No internship junior year but have prior/other experience

Ok, I go to a top public school as a finance major with a 3.57/4.0 GPA (enrolled in a finance/accounting honor society).

- I did an internship with a small online comany summer after freshman year (got to see ins-and-outs of how a business operates, solid experience)
-Plus I did a co-op with johnson&johnson my sophomore year.
-Lastly, next semester(fall senior year) I will be in an investment fund program at school where a group of 10-13 of us invest 250k of the school's money (heavy focus on equity research and pitching/presenting stocks to each other)...however as of right now I do not have any internships in my field lined up for the summer.

I am not done with my search yet (waiting to see if I hear back for an equity research position I applied to a few days ago), but if I do not do an internship and work a regular job (probably with my uncle's business), how much effect will that have on my job search next year senior year? The key here is that although I do not have an internship for the summer, I have prior and upcoming experience that will make me marketable to employers. Im just a little paranoid b/c there's always a lot of hype around the junior year internship.

p.s- any advice for the internship hunt?
Thank you!

 
Best Response

Getting an internship is incredibly crucial, especially junior year. I know someone who decided to take summer after sophomore year off and it heavily impacted his chances at getting an IBD and AM internship, despite have very good grades and solid other experiences. He didn't receive interviews at many firms comparable students were getting interviewed at and in the interviews he did receive, he was often asked why he had nothing on his resume for the previous summer. Your junior year internship will be much more important than anything sophomore year, so this will probably be even worse for you. While I'm sure people survive w/o internships it would be severely damaging to your chances at getting solid FT offers.

The important thing is to just do something/anything this summer so that there's not a gap in your resume. It is probably going to suck, but if you network your ass of and cold-call firms you can still find something. At this point I don't think it really matters what you do as long as its finance related. I would first start with alumni from your school at any AM, HF, ER, or even PWM firms. Boutiques are much more likely to be receptive. Even if its unpaid and just a couple weeks long you just need to get something. One or two 2-4 week externships at boutique firms would be infinitely better than what you've got going right now. I'm sure there are boutiques that are still willing to take on interns, you just need to find/contact. If you work incredibly hard (i.e. spend the majority of your day calling/emailing dozens of firms) you can still put something together. Best of luck.

 

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