Thursday, May 22, 2008

Internship before MIF

So one of the things I've been heavily looking into in the last couple of months was arranging for an internship prior to MIF. Especially if you are coming from a non-finance career background, doing an internship has tremendous benefits for securing a job post-MBA.

I have seeked help from London Business School regarding this, but I guess their career services is swamped with helping current MIF and last year MBA students find a job and first year MBAs an internship during and after the milkrounds.

My advice to people who would like to do a MIF is seriously think about investment bank internships by the time you are applying to your schools. Most of the investment banks that offer internships set deadlines such as November or December, so it is really inconvenient for us 1-year program participants. I guess it works well for 2-year MBA students since you can get into the program, apply to a bunch of internships in the first 3 months and have your internship ready and waiting for you in summer.

In my case it required a lot of networking and some luck. Luck is always important. It seems like now I have a VC internship in the US and a hedge fund internship in the UK lined up. I also have a job offer at a start-up firm to be one of the founders of the company that provides algorithmic trading solutions.

I am at the verge of making a decision, and that would possibly determine the rest of my career, as it would be harder to do a VC internship and get a hedge fund job when I graduate or vice versa. Should I take on the hedge fund gig and lean myself towards trading side of finance, or take the VC internship and have a VC/PE/M&A side of things? I guess VC/PE would be more fun (human factor), whereas trading would be more analytical oriented (given my tech background this is not a bad thing at all).

Any opinions? Please leave a comment on my blog page, or send me a note at finantic[at]gmail.com

Finantic

1 comment:

Subhrajyoti Ghatak said...

Congratulations!!

It depends what you enjoy more, since both of them are most wanted careers.

Left to me I would have prefered VC, cause that seems more interesting and enjoyable ( there is an expiry date on how long one can do analytical work, and if you can jump the curve that is welcome).

All the best to you