Internship Advice please?
Hi WSO Community,
I am a first time writer, new to the site, looking for some advice.
I am a Sophomore in college at a non-target school, looking for an internship in the finance field.
I have emailed multiple sites and a lot have turned me down due to complications with regulations set up (Wells Fargo, UBS, Merrill Lynch), and others have just not even replied to me.
I do not live in a city with about 20,000 people, so there are many sites, just none that will reply or will work out. Any advice on how to snag a summer internship? I have a 3.63 G.P.A, in clubs at school, and work a lot over the summer.
If I wasn't able to get a finance specific internship, what would be suggestions on places I could try instead? (Banks, accounting firms, etc....?)
Thank you WSO
Get internships to non-financial, respectable businesses. Build some experience to set you apart from the crowd, something unique. Then apply. Worked for me and I go to a non-target but work my butt off. I had to get over a year of unique office experience, followed by 3 months of non-related finance internships and I am finally in my second IB internship. Persistence.
See if your school has a career website or career center. Also go to local banks & apply there. Try to stay away from non-financial related internships if you are interested in finance and trying to build a resume. Be very aggressive and network with everyone you can.
Be willing to take something that is unpaid. Especially as a sophomore. The experience will be what sets you up for a paid internship after your junior year.
How would the hiring co. know the internship is unpaid. I have 3 unpaid internships and never once mentioned the fact that they were unpaid. Experience in general is what helped me. Knowing affluent business people never hurts. Jbone: If he is in the same boat I was, firms will not even look at his resume because of a lack of a name brand school and no experience. Not one investment bank recruited at my college either. Its the price I paid for messing around in my earlier years.
I went to a nontarget instead of crying about where I went or how I messed up earlier in life. I made the best of the situation I went to networking events, reached out to alumni that somehow made it to wall street, and stalked my way to meeting anyone working in finance. I'm talking at birthday parties, funerals, grocery stores, and night clubs, I was networking all the time. Not because I had to work in IB but because it was fun and its what I liked. I got a job from doing that, not from where I went to school. Sure my grades, resume, internships, technical knowledge secured the job. But I wouldn't have received interviews if I didn't work at reaching out, meeting new people, and communicating to them what I wanted.
You mean you never cried about any of that? Good god.
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