Advice For Investment Banking Interns

Interns are way too junior to be entrusted doing serious stuff, especially in this day and age.

Here's the latest from our Highly Placed Profesional:

I was salivating over the prospect of some witty intern banter from the hapless 'Paul', who spent some time with Barclays on Wall Street this summer. What a massive let down it was!

What does emerge from it, though, is just what ridiculous lengths you still have to go to in order to land a $150,000 Wall Street-entry job. But keeping these kids hanging around on an Excel sheet till 10pm or later at night seems utterly pointless. And the thing is, it's probably more down to people forgetting the interns are still there, than any real work related exercise; interns are way too junior to be entrusted with serious stuff, especially in this day and age.

At my firm, we encourage interns to come for a week and gain some proper work experience, and they are treated with respect and generally have a decent and valuable time. They rotate between desks, spend some time in Risk Management, Credit Control, Legal, Debt Capital Markets, Research and Settlements.

Do they get sent to get the coffees ? Sure, once in a while. But all too often today's brighter interns are only too happy to offer before being asked. Treat young people like third class scum (as used to be the case almost everywhere), and they'll probably give you the finger and look for something else to do. And you can hardly blame them.

Now I'd be the first to agree that if you're having a bad day, missing trades and losing money, and some pimply clueless twit is drooling over your shoulder, it can cause you to reach for the AK47 and go postal. Mercifully, in our shop, this rarely happens.

But let's go back to the New York-based Barclays intern who seems to be gearing up for the world of investment banking. Well, here's my view for what it's worth - don't join an investment bank unless you are purely motivated by money, and are happy getting pigeon-holed into a narrow sphere of operations.

Unless you become a rainmaker - arranging huge deals and talking to large corporations, most of the time you will be stuck performing somewhat one dimensional tasks. And given that what you earn often seems to rely on how dodgy your business area is, there's also the somewhat uncomfortable question of dealing with your conscience at the end of each day. I realise that that's the system we have, but I wouldn't recommend any intern to follow this path.

My advice ? Get a proper job and join the real world!