You finally managed to get an impressive summer internship at one of the top names in the city? You can be proud of yourself for a moment but the biggest challenge is yet to come. This challenge involves sleep deprivation, a massive amount of number crunching but also free sushi and limousines back from work to your flat.
Crucial For Your Career - Getting Into Your Dream Team
Interns in IBD can’t just choose where they want to spend their whole summer – they have to be chosen. So one of the first unofficial tasks on your new internship is networking. You will go through some technical training of just a few days, a lot of material to read up to - but what is really crucial about the beginning is to decide in which team/department you want to end up and how to get there. Be decisive in this – there are a lot of people ending up in a department they do not want to be in – and it is kind of a gridlock since it is hard to switch e.g. from sales to trading to Fixed Income to M&A. And the more years you actually have into the job, the tougher this actually gets. If you miss this in this first crucial step of your career, you will run into troubles.
So attend every networking event, coffee break and every small talk with the people in the department you want to work with. But why should they choose you: Show them you will not be a smart-ass or pain, easy to work with, sharp and motivated. But don’t suck up to them – nobody likes this.
During The Internship
Be the best intern of the century or at least try. Be attentive, ask your fellow team members if you can help them with something, even if this means you will spend your summer weekend in the office. Try to navigate your way through the team, identify who works with or against each other and don’t get in the middle of conflicts during the summer internship. Be prepared to get swamped with a massive amount of relatively trivial work, it’s all there to see if you can cope with the stress and workload.
Scoring Your Full-Time Offer
Looking back there are a few aspects that can be identified as common ground in people and their behavior when scoring an FT position out of the Summer Analyst role. First you have to be willing to completely neglect your social and private life during the time of the internship. You have to be ready to do the upmost boring tasks for days to come and be prepared to get additional workload on top of this. But the most crucial question people ask themselves when evaluating an intern is: Do I want to sit next to him/her for 20 hours/7 days a week? So be yourself, try to enjoy the work and environment with its perks, don’t take things personally and integrate yourself into the team as much as you can.
This is a long lasting, not easy to pass but also well-paid test.
Crucial For Your Career - Getting Into Your Dream Team
Interns in IBD can’t just choose where they want to spend their whole summer – they have to be chosen. So one of the first unofficial tasks on your new internship is networking. You will go through some technical training of just a few days, a lot of material to read up to - but what is really crucial about the beginning is to decide in which team/department you want to end up and how to get there. Be decisive in this – there are a lot of people ending up in a department they do not want to be in – and it is kind of a gridlock since it is hard to switch e.g. from sales to trading to Fixed Income to M&A. And the more years you actually have into the job, the tougher this actually gets. If you miss this in this first crucial step of your career, you will run into troubles.
So attend every networking event, coffee break and every small talk with the people in the department you want to work with. But why should they choose you: Show them you will not be a smart-ass or pain, easy to work with, sharp and motivated. But don’t suck up to them – nobody likes this.
During The Internship
Be the best intern of the century or at least try. Be attentive, ask your fellow team members if you can help them with something, even if this means you will spend your summer weekend in the office. Try to navigate your way through the team, identify who works with or against each other and don’t get in the middle of conflicts during the summer internship. Be prepared to get swamped with a massive amount of relatively trivial work, it’s all there to see if you can cope with the stress and workload.
Scoring Your Full-Time Offer
Looking back there are a few aspects that can be identified as common ground in people and their behavior when scoring an FT position out of the Summer Analyst role. First you have to be willing to completely neglect your social and private life during the time of the internship. You have to be ready to do the upmost boring tasks for days to come and be prepared to get additional workload on top of this. But the most crucial question people ask themselves when evaluating an intern is: Do I want to sit next to him/her for 20 hours/7 days a week? So be yourself, try to enjoy the work and environment with its perks, don’t take things personally and integrate yourself into the team as much as you can.
This is a long lasting, not easy to pass but also well-paid test.