How to get an appropriate internship in your first year at Uni.
Someone here had an internship in their first year of Uni? Have been applying to some positions that didn't stated "only for students in their 3rd year" or "Graduating in a certain year". Will see results soon. I got an interview at BCG and Bain, but I need some others options for back up, it seems these two companies are the only ones sufficiently 'open minded' to let 1st years have an internship, because you never now, maybe a first year student ends up being more capable than a 3rd year. Well, any recomendations? My final goal is to end up in Banking.
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What country are you recruiting for? Most things are for second and 3rd years for a reason, they need to have a pipeline for graduates going into the job. Bulge brackets and EBs will 100% not let you do a standard first-year internship as they require you to be a year out from graduation so they can give you a job offer. IDK about MBB but seems like they messed up their process or generally allow first-years to take part. Generally, you have to network to get an informal internship in first year. Local boutiques and search funds are great but again, depends on the country you are in.
EDIT: I see you're in the UK, you should've been applying to spring weeks as they're the bread and butter for London recruiting. Beyond these, there's the Bank of England first year summer internship and informal internships I mentioned earlier. If you need help with springs let me know, I'm about to start FT at a BB and helped a kid with recruiting this year for springs, they went on to get Goldman Sachs, Citi and a few others.
Man thanks for your response. First, congratulations for your position in BB! Yeah I also never thought that MBBs would accept first years in the process, I just applied. Before applying I talked with some recruiters of BCG and Bain and maybe I showed 'nice motivations'. About the spring week, yes I would love to recieve some insight, I'm applying later this year for the one in 2023 (my degree is 4 years long so I can only apply in my second year). It's Important to me to get any kind of internship this summer to be a prominent candidate for the spring week. Would you mind if I save your user and contact you in a few months to ask advice for the spring week?
Sure I can pm you. Worth noting that I'm highly inactive on WSO and just log on and off sporadically (hence why I randomly replied to your post at 1 am) so I may not get back to you as fast as you may need. I'll do my best though, I could also put you in contact with said mentee as I'm sure their recent lived experiences for spring week recruiting will be more useful anyway.
Nepotism
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I had one. I will just say that networking is goated. You won't get any BB internships, instead look for small offices of big firms (private banking) or genuinely any small firm. You just need to find someone that likes you. If you don't get one just get a normal job, it isn't the end of the world.
Thanks for your answer, but I have a couple of questions. How exactly did you network? Linkedin? Cold email to poeple that worked in small business units? How did you knew they would be likely to offer an internship? And lastly, what do you mean by "normal job"?
Normal job is being a bartender or something like that, anything to put in your CV. What else is a normal job for an 18 year old😂.
My situation was very specific, but I will explain what I did. How I started was looking firms that specialised in something I found interesting (smaller firms tend to specialise). From here I found what Private Banking was, I say this because it is probably your best possibility. Then after getting rejected I looked for small offices of big financial institutions, as partners there can basically do whatever they want, I got the standard email for that company and emailed one in each office. Then applied to family offices by looking investment firms registered in xx (plenty of websites with information about this).
Your strategy is to target places that are given high degrees of autonomy, as here employees basically are very flexible regarding pretty much everything (in the office I interned in, employees worked less on average that peers in other locations).
My pro tip would be to look where others are not, as these places don't get many people looking for internships (thus be open minded in moving to some random place in the summer). Goldman Sachs in some random small town looks almost the same as GS London for example (i obviously didn't got to GS, only used it as an example).
Regarding how did I know they offered anything, I didn't, I only knew that chances of getting something here are much higher than 0. I have to say though that I then realised that where I interned has had a couple interns in the past. Nevertheless, only me and another guy have ever interned there as complete outliers/outsiders in 10+ years.And try to use email better than LinkedIn but both are perfectly possible. For family offices you can search Portfolio manager and put the location on LinkedIn.Good luck
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