Bad Summer Internship...Need Advice

Hello everyone. I am in my freshman summer at what I'd call a lower-tier target school (doesn't really matter). Anyway, I have a summer internship with a company in my hometown in their sales department. I thought I'd be doing interesting work but in reality I'm just taking phone calls from customers. I am learning absolutely nothing and I don't see any way to change that in this current role. I honestly only took the position because my other opportunities fell through due to the virus but I did not envision it being this bad. And in all honesty it is completely mind-numbing and makes me hate doing it every single day. At this point I'm not even sure I could put it on my resume without outright lying about what I'm doing. I'm considering sending out a massive amount of cold emails as quickly as possible and explaining that I have an internship, I don't like it, could you please please give me a job or just taking a job in retail which I have done before and I know I don't hate it as much.

Also if it matters I would like to go into IB if possible, I have good grades and ECs to be honest. I would love to hear any thoughts/similar experiences.

Thanks a lot.

4 Comments
 

Don't quit, as long as you get to put experience on your resume it's a good thing. You'll be able to embellish the tasks you've been doing later.

 
Most Helpful

During my first internship, I only organized files for the first two weeks (paper and digital) it was mind-numbing, but I did that task well and every file was where it needed to be, and the senior employees managing me were happy with my work. When I finished with the files, my next job was to sort through potential/new customer data, and log them in the CRM platform. Once again, I grinded this out for a week double checked my work every time. I was initially meant to continue to sort these files for the reminder of my internship, but everytime there was a lull in the workflow, I would ask the other employees if I could watch what they were doing -- more traditional finance/ credit analysis work. Eventually, my manager took note of this and ended up going out of his way to teach me the general framework of their credit analysis process, and I ended up working closely with him and the other finance people on actual interesting work. The moral of this story is:

Grind through the shitty work and do it well, and whenever possible try and seek out ways to get involved in the more interesting work by showing initiative. If you can do this, i'd guess you'll be able to transition to work that you find more interesting. -- Don't slack on the job you have though because that will reflect poorly on you, and make your managers less willing to help/work with you.

 

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