How soon is too soon to intern IB
WSO I'm a transfer student from a community college that will be starting taking strictly finance courses this spring at a non-target state school. I would ultimately like to pursue IB but I would like to "try" the industry out with an internship. After doing some research, I found a descent amount of boutique, as well as middle-market investment banking firms in my area. Now the question is, would it be too soon to start cold calling these firms for internship opportunity before I take my finance courses? I have all my core business, economic, and accounting courses done but the way things will work out is I will be at this school for 4 semesters, Jan 2015-Dec 2016, giving me 2 summers to fill up with internships. Because I have 2 years left, I would like to land a boutique or middle-market IB internship as soon as possible, especially because of the disadvantage of attending a non-target state school. All advice is appreciated!
Do it now, Man!! the BB are pretty much out of play, as I'm sure you surmised. However, there's a great list of boutique investment banks on this website (search function boutique investment banks). After you get the list, make sure to cold email/cold call the MD's, and pitch yourself and tell them what you want. There are three alternative ways that you can do this:
1) Cold call directly and ask for what you are looking for 2) Cold email and ask for a few minutes to talk about their background with your resume attached. The MD's know what you want, so it can't hurt to attach your resume 3) Sleep in and Hibernate for the winter, and then travel during the following summer
I personally love the last option, but I believe that the best course of action would be the first. Start acting now and try to land something for the winter so that you can put something substantial on your resume to show that you are looking to do banking. Again, I highly doubt that you can get BB for SA or perhaps even FT this late in the process, but there should be no reason as to why shouldn't be ale to land a solid MM/boutqiue role within a bank upon graduation. You've got two years, man. Be a shark, be proactive, and don't stop until you get that offer. Godspeed.
@"alpha_q" thanks for the advice and it's actually thanks to this board that I found the list of boutique/mm IB. I understand that BB is out of my reach, but this is the reason why I'm going to pursue local firms. Any idea on what credentials or "standards" might be expected from a student looking to land an internship? I don't have any advance finance courses completed yet and that's my only obstacle at the moment, if it at all is one. Also, what type of work would a local IB firm have me doing for an internship that isn't SA or FT? Would an internship for a one or two office firm be considered informal?
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