Help! Not Getting more work as an Intern

Hey Guys,

So I've been working at this internship (6th week), and It started with boring work. This was to be expected, but eventually, I got to do modeling/dilligence & other interesting work. I will admit, I messed up on one thing, but my boss eventually said "just ask next time if you have a question." I though that was that and moved on. However, as of late, I am now back to doing the more boring work as apposed to the work I was doing with some other associates. I'm always asking to do more, and told there's nothing, but other interns are doing more work that just came in. I'm planning a sit down to get a performance review next week and see what I can improve on. Any thought on the sistuation? I could really use the help,

Thanks in advance

 

Summer is slow at most places, people may just have little work to delegate.

Unpopular opinion but it can come off as annoying when interns ask for work too often (multiple times per day), I understand showing initiative but it also seems like you can't entertain yourself or handle being bored. Sometimes you just have to sit quietly and read something on your computer, it will pick up eventually.

If you can grab lunch/coffee with an analyst or associate to discuss what they're working on (or just sports... talk about anything really) you can start to develop a rapport and hopefully get some work from them.

It's good that you have a sit down next week, mention that you really enjoyed XYZ project so far and it would be great to be looped in on those in the future.

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Thanks for the advice. Just curious about the annoyance part you mentioned. I get it can be annoying if a higher up has to keep saying I'll let you know if there is something to do, but what is the fine line between "This MOFO is annoying me" as opposed to "Hey, at least he's persistent and I can respect that"

 

Depends on the person, I think you have to read their reactions and gauge who to ask in the future. Most will respect a hard worker, it's probably not that fine of a line if you're aware there is a line.

On being annoying I'm talking about kids making full rounds of the office like 3+x a day, spending 20 minutes asking every single person and always getting the "I'll let you know when" response but still no additional work. Persistence is great, just don't go overboard. find 2-4 people who will reliably give you work or mentor you on a project they're working on, and then ask other people occasionally (daily, maybe a few times a week, depends on firm) but just not every hour.

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Most Helpful

Most importantly you also have to understand that you're an intern, not a FT employee and not somebody who I can trust to produce perfect work that doesn't require for me to double/triple check it.

Point being - if ANYTHING is time sensitive, I probably am never giving it to an intern. If ANYTHING is high-touch, I probably am never giving it to an intern. If ANYTHING requires me to spend more than 10 minutes to explain it, I am never giving it to an intern.

Not knocking the hustle / desire to take on more but appreciate the free time while you have it.

 

I get what you mean but I feel like at this current rate, it's destroying my will to comeback to this bank. Free time is nice but when you have 3-4 13 hour days of doing nothing it really makes you question life haha. I guess for more perspective, other interns around me, seem to be getting more work.

 

Nice to know (in a way) that someone is in a similar situation. I have a similar issue with other interns getting the more seemingly interesting work. I am persistent, as I'm sure you are too when it comes to asking for work, but it's definitely crushing when you know there is much better things you could have been assigned to.

 

I think the time sensitive aspect is very important. At my firm I have one analyst who constantly throws shit my way that I can never complete on time. Then he asks me every 15 minutes what my ETA is and says I need to be faster (on shit I've never done before, and he starts doing this one hour into a two hour task). I sprint to get it done and even on the shit I am pretty good at, formatting and other BS is often wrong and we both walk away frustrated. He thinks I am retarded but the other analysts who give me reasonable time frames are always pleased with my work. For reference, I am not spinning my wheels on any of this stuff, but literally taking the time to strategize what the final product should look like and then executing. Knowing what tasks to give your interns makes everyone happier.

 

I don't know what role you are in but if you're an intern and you have time and no work why not build tools in Excel or VBA to make certain processes easier (eg: automating manual parts of the job).

There is always room for efficiency. If you do this not only will you be appreciated but will also be seen as a proactive member of the team and not as a reactive one.

Also it will be good practice of Excel/VBA.

 

Have you pestered people, been given work, and poorly delivered? We have two interns I gave work to: First intern, is the intern assigned to my team. He asked for more work, I gave him some tasks and told him: this is NOT your priority and everything else should go in front of this task. I did not expect him to not turn the work in (one week in...) He is a bit of an idiot, but I thought I'd give him a chance. If he is not even fucking trying... He recently asked me to help him figure out how to do a task another of my colleague gave him (after never having completed what I gave him) - I told him to GFO.

