Is the Internship Worth It?
So I recently received the opportunity to intern at a “boutique” financial-services consulting firm in New York City. I will have 1-2 months to work there (since our vacation schedule in Asia is different, starting now for two months). The problem is that the firm is pretty unheard of and I’m questioning whether I should make the trip to intern there given that it is unpaid and an unheard of place.
While I realize that name is not all that is important, I am also aware that large ibanks and HFs will have limited time to browse everyone’s resume. Also, I had a Wealth Management internship from last summer at a Merrill Lynch branch in Atlanta (the best I could do, at the time).
Is it bad if one sees a progression from a BB-name to an unheard-of one on a resume? I would be sacrificing 1-2 months of my time I could be using to study for the CFA (which is approaching soon) and shelling out a fair amount of my own saved money, which I would be more than happy to do if it would help me find a good SA/FT offer in the near future at an ibank or a hedge fund.
What do you think?
Thanks in advance for everyone’s advice; any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated.
I'm assuming your a junior? If I were in your position, I would find out exactly what your job responsiblities would be with this boutique. What is it EXACTLY that they do. What is it you will be doing. The problem with some unpaid positions, is it is real easy to have an unpaid person do nothing but file all day. However, if you are getting paid, they probably are not maximizing their ROE (sorry had to say it). Find out exactly what you would be doing, determine whether you would ever want to work there full-time, and repost your findings. Good luck.
KEep this option there but continue to search for more!
Keep in mind that not only you are not getting paid, you need to pay for your own living expenses. If you enjoy the job, then good, but if you hate it, it will end up to be two of the worst months in your life.
Ling~
When I spoke to the guy running the place, I was told that he has different projects at different times and it depends what he's doing at the time, so it basically varies. When I asked him if he did some specific work such as portfolio management (noted on his site) he said that they do a little of everything and may even be able to accommodate my needs by having me do something that I'm interested in.
In other words, some nebulous answers. I may be able to do what I'm interested in and then put that down on my resume, which may sound good if I was allowed to do something like that, although I'm not sure what having an unknown name after Merrill will do, given that people will have 30 seconds to browse through my resume and perhaps see some sort of a negative progression or something.
What do you think?
Not worth it, unless you exaggerate the hell out of it on your resume. I can almost guarantee that you'll get all bitch work (I've been there before).
I'm not sure it would be all bitch work since he's an alum of the school and would probably literally try to give me whatever kind of work that I wanted. Maybe, at least. Still, regarding the trade off, especially with regards to the name-recognition progression and the time it would take up, you think that it wouldn't be worth it?
I think the problem everyone has is that we have no idea what'd you be doing. The name progression isn't as important as you make it sound, because Wealth Management is something that most often is an unpaid internship with a lot of "bitch-work", so you wouldn't necessarily be scaling down in progression on your resume. The question is whether you'd be "scaling up" in terms of the kind of work experience you're doing.
Sounds like either a skeleton crew where they will pummel you with work (I guess good, but sucks without pay) or you will have no true responsibilities and basically be a gopher. I'd look for something more concrete from them or try to find an internship with more defined roles in consulting/banking/portfolio management if that is what you are looking to get into. If nothing else, this seems like it has a chance of being a good one, but it could also suck big time so I'd keep your options open and look for another one.
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