Would You Be Willing To Work on a Discount for Experience?

I have a question for all of you.

Lets say you have an opportunity to do a banking job at a boutique way earlier than you otherwise could, but would get pennies. Specifically, lets say you're a high school senior with an internship offer right after graduation. The internship would normally pay someone around 15-20K, but you only get a 5K stipend.

On the one hand you get great experience on your resume for future jobs and this would beat out pretty much anything else that you could get at that time money wise.

On the flip side, you're getting extremely under paid and you'd likely be working 80-100 hour weeks.

Would you be underpaid and overworked for an opportunity later on, or would you say screw it?

If you could give details, that'd be great.

Also,this is clearly a hypothetical as I doubt any firm would do that for a non-child of a partner or something, but I'm just curious as to what people's opportunity costs are.

 

I would not.

That's the last summer you have with high school friends, and usually when the group trips and biggest parties happened. Banking versus sex is an easy choice, especially when there's no pressure on you to move ahead careerwise.

As a freshman in college, I'd take the boutique. If you can get the internship in high school, you can probably get it as a freshman, and start leveraging it for future positions. But as a high school senior, you don't even know what you want to do, probably. As an undergraduate, it's probably the same, but why commit 80 hours (nobody would keep a high schooler that long, though) to something you don't really know about?

And you can make over 5k a summer as a waiter.

 
np99sky:
I would not.

That's the last summer you have with high school friends, and usually when the group trips and biggest parties happened. Banking versus sex is an easy choice, especially when there's no pressure on you to move ahead careerwise.

As a freshman in college, I'd take the boutique. If you can get the internship in high school, you can probably get it as a freshman, and start leveraging it for future positions. But as a high school senior, you don't even know what you want to do, probably. As an undergraduate, it's probably the same, but why commit 80 hours (nobody would keep a high schooler that long, though) to something you don't really know about?

And you can make over 5k a summer as a waiter.

Very, very true.

And I can tell you that I regularly would be in the office until 12 AM at the accounting firm I interned at in high school during tax season, so it happens.

 
Best Response

I did an IB internship which paid a grand total of $300 a month, before taxes. I had to incur gas / toll / parking costs in order to work there, ultimately meaning I paid for the experience. The experience was certainly nothing to write home about, but it did give me exposure to the industry and a resume builder. I know for a fact that this internship was instrumental when I interviewed for full time positions.

What you've got to realize is that careers are built from the ground up. It is very difficult to make transitions that allow you to skip major steps. As a high school senior, having an internship will not make or break you, not in the least. However, if you're willing to start early, this will be a tremendous opportunity to get ahead of all of your peers. If you are confident you can obtain the same internship next summer, following np99sky's advice and become a waiter this year and work the internship the next. I would say that it is highly unlikely that any investment bank will be working you 80-100 hours right now. I don't know many (any?) analysts working that much, let alone high school interns. Recognize that the current economic environment is going to cut your hours in half, so ignore what you've read about how the industry has been prior to 4th Quarter 2008. ~~~~~~~~~~~ CompBanker

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

That is an awesome opportunity and will give you tremendous exposure so early...will clarify a lot for you.

You will know whether M&A is for you.

Maybe you will parlay this into bulge bracket internships early on as a freshman.

By the time you graduate you will have such a solid resume that you may have the ability to skip the sellside ...skip it all, go to a HF or PE shop directly.

It is an awesome opportunity forget the money it is one summer man..you will make fantastic money later by rolling this experience into great iternships...

Great job

 

80-100 hours was probably a stretch...probably closer to 60 or so.

I just wonder though, why is it that high school seniors and college freshman are willing to work those hours - for free - on Capitol Hill, but future bankers might be hesitant to give up that time making money?

 

hands down i would do it.

in my networking efforts throughout regional boutiques/MM, some of those firms have little to no internship positions for the summer. i would follow up and say that i am willing to work as an unpaid intern if thats possible, and suddenly they are a lot more willing to talk to me-- even if they dont actually plan on paying me 0, i guess it shows a lot of dedication

if i had nothing else this summer, i would definitely work for free. its not about the money this early in my career, its about the learning experience. and i would argue the technical skillset gained in IB is still the best out of any finance gig.

as for the high school kid, so you give up your summer. boo hoo. you have all of college to party harder than you ever had, and your resume as a freshman will be stacked so as to set yourself up for IB jobs every summer of college, putting you way ahead of the competition. in my opinion thats more valuable than 3 months of a less than usual amount of partying.

