pay or the notion of working in-person at some point, they have no incentive to help you build a valuable skillset. Without the bank's name it is nearly impossible to give good guidance on if this opportunity is worth pursuing. If you dont have any experience, I would probably jump at the opportunity and specify up front you are willing to work X # of hours so that it wont interfere with your school work. I would also inquire about the work you will be doing. For example, will you get a company computer, a CapIQ account, and the ability to pull comps? Or will you be asked to spend hours combing the internet on your shitty Macbook Pro with no resources trying to find comps? Will you be sitting in on calls with junior bankers and clients or will you simply be working behind the scenes?
When you arent being paid you need to ask the right questions to tease out if you will get value from the experience. I did one of these once and got absolutely nothing out of it, but it was a <5 man shop, so be warned.
What is far more common is to intern somewhere FT during the summer and to extend that internship during the school year remotely.
This one is a less than 5 man shop too. Not too sure on the company laptop part but my buddy said has been assisting on a live deal currently. It has to be behind the scenes of course so my best guess would be that he must be working on cashflow models and deliverables???
Can you elaborate a little on how bad was your experience in a similar scenario?? What were your deliverables? I would think such shops must be hungry for help without pay right?
If hes working on a live deal and doing any modeling or pulling comps, creating buyers lists, helping put together a CIM or teaser, I can already tell you it is more legit than my experience.
In my experience I was literally just sourcing (aka Googling) acquisition targets for PE funds, day in and day out. Horrendous opportunity that never helped me in any way, shape or form.
If he is actually doing value-add work and does it for 2-3 months at that point I would ask for pay though.
Were you able to get away with any contacts that proved helpful to you in the future? Did you make phone calls just out of curiosity if such was your role? I can understand experience had no take away but were there any takeaways out of cold calling or emailing that you did or potentially could/were able to leverage in the future?
Good question, no I did not. I would name drop this shop just out of spite but fear it could give away my anonymity even posting anonymously. I gained zero experience that was meaningful and ended up not even referencing it once I got my first legitimate internship. The reason was I would either have to lie about my experience or admit to working at a dumpster fire psuedo wanna be IB, neither of which was advantageous.
I would guess any company that even remotely cares about its interns would provide a better experience, but this firm was as illegitimate as they come. No experience would have been better than wasting my times at this POS establishment
Fair point
PM
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