Possible to get FIRED as an intern for underperforming?
Hey guys,
Current remote winter intern at a fintech-oriented group at a BB - workdays are ~12 hours a day.
To preserve my anonymity I won't get into the details, but basically a lot of commitments have come up for remaining duration of the internship such that it will be impossible for me to maintain even mediocre performance. I don't care for a return offer for the group nor do I care about potentially making a bad reputation for myself within the bank.
At this point I could resign prematurely, but ideally I would want to finish the term and be able to leverage the BB's brand and resume value for future recruiting efforts (which in my understanding wouldn't be possible if I get fired as terminations would show up in background checks?). In general, is it possible for an intern to be outright terminated for terrible performance (incomplete work, late submissions, missed work calls - basically the output of half a person, which I essentially will be) instead of simply not getting a return offer? Would the bank really bother with firing an intern just for atrocious performance if they'll only be there for a few months?
in order to be fired as an intern you would need to be egregiously bad. it's much easier for them to keep you for the 10 weeks or so and then not give you a return offer
Makes sense. But I'm wondering what egregiously bad would entail. Obviously something like getting convicted for a major crime would have implications on keeping the position, but what if I fail to complete every assigned task in the worst way possible? At one point I'm assuming my net contribution will be negative and they'd stop assigning me anything altogether - would the bank rather still rather keep me for the 10-week period than to go through the firing process?
lmao how bad are you expecting to do? surely you can bs your way through the internship and not fail that miserably
Terminations do not show up on normal employment background checks.
Oh that's good to know. But still, I would rather not have to face the dilemma of being honest or not when asked interview questions like why I left the group or specific dates on my resume.
As earlier poster asked, how come you can't devote the time/effort to at least be slightly worse than mediocre? You make it sound like your performance will be a 5 out of a 100... you can't manage even a 40/100 (which yes, will be an F, but at least it's not hall-of-fame bad).
Uh. If these commitments came up, and you're an intern, why not just talk to them? Like if you're an intern, they're not really relying on your work product. Maybe they say that you can't fulfill the responsibilities and should leave, but I think there's a decent chance they just work with you on it
It's a two way street. If you do an internship there and it's a BB they're gonna check. 12 hours a day is honestly pretty decent so they're not doing wrong by you. If you have other commitments, and especially if you've already been doing a decent job so far, better to just be upfront with them and offer to resign from the programme prematurely.
At least when they get calls about you it will be "decent worker, had to resign halfway for personal reasons" rather than "terrible intern who barely did anything"
They won’t fire you.
but what do you mean “these commitments came up”? Are these personal or professional ones ? The real questions is, if you can’t suck it up for 2 months and reduce your sleep / hobby time to perform, why would you want to reapply in IB in the first place ?
FYI, 12-hour days doesn’t exactly mean working at capacity ... this means 9-9, basically you’re finishing at 9pm every night, so you could add 6 hours per days + WE work if you needed to (not saying this is enjoyable, but if you’re n it ready to do this you shouldn’t work in IB)
Mate just be an adult, explain to your VP or Staffer that some other "personal" commitments surfaced and that you no longer will be able to give your 100% to the job. They would much rather have an early heads up and finding a replacement for you (an analyst that has bandwidth) or just move ahead with a leaner team than you slacking off, failing to complete the tasks you are given properly, on-time. If you don't want to return to this group/bank, it really will not matter that you quit..
I would rather flag them to the staffer/VP/whoever than just keep them for yourself. Not converting is always somewhat of a redflag, you'll see that banking is a much smaller world than you think it is, once you have done 2-3 deals you know most juniors in teams that are the same coverage at yours and defacto people at every bank, so the word can go around quite fast especially for outliers (ie good or bad)
I feel like we need more context.
You will never be outright fired for lack of performance. Before it gets to that, HR or somebody will come to you and try to figure out what is going on. Especially if you are an intern. You also generally get a mid-internship review, for example.
If your reason for not performing is a serious personal matter, they will work with you. Any other reason (side job, recruiting, etc.) will just look horrible on you. And rightfully so.
I have heard of an intern getting fired (just one case), but what’s going on? You made mention of getting charged with a crime - that’s rough but if that’s the case you definitely shouldn’t just not let your team know if you’re planning / need to be out of pocket. And if anything, that sounds like an awesome group, only working 9-9 at a BB. Try to talk to them about your situation, don’t just leave them hanging
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