How to Find Very Small IB Firms to Cold Email?

Hi guys, I’m trying to find a summer internship w/o previous finance experience aside from classes and Wall Street Prep.

Any advice on how I should go about finding and cold emailing very small IB firms to try and secure an internship?

13 Comments
 

Disregard title, i’m in college. for my soph summer internship it was pretty hard. ask finance hardos on campus or sometimes their websites have a “meet the team” page, that’s a good one. Most banks have an informal recruiting process fyi, ofcourse if they are insanely small

 

CapIQ, Google Maps, LinkedIn

would consider looking at internships in other fields as well considering you have no past experience eg wealth management, search funds, corpdev

 

Go to the chamber of commerce website of a city. I tried this with LA and found a list of every investment bank. Part of the website was like a business journal and had a straight up directory and map. Might not have been completely up to date, but x reference with Google / WSO / your peers' knowledge and you'll find lots of banks. This is helpful because I know many banks don't publicize location on Google but will have registered with the city.

For emails, hopefully you can figure out from their website. There are email test tools online to see if it’ll bounce. If you really can’t find an email send a polite and professional note on LinkedIn. Yeah less likely to get a response but worth a shot. I personally respond to most requests if it’s from an undergrad expressing some interest.

 
Most Helpful

Do what I did:

1) get the mergers&inquisitions networking guide

2) in there you'll find a massive excel list of both IB and PE shop names

3) log onto Fiverr, and find somebody who does "lead sourcing," give them the excel list and pay them to find 1-2 names+emails for each firm. Cost me like $50 i think - u can negotiate with these guys and say that all you want is emails and should get a lower price.

4) use mailmerge (i forgot how to set this up, but it basically allows you to use data from excel to add into a email template in Word - for example make and email that says Hi (insert name), Im interested in (insert firm)) obviously put some more effort in the email format so it doesn't look cookie cutter

5) attach your resume and blast off hundreds of emails to many small firms

6) network over the phone with the people who respond (many of the emails will bounce)

7) secured sophomore summer internship despite going to a shitty non target

 

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