I am in deep shit

Do not thing you're in deep shit at all. Covid has caused many people's internships to get cancelled, and I believe your firm will be very understanding of this if its ever brought up.

Do you have any written email confirmation from the firm that they're willing to have you on board as an intern? If so, you can always show that to HR if it's questioned.

Either way, I think you're fine here. HR most likely understands that many people had their internships cancelled due to Covid.

My man, relax and congrats. As long as it was true at the time, you're fine. Especially with covid.

I'm going to take a differentiated stance from everyone else:

Haven't you heard of the old saying "Don't count your chickens before they hatch?" That's what you did here. Sure, you weren't "intentionally lying," but you still grossly & materially overstated the likelihood of you having an internship this summer. You didn't even have a direct verbal offer, much less a written one.

From an accounting perspective, imagine a firm claiming to have a significant amount of additional sales (enough to be the difference between a profit and a loss) soley based on a customer saying they'll "probably" spend that much in a few months. That would be total fraud.

Moreover, you presumably had at least two or three months to say something to HR but you didn't?

It might be worth reaching out to the head of the firm you were meant to intern at, explain the situation and ask for a brief written note that you were meant to intern with them.

Of course, if you do that you'll want to come across as very understanding of Covid etc and not bitter about him ghosting you. I'd imagine if you come across as sincere they will be more than willing to make some sort of written confirmation (or get HR to make one)

Am I the only one here who doesn’t think you should send hr any update? I would wait for them to say something. And if they ask for the offer letter, you can just tell them the firm gave a verbal offer, and after following up several times, you hadn’t heard back and it ended up being cancelled by covid

Seems fishy to me that you put it in your resume when you didn't even have confirmation about doing the internship.

Luckily for you, internship cancellations due to covid are really common so they won't think about it twice. Just don't say it.

Send your resume without it and that'll be it. Trust me, with so many interns, do you really think they'll remember that you had X "incoming internship" in your resume? No.

Some people tend to think that HR is out there to get you or that they really scrutinize their resumes really hard to find holes. They don't give a shit. They just want to get their paycheck and be out by 3:30pm.

Analyst 1 in IB - Gen:

Hey fellas I am currently in somewhat of a unique situation and was looking for some advice from the community. Been sitting on this for a while as I was just very confused as to how I should proceed.

I had an 'incoming internship' listed on my resume for this summer (2020) and luckily landed an offer for an SA 2021 role at a bank earlier in the cycle. The 'incoming internship' ended up getting cancelled so I was wondering if you guys had any advice on how to approach this with HR.

Here's the main issue - the incoming internship wasn't necessarily confirmed with a formal contract at the time. I had spoken to the head of the firm and he said I could probably intern there and to follow up later. COVID-19 hit and they practically ghosted me. I had it as an incoming internship on my resume as it seemed likely at the time and with recruiting pushed up by a ridiculous time frame I had to show some 'expected' experience.

Obviously, I was thinking of giving them an update with a newer version of my resume but any idea if they would conduct a verification check for my cancelled internship i.e. ask for references or for offer letter/proof of employment documentation etc.? Or would they consider this an issue and potentially rescind my offer when the inevitable background check happens a couple months later? If i were to somehow land another internship that goes on during the semester and maybe send them my updated resume with that do you think it could negate the earlier issue (since I show some experience in place of the cancelled internship)? Understand that I had no intention of lying here, the internship was legit at one point and not something I fabricated.

Would really appreciate some advice from you guys. I have been very stressed because of this - come from a middle class background and grinded my ass off for the offer so I'd be devastated if they rescind. Thanks all!

I suspect you knew what you were doing. No point in trying to convince us though. I respect the finesse and you got kinda lucky bc of covid, so you will most likely get away with this

You played your cards super fucking well bro, I think you’re good because I had a similar situation and I didn’t even have it on my resume, they ended up saying that it didn’t matter because they had no expectation anyway (mid tier BB)

No idea if you're gonna be ok here or not - maybe someone who's gone through the SA backcheck can shed some light.

BUT if you do pull this off I gotta say this is one of the biggest finesses I've ever seen in student recruiting and the stars couldn't have possibly aligned for you any better with internship cancellations through COVID. Rooting for you here tbh

BUMP

You’ll be fine. 
 

1) Lots of background check firms don’t even refer to your resume, they verify employment dates that you’ll input on their website when you verify. Just leave off the non-job in question, or write “[COVID].”

2) There will be tons of kids in your class who have similar or same issues. HR and or background check will give you guys a longer leash, or may not even bother verifying canceled stuff (sounds like a huge pain)

anyone else come here because of the title and then tl;dr?