What is a spring internship in investment banking? How is it different to a summer internship?31/8/2012 by Girl Banker In addition to their summer program, some banks now take in interns over the Easter period for two or three weeks for a more informal introduction to investment banking. Key differences between a spring internship and summer internship: 1. Summer internships are typically 10 to 12 weeks whilst spring internships are only 2 to 3 weeks. 2. London seems to be the only financial region that is currently popularising spring internships into a regular program. 3. Banks expect less of you in a spring internship than they do in a summer one which means it's easier to impress. 4. A spring internship gives you a very basic overview of several desks whilst a summer internship gives you a much more in-depth experience of one to three desks in an investment bank. 5. A summer internship can lead to a full-time job, a spring internship does not lead to a full-time offer Advantages of doing a spring internships 1. It qualifies as work experience and will increase your chances of getting interviews when you start applying for full-time positions and summer internships. 2. It can help you to decide whether or not investment banking is for you. 3. It can help you decide which teams in corporate finance or the capital markets are more fun and interesting. Note that spring internship schemes if available are very limited. If you can get onto one this will definitely make you look more passionate about banking.
1 Comment
by Girl Banker At junior levels all banks want just one thing: someone with the right attitude. They will train you to ensure you have the technical skills but underlying all that they want a go-getter, someone who is hungry to excel. That is the fundamental requirement. In addition to having the right attitude, they look for:
Investment banks vet their applicants with extreme care. The majority of their hiring needs are satisfied through their annual recruitment of new graduates. The vast majority of new hires are recruited after completing an eight to twelve week internship the year before they embark on full time employment. Many universities don’t emphasize this point hard enough: if you want to become an investment banker, do an internship a year before you graduate. That said, a résumé/CV looks more interesting if you have a variety of different experiences: one solid banking internship plus two or three other out-of-the-box experiences (charity work, other industry or business experience) will do much more for you than three banking internships. by Girl Banker Reading Amazon kindle books on Windows XP, Vista and 7 is easy peasy. Log into your Amazon account and download the software: Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. This is essentially the "app" for Windows. When you buy kindle books off the Amazon website, you can have them wirelessly delivered to this or any other device that you own. If you download a book to one device it will be in the Archives on the other devices so you can simply reload it to an alternative gadget at no additional cost. Happy days. This is how you can read kindle books on iPhone, iPad or Mac. by Girl Banker You don't need to own a kindle tablet in order to read kindle books! Here is how you can read kindle books on any apple device: 1. Go to the app store 2. Search "kindle" and you can download the kindle app 3. The app allows you to read any kindle books that you've bought on the Amazon store In the early days, you could buy the books directly through the app but as usual Apple got greedy and wanted a cut of book sales so nowadays you have to buy the books directly from the Amazon website. No worries, you can still do that using your phone. The best bit is that you can have the Amazon kindle app on multiple platforms. I have it on three iThings. When I open any book on one gadget or the other it knows the last point to which the book was opened on another device and asks if I want to go there. Neat, huh? When you buy kindle books off the Amazon website, you can have them wirelessly delivered to this or any other device that you own. If you download a book to one device it will be in the Archives on the other devices so you can simply reload it to an alternative gadget at no additional cost. Happy days. This is how you can read kindle books on Windows XP, Vista or 7. by Girl Banker This is a very popular question amongst students who want to become investment bankers. The process is very similar across different investment banks and works as follows: 1. An internship application is submitted, usually using a standardized online form (rather than your own stylized résumé/CV). 2. Once your application has been accepted, the interview(s) you are invited to will normally entail all of the following:
