The hot summer weather bring me back to a few years ago, shortly before the high tide of finance jobs went back out to sea. I fell backward into a pretty damn good boutique summer analyst stint in midtown Manhattan, which I somehow managed to nail down long past the formal recruiting deadlines at other places had passed.
I didn't get an offer that summer, and I can't blame my employers. Frankly, I doubt that I would have given myself an offer had I been in their shoes.
The truth is, I'm not sure if I could have gotten an offer no matter what, as they hadn't had too many interns before. However, I want to use this post and the benefit of hindsight to talk about what I could have improved upon back then.
Perhaps the following reflections will help some of you nascent monkeys eek out an offer from your ongoing internships:
- You might be expected to be very proactive when it comes to seeking out work, especially at a smaller place.
Don't wait around for people to give you stuff to do if you're twiddling your thumbs. I worked in a satellite office--the main one was an ocean away. I had some pretty large blocks of time where I had nearly nothing to do. The deal teams were rather lean, and my associate would generally turn most changes himself. After all, it was time sensitive work and he was able to do it much more quickly than I could have.
After a few days at the start of the summer of calling/sending e-mails to people in the main office, I said to myself "Well, they know that I'm here. If they need help, they'll get in touch." This was a mistake! Some internship programs are more formal than others, and mine was particularly informal. In retrospect, I should have tried to reach out to more people on a more consistent basis to not just ask if they had work for me, but to develop a relationship with them. I could have done a better job of trying to get to know everyone by asking them about deals that had recently done, the industry, and so on. You really can't expect people to just give you work, especially if it's an informal internship program and the firm isn't sure what their hiring needs will be like. People will give work to those that they know and trust.
- Don't be socially awkward!
This was my first real professional job. I had a policy wonk internship the summer before, which was a great experience, but working at an NGO or non-profit isn't quite the same as working in the private sector. My phone skills weren't great, and I didn't have quite as much professional confidence, poise, or self-awareness as I do now.
Much of the improvement you'll make in this category simply comes with time. Remember: success in school is only weakly correlated with success at your job, and you need to do more than just wait around until people give you stuff to do. All I can say in terms of concrete advice is to be well dressed, be personable, make small talk, and try to get to know your coworkers personally.
- Try to seek informal feedback.
This is the sort of thing that everyone tells interns and employees to do, but I'm not sure how many people actually do it. Remember, this is a two way street: your employer expects you to work, but you should be confident enough to solicit feedback if you want to gauge your progress over the summer. If you have any legitimate concerns: "Why has the office been so slow lately?" "Is there anything I can do to make your life easier?" you shouldn't be afraid to voice them.
- Seek out news in your space.
Fire up the Bloomberg terminal and look up companies in your space. Set up a Google news alert to get news stories related to what you're working on delivered directly to your inbox. Bring things up with your associate, or whoever it is that you're working for. It will show interest, curiosity, and motivation. And more importantly, it will give you a better idea about whether you want to work in this field after college.
- Stay organized, and try to find processes that you can improve.
A big part of finance, consulting, and any other professional services job is simply keeping information organized. You need to be able to retrieve e-mails, spreadsheets, and presentations quickly. Keep your folders organized, make sure that there are no loose files in a root folder, and adopt consistent naming conventions across all of your documents. Get into the habit of dating anything that's going through changes (personally, I like to start doc titles in the form "2013.07.25"--this way you can just filter a folder by name and see everything organized cleanly by date).
If things are slow, ask around and figure out what sort of boring, nitty gritty processes--internal memos on companies, data collection efforts, and so on--there are that you can help improve upon. If you're good at Excel or VBA, maybe you can put that knowledge to good use here.
Do any baboons out there have any tips for our monkey hopefuls? What would you do differently if you could do your internship again?
*their
I agree with all that you have said. However, unless you come from a good family, I feel like nobody really tells you these things when you're an undergrad looking to get a job after graduation. I wouldn't have hired me when I was in college, but I didn't know any better, and my school didn't really press upon the fact that you need to become a value-added intern, not a resume-building intern.
good advice
In my first internship, in the summer between high school and college, I worked at a large local financial services company in the accounting department because one of my friend's dad was the CFO. It was my first real job, and I really had little guidance on how to act in the office. My parents never taught me what to do, and I was always socially awkward in high school (and pretty much until I read Neil Strauss in college).
So at my internship, I was just polite, quiet, and did my work, did it well and did it fast. I'd probably have hired myself on those merits. But in retrospect, one of my greatest regrets is that I brought my own lunch and ate it by myself at my desk every day while reading Bloomberg, and never got to know anyone on the floor other than the people I worked with directly...which was probably fine, because I wasn't great at holding conversations anyway. Today, I literally couldn't tell you the names of the three other people in the cubes around me...and wouldn't recognize their faces if I saw them downtown. Bottom line, I should have eaten in the common areas, and tried to network even if it was awkward or uncomfortable.
So two tips: 1) If you're socially awkward, read "The Game" by Neil Strauss. If that bald awkward man who wrote awful angst-filled poetry as a teen can become a social monster, so can you. 2) Get to know people you work with. Remember names, remember faces, remember details of their lives. Even if it's uncomfortable at first, just keep practicing and it'll get better over time (another lesson from "The Game").
Fixed.
Yeah, this is true. I thought to myself "If I show up on time and keep my head down and work hard at the tasks that people give me, I'll be in great shape." That's mostly true, but it's tough to figure out these soft skills without actually throwing yourself in there and learning from your mistakes. In particular, I remember being unsure about when to ask for help/clarification; I remember not wanting to look like an idiot. Now I have no problem asking questions all the time, I don't even worry about whether it will be perceived as a dumb question.
My biggest mistake happened even before the internship. I had no clue about anything relating to financial markets and banking and I went into the internship being unprepared. That said, the other interns were not better, which makes it all the more disappointing that I could have absolutely crushed the internship if I knew even the basics.
Its amazing how little attention is paid to those soft skills. I also used to think that just working hard and doing what you were asked to do would be enough. Not so! You really need to push yourself out there and be confident. Truly intelligent people know when they do not know the answers and know how to look for help in getting those answers.
Ex molestias voluptatem perspiciatis odio optio sed. Dolorem ut accusamus ex autem et. Saepe quos accusamus molestias aliquid voluptatem quidem occaecati.
Quaerat rem non iure omnis. Aut sed aut nulla deleniti quasi. Unde incidunt quo reiciendis aperiam assumenda explicabo.
Non soluta aut facilis pariatur. Debitis magni qui incidunt. Officiis aspernatur quia accusantium nihil non rerum non ex.
Illo tempora labore et et. Deserunt vel ut quo amet nemo voluptatem consequatur. Quia ducimus sapiente laborum ea dolore ut. Nulla omnis ipsum sint voluptatem odio quo quaerat quas.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...