Second intern, not on my team, super humble and after having a chat I told him I'll give him some interesting stuff to do. I sent him the task I had sent to the other intern. Next day it's complete. Not only complete but almost perfect - clearly there are some things that can improve but I can see the guy busted his balls to sort it out. I have been giving him assignments every day, and he keeps on delivering WHILE at the same time working for his current team.

Needless to say I know which one I will recommend to my mates still in IB and which one I don't give the time of the day to anymore. (I am in PE and we don't recruit much out of undergrad).

It's one thing to ask, it's a whole other thing to make sure that what you were given shows you spent a lot of time executing on.

 

Thanks for reply. I just started the internship, is it appropriate to ask for more tasks to do? I also read about some other discussions on the forum saying that people could ask for previous deal decks to read about, is that a good idea? Thanks again.

 
<span itemprop=name>Prescott Moncrief lll</span>:

Ask for **MANAGEABLE** tasks, and then do better work, so they trust you enough to give you more work.

Always remember the golden mantra - underpromise and overdeliver.

GoldenCinderblock: "I keep spending all my money on exotic fish so my armor sucks. Is it possible to romance multiple females? I got with the blue chick so far but I am also interested in the electronic chick and the face mask chick."
 

If you just started sometimes it takes a few days to figure out what an intern should be doing and weighing what to teach them vs the menial tasks. I appreciate the person who responded so better work. That is so true, the better work you do the more likely you'll get more and more "interesting" work. I'll just add try to create your own work, think about ways you can teach yourself or train yourself to do something that would be useful in the downtime

 

I'm going to give you some different insight: sometimes there just isn't work to be done. I hate sitting around with nothing to do, even now that I've left banking and am in corp dev, but sometimes, that's just the way it is. So, let me recommend you three things to do:

  1. Ask for work, but don't get annoying. If your analyst is working on a model or a CIM, ask to look at it once he/she is done or has moved on to something else (pro tip: save the model or CIM to your desktop to avoid accidentally saving over the current version on the share drive).

  2. Have you ever heard of the dynamic questions that the GMAT poses to test takers? When you answer a difficult question correctly, you get a more difficult one. If you miss a question, you get an easier one. Intern work is a lot like this. Want more work? Then make sure whatever you turn in is perfect. I am not saying you did this, but if you're turning in error-ridden work, no one will want to give you anything to work on. Triple check everything. Print everything out. Tattoo "F7" on your arm. You know the drill.

  3. Try to think ahead. Let me give you an example. Say that your managing analyst is about to start working on putting together a shell for a pitch. Take a look through the sharedrive for pitches done for similar companies. Print them all out. Notice the general order of slides. Try putting together a pitch shell yourself. Ask your managing analyst for some input. Worst case scenario, you wasted a day that you weren't doing anything with anyway, but showed your managing analyst that you care.

 

How long should it take for an intern to build a valuation model from scratch(DCF and multiples) for a private property and casuality insurance firm? I started on Monday and I am still reading up on stuff about it. It is a hard task, because all these revenues and costs are difficult to forecast compared to a tech, retail or whatever more "tangible" company.

 

We had some interns on my desk last summer. From what I could see, the best way to get real work would be to engage with your managing analyst on tasks that you can tell interest him/her. They're more likely to go into detail on subject like that. After you get a good feel for that task, ask to do small parts of it. Soon enough you'll learn it and be on your way--at least assuming your analyst isn't a complete s**t head. Either way don't complain about it--you'll get blacklisted right quick.

 

Focus not only on the actual work you are presenting your analyst, but how you are presenting it.

If he has no certain presentation he prefers, make up your own that is clear, visually appealing, and concise.

 

If there's nothing else, I would offer to double check anything that people need double checked. As someone who frequently has to move faster than I would like to, and has occasional access to interns, giving them some document to double check is (in my eyes) a happy medium between letting them be involved in something substantive, and allowing them to participate in a way that won't mess things up if they get it wrong. Plus it always assuages my paranoia to know that there's another set of eyes on my work product before it heads up the chain.

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No promises, but maybe one of our professional members will share their wisdom: marion.sottas JustADude Gk99

Hope that helps.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

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