3. Accepted to intern in the summer. 4. After the summer internship, you receive a hire letter or a letter stating that you will not be offered a full-time position. The proportion of interns offered full-time contracts varies from year to year and from bank to bank; it is never 100%. Usually banks will recruit a few more people from outside the summer program but at the moment many are not doing this; banks are selecting the best summer interns and that's it, so getting an internship is critical to becoming an investment banker. If you’ve interned but have not secured a full-time job, you will have a better chance of securing an alternative entry-level position than if you hadn’t interned at all, so do not despair. Some banks may not have filled all of their positions from the internship program and will look to fill in those roles with people like you. by Girl Banker If you are trying to become an investment banker, there are two routes you should look at if you are still in university and three routes if you are already a couple or years or more into your career. 1. Use your university’s careers service. Investment banks may visit your university specifically to recruit the best scholars. If you are at a top-end university they may even have a unique recruitment program/process for your institution that you can use. Even if you graduated ages ago, call up your university to check if they have resources that might help you in your job search. I recently discovered that the university of Cambridge offers lifetime help and support to alumni, I had no idea. I am sure this is not unique to my university. 2. Apply directly via the bank’s website. Your university careers service won’t have knowledge on every single investment bank. It is definitely worth exploring the careers section of banks independently and applying more widely to increase your chances of becoming an investment banker. 3. Call up some headhunters If you have work experience that investment banks would find valuable above the entry level, you can use headhunters. If you're young and haven't started your career yet, this route is mostly closed to you. In a recession, headhunters' books will also be thin but the very best ones will still have access to new positions especially at the senior level. Call them up and get your resume/CV in front of them. Whichever method you use, network proactively. Get to know people connected to the industry and learn as much as you can from each. by Girl Banker Knowing details about the investment bank and then appropriately dropping that knowledge into an interview shows that you are very interested in the role, that you have done your homework and it will boost your chances of getting hired. Before you head out, make sure you know the following: 1) Size of the bank by market cap. If you’re looking at a boutique investment bank this is not so relevant. Other metrics, such as the bank’s sector focus or client-focus, may be more meaningful to you. 2) Number of countries the bank is located in. 3) Number of employees. 4) The location of the head office of the bank. 5) The CEO of the bank and other important or well known employees. 6) The bank’s mission statement and guiding principles. 7) Read the careers section very thoroughly for any hints and tips; you may be surprised by how much info they give away. 8) In the careers section, do they have people profiles? What do employees say about the bank and why they like working there. If the pros they mention appeal to you, try to mention them in your interview. 9) Interesting bank policies e.g. their environmental policy? 10) The bank’s pet projects, e.g. are they supporting a big environmental restoration project or something to support a specific group of dispossessed people? 11) Recent news involving the bank: deals they are working on, regulatory rulings affecting them, earnings announcements. I really charmed the pants off my interviewers at my first Goldman interviews because I had memorized their 14 business principles and I knew everything that Goldman was doing for the environment and so forth. I came up with this strategy because, as I perused the firm’s website, I noticed how frequently they referred to their business principles. Some of my responses went like the following: “According to business principle number 7 which states that ... and I follow exactly the same mantra as exemplified by the time that I did...” – yep, it’s official, I’m a suck up and proud of it. A little flattery won’t hurt you but don’t overdo it. by Girl Banker Your resume/CV is the first opportunity that you get to market yourself. Through your CV the recruiter decides whether or not to interview you and indeed, whether they 'like' you or not. You want everything about your resume/CV to say, I'm the person for this job, hire me! Here are some pointers to help you get noticed: 1. Avoid information overkill Try to keep it to one page but two pages is okay if there is a lot of white space. All important information should be on the first page; if page one is unimpressive the recruiter will not waste any time by going to page 2. 2. Bold the important facts so that they stand out Some people only skim read. If you bold your key selling points then they won't miss them. 3. Stick to short bullet points The maximum length of any bullet point should be two lines, ideally. It stops the reader from getting bored. Don't use a narrative style, write in short punchy sentences. 4. Don't make any grammatical or spelling errors - not even one. Such mistakes say:
5. Only include facts that make you relevant to the job at hand A resume / CV is a snapshot of your qualifications for a specific job. You don't need to include:
