Received Private Equity SA Offer but they want to pay me $15/hour
Hey, so I was recruiting for lower middle market and middle market PE firms for a sophomore summer internship before my junior year, which I signed at an EB. Of course I understand that any experience at this age would be great, but I received this offer in some tier 2 city, which requires me to relocate. The firm seems legit, lean, and like it'll be great experience, but the only catch is they are paying me $600 per week or $15 per hour across 40 hours for 13 weeks.
Normally I would just take the experience, but I need to sublease in this city which is going to cost about $1,500 per month, so I'm barely breaking even with other living expenses, so I'd basically be working for free. Would it be aggressive to push back? It was a brutal round of interviews, but idk what to do here...
It's LMM and you're a sophomore, so speaking from experience, you're lucky you're getting paid at all to be honest ha
Maybe you have to find somewhere you can have roommates or look at cheaper places. PE internships in LMM are going to pay very low because frankly, you're a cost to them. You're halfway through college with no experience in anything relevant (unless your one of your parents runs a fund and you helped after soccer practice lol). They don't expect you to actually add any real value and probably don't have a formalized training program, so adding you into the mix is more likely to make them less efficient than more. You're not "just breaking even" even if you're only making enough to cover your nut, because you're also getting experience you can speak to/leverage for FT recruiting later on and will potentially make connections that help you find work later.
You can try to push back for maybe $20/hr or something similar, but I would expect it to be shot down and be prepared to be disappointed with the response. So long as you keep it reasonable though, I don't think you have to worry about them pulling the offer over it. That would be extreme.
Do you honestly think the experience is going to be that useful? Also, I don't plan on recruiting for LMM after IB. Just not really sure what the value-add is here. They seemed very persistent on having an intern - but what do you suspect I am going to be doing on a day-to-day? If I am working through models and conducting diligence calls - great. But i imagine they are going to have me doing menial tasks. would my time not be better spent just taking a course and not slaving away for 13 weeks?
Work experience in a finance related field demonstrates interest and will help your resume to stand out. It’s very hard to get an IB summer analyst role with no prior finance experience.
Take the job and do the menial labor - you can study technicals or ask the associates to teach you things in excel in your downtime. This isn’t a full time job that you have to do forever, it’s just trying to get incremental net new work experience to demonstrate interest in finance.
Ok - good points. Just saying I already have a EB signed for next summer, so presumably a full time offer at this EB. I couldn't imagine a sophomore internship would make any material difference on my resume for on-cycle. If I do an internship, I am more interested in learning. In your experience in PE, do college interns do real work or is it just a joke/favors for clients' children?
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