Wall Street Internship Checklist: Summer 2024 Applications Are Opening Now
source link: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-investment-banking-internship-wall-street-summer-2022
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Where do I apply and when?
The application process varies from firm to firm, but undergrads serious about landing an internship next summer should start getting serious now.
"When you think about the recruiting timeline and the matriculation to full-time analyst program, that journey really starts two years earlier," Andrea O'Neal, a senior coach with Management Leadership for Tomorrow, an organization that helps prepare diverse students for finance industry careers, told Insider in an interview in 2021.
Indeed, applications for 2024 internships are already starting to open at places like JPMorgan, RBC , and SVB Securities. Pretty soon, recruiters will start visiting schools for coffee chats or meet-and-greets, and they will set up interviews for candidates they like.
Application deadlines vary. Students looking to work as a 2024 summer analyst at JPMorgan, for example, have until the end of October 2023 to finish applying for some jobs. But at RBC, the window for 2024 summer analyst applications closes in March. And regardless of the actual deadline, its smart to get a foot in the door as early as possible, experts say.
Of course, some banks have yet to launch their calls for applications. So interested students should regularly check the websites of firms that interest them. It's also smart to keep a running tally of the firms they have applied to, and where they still need to apply.
Advice from the pros on how to make an impression
Applying for the job is just stage one. You will also need to go through a series of interviews and meet-and-greets where you will want to wow your interviewers with your knowledge if finance — and of yourself.
Danielle Dodgen, head of US campus recruiting at Lazard, recently shared her pro tips for candidates. They include knowing exactly why you want the job, maintaining authenticity, and coming prepared to talk about industry news.
Insider has also spoken to high-powered executives from Barclays, RBC Capital Markets, and Lazard, on their advice for those looking to nail their interviews and stand out. They suggest demonstrating entreprenuerialism — and cold outreach.
Indeed, you can only wow your potential employers if you get an interview. And sometimes that means going beyond the basic application process.
Experts agree that cold outreach is an effective tool to secure a summer internship, and research backs that up. The National Association of Colleges and Employers in 2020 found that 70% of the more than 540 interns surveyed said they'd landed an internship through cold outreach.
But how do you break the ice and make cold outreach feel, well, not quite so cold? Insider asked a top venture capitalist who got her start as an intern at JPMorgan Chase — and used effective email networking with people she didn't already know to help her get the gig in the first place.
It took about 150 emails in all, according to Amy Cheetham, a partner at Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage investment firm based in Palo Alto, California. Along the way, she learned important lessons about how to get a foot in the door on Wall Street if you don't already have a Rolodex of industry contacts.
What does a Wall Street intern do anyway?
Once you successfully nail an internship offer and go from applicant to intern, what can you expect to do on the job?
In the summer of 2021, we asked an IB summer analyst at a leading large-cap bank to break down a week in their life. The intern created a detailed schedule featuring colorful nuggets like what their final project consisted of, the kind of feedback they received from managers, and how they enjoyed a late-night ice cream party with colleagues at the office until 2:30 a.m.
From socializing in Manhattan to working on live deals, here's what she said you can expect: including 75-hour work weeks, late night ice cream parties, and lots of takeout.
Not everyone loves it though. A different investment banking intern told us last summer that he turned down an offer for full-time work after finding himself chained to desk and afraid of being reemed out in front of his peers.
What is an investment-banking 'superday'?
As investment-banking interview rounds advance, candidates may be called into "superdays," which indicate that a search process is nearing its conclusion. Sometimes, banks even fly and pay for lodging for their top out-of-state to travel to New York or wherever the company is conducting its superdays, in order to meet those candidates in person.
Superdays are competitive, rapid-fire sequences of interview rounds, which are typically conducted by senior bankers such as managing directors and vice presidents. They're intense, and candidates should expect worldwide experiences meeting — and trying to impress — multiple company leaders in a relatively short period of time.
Insider obtained two lists of questions developed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which can help you think through your interview prep strategy.
Getting inside Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs is one of the most prestigous Wall Street banks, regularly topping the charts when it comes to M&A and IPOs. As mentioned in the intro to this story, it's also a highly sought after employer.
Recently, Insider snagged two slideshows the firm's campus recruiting reps presented to finance students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, one of Wall Street's most trusted repositories from which to source talent.
The leaked slideshows — nearly 30 pages in all — are bursting with information about the firm's investment-banking and asset-management summer analyst programs. Use them to study up on how Goldman operates before tossing your hat into the ring.
What is an 'exit opportunity'?
The journey from investment banking to private equity is a well-worn path, and so-called "exit opportunities" — that is, where juniors bankers can conceivably go to work into after moving on from banking — fuels much intrigue and even jealousy among the intern and analyst sets.
