Should I quit my internship? Please help.

I received an internship offer a few months ago from a small IB shop close to home. I was looking forward to gaining any experience. Oh, I’m also an incoming sophomore.

fast forward to May, I’m 1 week from my start date. I am now being transferred to a “research” role due to deal flow being extremely stagnant (Covid). They didn’t say what I’d be doing, but they try to encourage me about it and ensure that when a deal is live on banking, I’d be involved or I’d have the opportunity to listen in)

I keep a happy face on and go on with life. turns out, the research role is just busy work. literally. I go through email lists all day and sort some administrative stuff. It is absolutely mind numbing and has nothing to do with any finance at all. Even fixing PowerPoints would be a blessing. oh, it’s also an unpaid internship for credit.

Id honestly rather be home and follow the market, study for interviews, etc. I am an incoming sophomore at a semi-target and am in a decent position for recruiting next year. (good alumni base, 4.0 gpa, good campus involvement). I am worried about not having anything for this summer (although I can still put the company down, as I’ve been here for almost a month.

Should I quit? I spoke to some bankers and they told me there is a ton of work to do, and would completely understand if I said fuck this and just left. Again, working at a supermarket as a cashier would give more financial experience. I am quite literally doing nothing worth my time and have gotten the impression that this is what I’ll be doing until I leave in late August. Any suggestions?

Any suggestions on what to do?

11 Comments
 

Don't quit and here's why: 1) You have experience on your resume that you can potentially spin come interview time 2) You may still have the opportunity to gain experience in live deals 3) If you quit, you potentially just burned a bridge that may burn further bridges 4) If you're really just doing admin stuff, I'm sure you're finishing work before 8pm with tons of free time during the day that you can use to study/follow the markets 5) Do a great fucking job at the admin work. You're nothing, kid. Show them that you have their back when shit goes to shit and I'm certain that if these bankers are decent human beings, they will pull for you when the time comes.

 

figure out a way to do the mind numbing work quickly and then ask for more responsibility. Or do the same and spend the rest of the time studying as you would at home. Given COVID, having something on CV becomes even more valuable relative to the competition, and a Research title isn't half bad. As far as bullet points go, you can either spin or make sure you do the above and take on more important work.

 

Do not quit, it's a bad look to have only one month on your resume. research and admin stuff is at least 60% of an IB internship, be happy you're learning how to do it now and can talk about it in recruiting. No one is looking for you to say you built an entire deal model but being able to say you have experience in IB, even mindless things, is a plus.

This summer will make you appreciate your next role that much more.

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