Will this internship help or hinder my future chances of landing a job in finance?

seabird:

Dude, why not take it? Unless its unpaid. To compare 2 kids, one of whom has experience doing something and the other has nothing on their resume, the choice is clear. Especially if you can sling it and make it sound like you did it because of your interest in finance.

Will it probably directly lead to your working in pe/ib? Probably not. But shit dude, its late in the game. You could do worse.

FSC:

PrinceAlbert:

FSC:

What year are you in school / when did you graduate? If it's early on in your career, you can still spin this into something. Whereas the later it is, the less likely you are to be able to use it for a finance job without grad school / MBA.

1st year at university. What sort of spin could I put on it?

First year? Everything seabird said, minus the late in the game part (I think he just hasn't seen your last post).

You could turn the work into anything; if even one project that summer involves finance, those are your 3-4 lines right there. You could also be very enterprising and do a lot this upcoming year in college. I'm assuming you're in the US? If so, you have 3 years and 2 summers left before graduation; bust your ass this coming year doing finance classes, taking leadership roles at clubs, networking (conferences, info meetings with professionals), and basically looking for a better internship for next year. Worst case, you do a wealth management internship next summer, which isn't even that bad.

If you're in Europe (and thus only have 2 years left), then you need to seriously bust your ass to get an internship during the coming fall semester so you can try to land an offer for next summer at a place you'd like to work.

Either way, if you have nothing better lined up, then you absolutely should take it.

Thanks a lot for your help guys, appreciate it. Yes it's unpaid, which is a bit of a bummer. I'm based in the UK. Over here it's really tricky (read: very rare) to get a summer internship programme in your first year. The general chain of events goes something like: first year: spring week, second/third years: summer internship, grad: offer. And I've got a very relevant spring week lined up that I'll start in a few days. Therefore I probably wouldn't be doing anything better in the summer, maybe just earning a few shillings in a summer job but I can live with foregoing that money if the internship will actually help in the future...

Still think I should go for it?

The basic outline of what it is can be found here: http://www.gsk.com/uk/careers/undergraduates/undergraduate-supply-chain…