6. Don't mass produce your resume / CV Unless you are applying for identical roles in different companies, you should not send identical resumes/ CVs out. Customise them according to what you are applying for. If you're applying to a TMT Team in IBD mention things that highlight your tech knowledge. Can you build apps and websites? Which web building languages do you use? Although you won't be doing any of this stuff it shows you are plugged in to the psyche of the tech world. If you are applying to a Healthcare team that tech knowledge is going to look misplaced so you'd include less of it. 7. Lacking relevant work experience? Focus on your skills. Even if you have never worked before, whatever life experiences you have, there will be some transferable skills. Organisational skills developed as result of being the eldest of five children? Experience dealing with difficult situations as a result of being the Head of House at school? Mental perseverance developed from being a top athlete or musician at school and having to train for crazy hours when most of your friends were chilling and having a laugh. 8. Don't hide anything Make sure to have dates clearly displayed so it doesn't seem as though you're hiding career gaps. 9. Don't lie or exaggerate achievements Investment banks do background checks on all CVs, especially if you are an experienced hire so they will find out anything that is not true. 10. Get a second opinion Even if you cannot afford professional help a friend will be able to point out typos that you might have missed and other irrelevant detail. Try to ask a friend that has some experience with looking for jobs as they'll know a little more about what employers are looking for. If you can afford it, getting an independent investment banking coach/mentor will help to place you ahead of the competition. Here is an example of a good resume / CV, it's the actual CV I used to move from IBD to Derivative Sales without any changes. It's not 100% perfect but I purposefully haven't changed it because I wanted to use a real CV that got a real job. by Girl Banker Listen to the iTunes podcast instead. Connecting with people and building your list of contacts is absolutely key to getting and staying in the investment banking industry. Here are five more tips following part 1 on Networking Yourself into an Investment Bank. 6. Catch up with your peers, especially any economics students, on how they are going about hunting for a job.
7. Always send a follow up email to new contacts: A ‘thank you’ or ‘great to meet you’ email always goes down well. In addition, you can elaborate on a discussion you had or perhaps remind them to send you something that they said they would or vice versa. 8. Join LinkedIn. You can use this as a tool to connect with any new contacts you have made.
9. Find a mentor or a coach. A coach will give you constructive feedback on the quality of your answers to interview questions, your body language, the tone of your voice and importantly how you can improve. Every top performer in sport or industry has a mentor coaching them to success. You can receive one-on-one coaching from Girl Banker®. 10. Finally, ask intelligent questions! As part of SEO, I had exposure to many high-ranking bank officials at networking events and I made it a point to ask something smart, so much so that my peers began to recognize me as the girl who likes asking questions. At the end of the experience SEO awarded me recognition as ‘The Most Insistent Person.’ Don’t ask me what that means! by Girl Banker Above all else, building a cache of contacts helps your career in direct and indirect ways. Five pointers on networking: 1. Attend networking events and aim to leave with about two business cards. Don’t stretch yourself thin by trying to meet with everyone; it’s much more useful to have a proper conversation with two people than ten superficial conversations. The two people you connect with are more likely to remember you later on. 2. Look engaged when you're talking to people Maintain eye contact, don’t keep on looking away and don’t check your phone – not even once. 3. Go to local recruitment events. If you manage to find out the names of any speakers in advance, do some research on them so that you can ask very specific questions, based on the speaker’s own experience of the industry.
4. If you don’t have business cards, get some made, even if you are still in university. I did this and found them handy in creating an impression. Let’s face it, it’s very unlikely that the investment bankers that you give your card to will actually call you. However, you will look like a real keeno if you have cards when most of your peers do not. Vistaprint produces good quality affordable cards. 5. Join any professional organizations or societies related to investment banking. You will probably find some in your local careers magazines or on careers websites.
You might also be interested in: networking part 2. |
Girl Banker®I created my investment banking blog in 2012 as soon as I resigned from i-banking & published my book, To Become An Investment Banker.
Initially published at girlbanker.com, all posts were later subsumed into my personal website under katsonga.com/GirlBanker. With 7 years of front office i-banking experience from Goldman Sachs and HSBC, in both classic IBD (corporate finance) and Derivatives (DCM / FICC), the aim of GirlBanker.com was to make it as straight-forward as possible to get into a top tier investment bank. I'm also a CFA survivor having passed all three levels on the first attempt within 18 months - the shortest time possible. Categories
All
Archives
August 2017
|