Quit full time job for unpaid internship?

Purely hypothetical at this point.

Here's my situation: I'm currently working full time at a glorified back office job that offers little room for growth and certainly not a path to get me to where I ultimately want to be (that would be buy side equity research). I only accepted this offer because I was coming from a non-target, pickings were slim, and I was running out of options financially. I've been here a little over three years. Don't want to get into details but there is 0 opportunity to stay here and do the sort of work I want to be doing. Since I've been here my finances have gotten much better and I've passed the first two levels of the CFA® exam.

Through networking, I've made contact with several buy sidr analyts and portfolio managers. What do you think about me offering to work for free in exchange for getting an analyst job? It's a risk but I think the pay off could be huge. Anyone here ever done this sort fo thing? Ideally I would have pursued this back in college but I had to discover the power of networking, etc. on my own and that took awhile.

Appreciate any feedback or thoughts anyone might have.

10 Comments
 
idragmazdaHave you thought about pursuing an MBA and breaking in from there?

Absolutely have but I think the problem with that is that my work experience and recommendations wouldn't be that impressive. I know that's a big part of the MBA application process so I think that would really limit the schools I could get into and I'm not sure that what's left would give me a good shot. I'm also terrified of student loan debt. But it is an idea...

 

I wouldn't do an unpaid internship unless it had a very real chance of converting to a full time paid job after ~6 months. I'd be upfront about this.

 

OP I am in literally the same position as you, and I've come to terms with myself that if I don't get into an MSF for this term (I think you should really look into MSF/ maybe some MBA programs) that I would be more than willing to quit my BO job for an unpaid internship at a boutique or anyone willing to have me. However, I'm less than a year into my current role and you're 3 years in...so I don't know if I would personally quit if I was in your current situation. I think the better option for you would be school or get lucky and break in via networking (obviously easier said than done).

 

Honestly, unpaid internships are crap... most of them will let you do general crap and they won't invest too much time teaching you the job... UNLESS you know for sure that this unpaid internship can turn into a full time paid job... Have you tried getting MO in your current company?

 
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