Working for private equity remains the holy grail for most junior bankers, according to Odyssey Search Partners' 2022 survey of over 2,500 junior bankers. (Venture capital came in second with hedge funds pulling the rear.) And it's just one reason so many college students now aspire to work for boutique banks over bulge bracket banks.
Exit opps are such an important consideration that PJT Partners, one of Wall Street's most prestigious elite boutique banks, tabulated all the exit opps of 70 of its junior bankers from 2012 to 2020, in an effort to flex the bank's top employment outcomes to internship hopefuls.
PJT presented this information in a slide at a recent Wharton undergrad presentation, which Insider then obtained. The boutique bank says its former junior staffers go on to work for a bevy of blockbuster buy-side heavyweights, like Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR, to name a few.
Is it better to work for a boutique bank or a bulge bracket?
Snagging an internship usually leads to a full-time offer to work after graduation. But is that what you even want? What's it like to work on Wall Street?
The answers depends largely on your individual team — and firm. Junior bankers fresh out of college usually start out with more menial tasks, like putting together PowerPoint presentations. But not always.
An annual survey of first-year investment banking analysts by recruiting firm Odyssey Search Partners reveals a lot about what junior bankers actually do and firms like Goldman Sachs and Lazard. The 2021 survey revealed that junior bankers who worked boutique banks reported getting more hands on experience than their bulge-bracket peers.
"The very best candidates, the very best seniors in college looking to enter investment banking will continue to have a preference for the boutiques because of the deal experience, responsibility, and, frankly, exit opportunities that they've seen from those that have joined those banks in prior years," said Keizner. "Even given the efforts of some of the bulge bracket banks to attract and retain people, I think that overall pattern will likely remain."
Assuming you still choose to work for the Goldman Sachs's of the world, here is a mock daily schedule recruiters of the powerhouse firm created for potential intern applicants. The schedule suggests entry-level bankers lives can run the gamut, from headline-grabbing deals to calls with titans of industry, dinner with friends in the city, and of course, a few unavoidable Excel spreadsheets.
How much money can I make?
Working on Wall Street can mean many different things — from trading stocks and bonds to managing risk to cobbling together multi-billion stock offerings. Pay will vary depending on what you do and how much money you make for the firm. That said, compensation on Wall Street tends to be well above the national average annual wage of $60,575.07. And that's before bonuses are paid.
Indeed, Wall Street has for decades been one of the most lucrative career paths available. And it's probably one of the only industries where you can rake in a six-figure salary your first year out of college.
Insider has been compiling information on how much bankers stand to make at all stages of the game, including when they first start out. We have learned that so-called "boutique" banks — smaller banks lesser known to industry outsiders — tend to pay more than so-called bulge bracket banks like Goldman Sachs and Citi.
To find out exactly how much analysts, associates, vice presidents, and more make at boutique firms, Insider pulled data about nine firms, including Moelis, Lazard, and Evercore. The results can be found here.
We also broke down pay across larger banks like Citi, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and more here. Total comp, or base pay plus bonus, can be found here.
Of course, this is not easy money by any means. In fact, don't be surprised if you find yourself getting paid the same hourly rate as a Starbucks manager.
What not to do in a virtual interview
During the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, students participating in virtual recruiting for investment-banking and hedge fund internships were often aided by a little trick up their sleeves: digital cheat sheets.
If you're participating in any virtual interviews this year, using this hack could be tempting — but students should think twice about trying it, because those who got caught were removed from Wall Street recruiters' lists last year.
As Lazard's head of campus recruiting recently explained in her interview with Insider: It's OK to get tripped up in the interview process. It's how you handle it that will determine whether you make it to the next round.
Don't pretend you know the answer — and definitely don't cheat.
Getting your foot in the door on the buy-side
General Atlantic managing director Alex Crisses has an intriguing thesis: Betting on the gut instincts of college kids could result in some of the $65 billion growth-equity investor's smartest plays.
Every summer, Crisses' team brings on about six to eight interns. They mainly focus on sourcing and pitching opportunities that would fall within one of the firm's five investment sectors: technology, consumer, financial services, life sciences, and healthcare.
Crisses, GA's head of new investment sourcing and co-head of emerging growth, walked us through the buy-side firm's highly competitive but growing summer internship program, which accepts about 2% of applicants.
Insider has also spoken to Grace Koo, head of talent acquisition at private-equity giant KKR, about how the firm is broadening out the schools it relies on to help it find future dealmakers for its internship program.
Inside General Atlantic's undergrad internship, where just 2% of applicants are selected to pitch new investments in cmopanies like Duolingo and Riskified
Disclosure: KKR is a large shareholder in Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider.
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