Internship recruiting in Italy
I was wondering which are the main differences, if any, between Milan and London (or other eu cities) internship recruiting. My guess is that SA internship is not that common in Italy, most internship are off-cycle or last 6 months anyway. I also feel interviews and ACs for Milan offices happen in January/February (since offers are posted generally in September), so much later than London timeline. However I'm no expert and any info would be gladly appreciated.
1. No summer internships in Italy, there was just the one from JPM but is now called off-cycle since it starts in July, still lasts about 3 months I believe.
2. Interviews in Italy are MUCH more technical than in London since offices are very small and they need you to perform from day 1, behavioural questions are almost non-existent in most IBs. This might also be due to the fact that offices in Italy are very senior heavy and you will be heavily staffed since there is no staffer, so they want to take on interns that can perform in these conditions
3. Headcount is a real issue, I've seen people do 4 OCs in Italy without offer just because of headcount. On this note, US BBs usually have 2 intern spots for each cycle, 1 man and 1 woman. EBs have more intern spots, e.g. Rothschild has about 6-7 spots in M&A and 2-3 in Debt Advisory for each cycle if I remember correctly
4. Interviews happen at different times depending on the bank and intake. For example Lazard will do interviews in March for June start, Goldman interviews around January for both off-cycles of the year. You should check with people that work in those offices for specific timelines
5. Obviously it is country coverage and thus there are mostly no industries, apart from some banks that may have one industry team alongside the country coverage.
6. Even more obvious, you have to speak native/C2 Italian to work in Italian IBs
Thank you very much, this clears the picture a lot.
Have you seen anyone with an intermediate level of Italian fluency working at BBs in Italy? Considering banks not only pitch to Italian clients but instead, clients all over Europe plus analysts mostly work on decks and have limited interaction with clients so I think you can survive without native-level fluency. It is possible in France and Germany. Don't know why not here in Italy
Never seen it, don't think there is anyone who isn't native italian working in an Italian office of BBs. Sadly Italian companies, even huge ones, are still very local and want material translated in Italian, meetings held in italian and so on. I interned in the Italian branch of a BB/EB and we never ever dealt with European deals, internal material was in English but still focused on country coverage. The most international interaction that you get is working with London office, but still on Italian coverage deals.
Studying and did IB internships in France. Don't think it's possible to do front office without C1+ level of French. In Germany it's possible but still extremely rare and you need at least B1/B2 level.
Many years removed from this but purely out of interest is it a similar environment to France where everyone has several offcycles by the time they graduate? When do people have time for this? Do these programmes have longer breaks hence usually the 4 year programmes?
How come more of these french / Italian people not super competitive for the London scene? Or is the answer that they are especially if they get an LSE masters on top of their boconnoci / HEC undergrad?
In Italy it is not as mandatory as in France, and guess what banks still need brits to cover UK companies and doing 20 internships sure makes you a bit better but if you are not sociable what so ever (which a lot of the continental folks are as they are purely career focused) you still won't be hired.
Italian university programmes are very academic and leave basically zero time for non-summer internships. I would say the average italian never touches a job before graduating from his/her MSc. Students from top italian Uni like Bocconi on average do one short (3-4 months) internship in Big 4 during their BSc.
Definitely not competitive in terms of internships with French/German. My profile was similar to that of the average italian but this never stopped me from getting internships in London as I found that they are allocated on a national quota of some sort, so I was never really competing directly with non-italian people.
In the end, I believe the marginal gains from doing internships really fade after the first decent one, since you learn all the basics pretty fast. Never really felt that people with more experience were outpacing me due to their past experiences
Well banks will always need italians in coverage in London because you fuckers do deals solely in Italian - and it is the only place in Europe I have seen this.
thanks. so would a top British student didn't get into LSE / Oxbridge - would going to a top German / French uni and doing multiple internships put them in better position than e.g. Warwick / UCL grad when they apply back in London? This is assuming an ability to speak European languages so they would be able to get internships there.
or would a better option be to go to a top independent school for 11/13+ and try get those work experiences before Uni then just do spring week, summer then FT? I'd say Grammar school too but tbh when randomly browsing people on Linkedin I've rarely come across Grammar school people who had pre uni work experience.
Are there small boutiques freshman can try to cold email their way in?
Yeah, there definitely are some small boutique IBs to which you can apply. I have seen people from Bocconi and very rarely PoliMi/LUISS get the job, mostly already MSc students. Sadly 90% of the students in the MSc in Finance at Bocconi want to do IB, and while London IB placement is great it can't accomodate that many students, so many fall back on these boutiques and make it quite difficult to even get interviews as a freshman.
If you want to find said boutiques I think it's quite easy to just browse LinkedIn profiles of MSc in Finance students at Bocconi, you will find many.
A short list from memory:
Some of these maybe won't take a freshman into consideration but doesn't hurt to try. From Bocconi you can also apply to spring/summer internships at BBs and other IBs during BSc and I've seen some people get in so be sure to do it.
add Klecha&Co to that list
I would avoid Rothschild like the plague. Their Milan office makes Guantanamo look like a playground.
Can you expand?
It is very much known in Italy that Rothschild Milan is a sweatshop. They have interns working from Monday to Sunday usually up until 2 am very consistently with spikes up until 6am, also have a very toxic internal culture (giving names to interns, throwing things to interns etc).
They had a big issue last year with some intern threatening to contact his university's career service to report on them, this sparked a reaction from Rothschild Global that contacted the office and "regulated" hours for the interns saying that they should leave the office at 9pm and introduced a "staffer" from London office. From what I know, these changes are largely a PR stunt and interns still work sweatshop hours, with the better interns getting all the work and those in bottom bucket becoming interns for the other interns.
The office is admittedly top class in Italy and has great dealflow, but if you have other opportunities you should take them since its bad culture is there to stay because seniors creating it will not change soon.
Culture is pretty rough in Italy. Does not matter whether it is a BB or EB.
Does anyone know what's the pay like? I mean, if it is at least worth less to give it a shot?
heard rumors saying it was around 70-75k + small-mid bonus for A1
Don't know about FT, but for internships there are quite few boutiques that pay 500/600 euros per month, others 0 euros. With the biggest banks you can expect something like 1200/1300 euros per month
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