side internship opportunity - freshman
I recently saw a listing for a Lazard Capital Markets "Retail & Merchandising" internship. I am well aware that this is also known as the Mall Rat internship, and that Lazard and LCM are two very different firms.
For a freshman who will be doing a MSSB PWM this summer, would this mall rat internship be beneficial as a side internship (PWM during the week, mall rat during the weekends)? My goal for junior recruiting is IB or ER, and in the job description it seems like it has a small connection to ER. It is also paid, $10 per report. I saw the report template and it doesn't seem like it would take very long to fill out.
Anyone who has done this internship or has heard anything about it, please share your thoughts.
EDIT: To clarify, this internship would pretty much just be me driving over to the local shopping mall on a weekend day, for maybe 2-4 hours, observing certain stores, and then filling out some pretty straightforward reports. On the job description they said that they would show us how our research affects their investment strategies (do they really do this?)
i'd do it.. nnobody has to know you were a mall rat, and besdies, analysts have to do channel checks anyway.
Is this for the boston office?
Yes, if I did this and someone asked me about it, I wouldn't refer to it as "mall rat." That just sounds terrible...What is a channel check? This is for their NY office
i would love to do this
Don't look at this as a chance to do something that you can spin into something more glamorous than it really is. Look at this for what it actually is: a chance to get paid a little money to go observe, evaluate, and compare stores. You should be less relieved by the brevity of the reporting template you're being asked to fill out, and more curious about what all the information means to an investor and how to best gather more helpful, relevant information. This is what should be on your mind if you are looking to be successful in one of the fields you mentioned. The opportunity cost is a few hours of your summer weekends.
I would be really impressed interviewing a candidate who told me about what they learned in their "mall rat" research job, rolling up their sleeves and working hard on the weekend to gather seemingly meaningless pieces of local retail data, but who grasped the larger picture and took something from it. Candidates spend too much time dressing up their experience to sound important and too little time reflecting on the key-takeaways from otherwise trivial experiences.
Channels are the avenues by which a company distributes its products (like retailers, for instance). Research analysts will call on these channels to see how well a company's products are selling to get a sense for whether or not the company will hit its sales guidance. Those are channel checks.
I know an analyst at a large hedge fund who actually does this on the weekend for his reports.
LOL...seriously?
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