 

i'm more than willing to work for free at the moment, and somehow like the work.

but your resume as a freshman is still stacked if you get the internship later. I won't be in banking until this summer, just to put that out there, but even if I genuinely enjoy it, high school summer is the last time you see a lot of people. college is amazing, but so was high school. College summers are different -everyone goes home or their own way. But before college, everyone is still there.

It's hard to justify saying goodbye and getting laid are less worthwhile than making coffee or mindless data entry. You won't be given any significant work on the job -nobody is going to trust a high schooler with anything that creates value.

CompBanker brings up a good point -if you're coming from an extreme nontarget, it could be a huge deal in terms of getting people to look at your resume. In that case, maybe.

You just don't sacrifice having a good time for administrative work at long hours. It should be the other way around.

 

I think a lot it depends on where you plan to go to school. If you plan to go to HYP, that experience probably won't even still be on your resume by the time you are a junior applying for "real" summer internships. If you're enrolling at a non-target, it might be really beneficial to take the internship.

That being said, you really need to think about the fact that you are only 18 years old and this could very well be your last summer with all of your high school friends together. While having the boutique on your resume might help you land an interview later on (although no more than a 3.8+ GPA or a few great ECs would), a great summer experience traveling or doing something unique that you can talk about in an interview would go a lot farther towards landing the job. Plus, when you look back on your life a few years down the road, you're probably going to wish you enjoyed that last summer and find that the experience was mostly useless.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Interesting comments. I ask because I'm trying to do a startup and the guys I'm working with and I are trying to think of cost cutting measures, and one I suggested was to get some interns who will work for cheap. I know that college freshmen are a good target simply because they can get few internships otherwise, but I was also thinking of recent high school grads.

I 100% agree that your high school (and college for that matter) experience should be put over a job opportunity, however given that these would be kids with computer programming experience I'm not sure if they'd be going to beach week or having that one last kegger before going off to school anyway.

 

if you want to place yourself in good footing, do it. i know a lot of the kids who got awesome FT jobs started getting 500/month doing ibanking very early on and ended up at BX, after interning at Goldman. a lot of these did end up dumping their original ib experience in their resumes once they "upgraded", but their interviewers openly told them that having prior ib experience was key, which was this first no pay job. granted, these are extreme cases, but still there.

 

Definitely do it. They are not going to work you 80-100 hours, you're a high school senior! This will give you such good exposure to the industry and an experience like many said that can be a really effective bullet point on your resume, showing maturity and initiative at a very young age

as far as going out goes - save the parties for later, you'll have more fun once you're 21 anyways where you can go to the bars (especially the one's that are hard on ID's which are usually the most fun) instead of the mom's out of town party which cops crash before 1

 

mcds:

I worked as an intern for a startup in high school, doing programming work. So I actually have experience with what you're doing.

I know of a few boutique ibanks that recruit freshmen and sophomores heavily, doing data-entry and coldcalling/"deal-sourcing", and there's still a huge supply of students ready to do it.

It really does work. Plus, in regards to the programmers you want, a few students are likely to already be pretty knowledgeable -there are a lot of self-taught people. Aim for sophomores or juniors, not seniors though. High school seniors, even the programmers, aren't as likely to do it, and sophomores and juniors want it on their college apps. Just make sure they know their shit, maybe ask a comp sci teacher at a high school.

If the intern is good, you can ask them if they have anyone else they know to recommend.

They also work for free. But keep the higher level programming to older people, unless you trust them. Make sure to tell people "not many high schoolers get to do this" or "this'll be sweet going into college or other jobs".

Interns will eat that shit up.

Otherwise, given that it's unpaid, they'll surf the internet on your computers. Or that's what I did.

 

I would have definitely accepted an offer like this if I had the opportunity a few years ago when I was finishing up high school. It gives the student a huge advantage over lots of other kids their age and as long as they aren't a complete idiot, they should be able to leverage it into a job where they are making the 15-20k the next summer.

Seeing your post mentioning you were looking at this from the perspective of the employer, I would be hesitant that the intern might just quit halfway through when they see how much they are working for such little pay and hear about all their boys getting smashed each night while they format a fucking sheet until 2 am. With that said, maybe consider only making them work 60-80 hours...

Just my thoughts, but I think you could really do well with this idea if you think it out thoroughly before implementing it. Good luck!

 

do it. You'll still have time to hang out with your friends, as I'm sure you'll seldom have to put in more than 60 hours a week. The advantage that gives you once you're in college is outstanding. Aside from that, i'd say half the people that are now your friends will no longer be your friends a couple of years into college, so you're really not missing much there. The ones you'll keep may very well be your friends long time after you start your full time, so you're covered on both ends. Take the job and be a superstar.

 

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