GUEST COMMENT: How to game your internship

So you're lucky enough to be one of the few selected to do a summer internship at Bank X.....fantastic! The question is, are you really prepared for the challenge ahead? Make no mistake - your internship place is no ticket to a graduate job. It is simply a chance to give that full-time position your best shot by showing the powers that be exactly what you're made of!

Week 1 - 2 of any internship tends to centre around training, getting to know your peers (sizing up the competition!) and familiarising yourself with what will now be your home for the next 10 weeks. I mean this quite literally, because had I been able to bring my duvet and pillow and sleep a mere 3 hours a night during my internship, I would have been most happy.

After the initial uninspiring two weeks.....let the games begin!

Rotational internships

The 8 week multi-rotational internships are in one sense inspired - they allow you to gain exposure and touch on every aspect of the business to see where you best fit in. Unlike the single desk placement where you only have to impress those working closest to you on your allocated desk, rotational internships are a constant beauty parade: you need to impress each and every person you encounter.

HR will provide you with a rotation time table for approx 3 weeks. The trick here is to attend each rotation, be focussed and personal, ask questions and seem interested even if it isn't a product you like. The second you leave, your rotation host will be pinging off an email to the internship captains and HR providing feedback on you.

If your rotation is on a desk you are interested in, it is important to express that. Ideally, you need a project to work on (project simply means more time on the desk so they can see how suited you are).

The second trick is not to rely on these rotations alone.

In most cases, the rotation schedule dictates your whereabouts for only two hours a day. This leaves the rest of the day for you to work on projects. The clever interns are those who make the most of every possible life line, and effectively use this time to create their own rotations.

Speak with your buddy, your mentor any rotation host you get a connection with - tell them your interests and which desks you are interested in and get that all important introduction!

Be aware of your environment and seek those desks which are actually hiring - do not be fooled, if a desk were to find a willing spring chicken who works hard and is willing to take on mammoth projects they will take advantage of this fact, even if they have no headcount. Yes you may impress a few people, you may get good feedback, but you haven't secured yourself a contract.

The sad truth is that on both the multi-rotational programmes and the select desk internships, there are plenty of cases of interns working their butt off even though the desk isn't actually hiring.

Select desk internships

On the select desk rotations, the process is very simple. The desk either hires you, they reject you, or they put you into a pool where they effectively acknowledge that you are a good candidate but not for them, thereby opening you up to desks who do have a need for a hire.

The secret intern bidding auction

Why have I blabbered on with all this detail? Often interns have asked me how do the big IBs whittle down 70+ multi-rotational candidates to maybe 20-30 full-time places and the simple truth is because all the above culminates in one final bidding auction in the final week of your internships.

All of the Captains meet in a room with HR, Some will have headcount quotas and some will not. Those who don't are there simply to provide feedback and those who do have Intern Currency - effectively the power to bid on the intern they want and often each desk will have a reserve candidate also. OFF THEY GO!

Each intern's photograph pops up on a screen and the captains place their bids. You don't want to be the intern who receives silence when their photo appears! Desks which are seen to have 'a greater business need' have more Intern Currency and will over rule another desk who may also want you but not have as much need. It is important that you too have indicated your preferences to HR: when two desks are battling for the same intern, this can sometimes swing the vote.

Interns are usually horrified at the discovery of this auction process but I try to remind them that we work in an industry that runs on numbers, buy/sell the bid/offer, currency and commodities, somebody wins, somebody loses. It's the only thing we know and thus your job is to make yourselves that precious commodity or AAA rated bond then you've got all the traders right where you want them!

The author is a junior banker who has been through the internship process and knows it well...