Featured Article

According to the interns, rumors about long hours in Investment Banking tend to be true. Sometimes they did not go home; one had only the 4th of July off during the whole month; and there was more than one who survived an occasional 90 hour work week. Nevertheless, interns report that their long hours were well worth the experience.

The rewards included working with very smart people, enjoying a great variety in their work, schmoozing with CEOs of other companies and talking about projects with Managing Directors of their firms. Utilizing their strong detail and multi-tasking skills, they did research, created "pitch" books, had a lot of client interaction, did financial modeling, took part in conference calls, did due diligence, and were involved with live deals where huge sums of money were at stake. Most of all they felt like they were adding value to their firms.

Two got their jobs through Summer On-Campus Recruiting, another from networking with an alumni, who had been in the same Cal Business Club that he is in now, and the last through application to the SEO (Sponsors for Educational Opportunity) minority based program (212-532-2454). This program has a February 15 deadline each year. They will take international students and some sophomores.

They had a wealth of advice for obtaining finance internships: "Start early." "Use every resource and method of job-hunting that is available." "Always be honing your resume from suggestions you receive." "Don't get discouraged!" In one case, the student dropped 25 resumes, and got 4 interviews and 1 job offer.

Job-hunting and especially interviewing is about relationship building. Companies want to know that you are "comfortable with yourself." An interview is not a race to spew out as much information about yourself as possible in hopes that something will stick. Try and relax when you are interviewing, As one former intern said, "Interviewers appreciate students that are not all stressed out and display the confidence to be themselves."

Do your homework, know yourself and be able to talk about what you have done in an interesting way. If you are asked a finance or technical question that you don't know the answer to, admit it. One intern emailed back to the interviewer the answer to a question he had been asked but didn't know. This kind of behavior can demonstrate that you're eager to learn, respond positively to challenges, and will take the initiative to do what's necessary to get the job done.

Keep your energy up. One student had a one and a half-hour telephone interview full of technical questions. He was "grilled" by an associate and an analyst. Afterwards he felt like he had been through a final exam, but he got the job.

Another student who had worked for the Export/Import Bank of the United States in Washington DC had worked at the White House the previous summer through Cal in the Capital. This, she said, gave her an edge when interviewing as she indicated that she had government experience and knew what internships in DC were about. She saw the job listed on CalJobs and applied from Spain where she was doing a Semester Abroad. This resulted in 3 telephone interviews at 2:00am. She got both behavioral and case questions and about the latter she said, "You don't have to be a business major for case questions - they just want to know how you think." She thought she also had an edge because she had lived in a different country and had taken the initiative to learn another language.

She thought that the most important things to do in an internship search were "to follow-through on everything, to keep in touch with the employer and to show lots of enthusiasm for the opportunity." An employee of Goldman Sachs said they had been on campus 12 times last year and about the third time they spoke to the same student they started paying attention.