Massive increases in the number of interns at Nomura and RBS
Students about to undertake an investment summer internship this year can thank their lucky stars they weren't part of 2009's greatly diminished intake - numbers have increased significantly in 2010 and banks are more optimistic of upping full-time conversion rates.
First off a caveat - intern intakes haven't swelled across the board, but those banks which only recruited modest numbers in 2009 have regained their appetite to hire.
Dramatic increases come from RBS, which has more than doubled intern numbers in its global markets division in the UK and Europe, from 115 in 2009 to 261 this year. Then there's Nomura, which hired 70 interns in 2009, and has upped this figure to 140 for its investment banking and global markets divisions.
Citigroup has also recruited 200 summer interns for its EMEA analyst programme, which is a 60% increase on 2009.
Meanwhile, the likes of JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital, which kept intern numbers high last year, have largely remained unchanged. Credit Suisse says it took on 150-250 interns last year and has hired in the region of 250 in 2010.
Goldman Sachs wouldn't provide firm figures for its summer intern intake, but Sarah Harper, head of recruiting for EMEA at the bank said it had seen a "significant increase" in class sizes for 2010.
"Our intern class size tends to be in line with what we expect the fulltime class size to be the following year, so interns this summer should feel confident about securing a 2010 fulltime position if they do well over the summer," she says.
The chances of securing a full-time position tend to vary from bank to bank. For example, JP Morgan says that approximately 80% of its full-time positions are filled by interns, whereas Citigroup offered 60% of interns a place on its graduate scheme in 2009, and 53% of all grad programme roles were filled by interns.
"Our average conversion rate for offers of places on our graduate programmes to last year's summer interns was around 80%," adds Karen Martin, group graduate recruitment manager at RBS. "Although we've increased numbers and received higher than last years application volumes, we've continued to keep to our standards. I'd therefore expect at least similar conversion rates for this year's summer interns cohort"
