The most valuable experience for students

Hi all,

I am a member of "WSO for about 1 year now, as a dutch student. Learned a great deal from this site, thank you all for that.
Currently I am in the last year of my finance bachelor. Average great of 8/10. Have some experience as a treasurer and member of a student investment club.
Next year, I want to make the next step. I am not sure what to do. A few of my ideas are:
- board member of student association;
- internship abroad at international like Heineken, Shell, Unilver, etc.
- internship in my home country at a financial firm;

The experience abroad would be most valuable I think, since it will improve myself as a person and my English speaking.

About my interests and job ambitions: very interested in consulting career as well as in a financial career (IB / Corp finance).
Hope some experienced members could give me some advice.

Thanks a lot in advance!

5 Comments
 
Best Response

My personal experience has been that choosing a to go for a position abroad just because it is abroad will not be productive. The companies you have listed will not translate well when trying to apply for something like IB, and I am pretty sure that they will only prove to be significant leverage in the consulting world if you have spent several years working in an industry (might be wrong on this though).

Honestly, you would be better off focusing on gaining experience that is relevant from a professional standpoint at this stage rather than trying to improve your english over the course of a few months in a not-so-relevant role. My advice would be to try to get into a financial services firm or a consulting firm (either in your country or abroad), as this will probably be the most relevant experience you could get. Best of luck!

 
CorpFinHopeful

My personal experience has been that choosing a to go for a position abroad just because it is abroad will not be productive. The companies you have listed will not translate well when trying to apply for something like IB, and I am pretty sure that they will only prove to be significant leverage in the consulting world if you have spent several years working in an industry (might be wrong on this though).

Honestly, you would be better off focusing on gaining experience that is relevant from a professional standpoint at this stage rather than trying to improve your english over the course of a few months in a not-so-relevant role. My advice would be to try to get into a financial services firm or a consulting firm (either in your country or abroad), as this will probably be the most relevant experience you could get. Best of luck!

I think that the abroad experience will give me some kind of entrance to an ib internship. But correct me if I am wrong.

 

What function would you be in at the internship abroad option? If you have anything at hand you could describe would make it easier to compare it to the domestic internship option? Good luck with it!

It's hip to be square!
 

those companies abroad would be pretty nice for IB

not a perfect match, but if you do some meaningful work, it should be nice you can leverage your knowledge gained to get into some groups in IB or (even more so) management consulting

i'd pick that would not pick #1 in any case

 

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