Lazard interns' gentle time illustrates alleged issue converting summer internships
It's not clear whether Anna McFadzean, a London School of Economics student and summer intern at Lazard, has converted her 2024 internship into a full-time job offer. Nor is it clear whether Arshiya, an intern in the FIG team, has. However, Lazard has featured them both in the day in the life video below. It illustrates why summer internships in investment banking jobs aren't always the reliable routes to first jobs that they used to be.
McFadzean spent the summer in Lazard's M&A team, a location known for its long working hours. Wall Street Oasis puts average working hours at Lazard at 85 per week.
Despite this, and despite being staffed on what she says are two deals, McFadzean's time as an intern seems pretty leisurely. There's time for a morning walk. And in the afternoon/early evening, the Lazard male interns meet up for a five-a-side football match.
Admittedly, it's not clear whether work continues into the evening, but the undemanding schedule is anecdotally not atypical. Banks have reportedly been careful not to work interns more than 12 hours a day after an associate died at Bank of America in May.
Omar Sadraoui, a former Deutsche Bank associate who now runs Invest & You, a company that helps young people get into banking, says banks' unwillingness to put summer interns under strain is problematic and means that they tend to hire a different sort of intern instead - off-cycle interns who can be made to work harder.
"Summers are protected and off-cycle interns are not," says Sadraoui. "Because of that, summer interns can't be trusted to do real work, and it goes to the off-cycle interns instead," he says. As a result, he says a much higher proportion of off-cycle interns are converted.
Lazard declined to comment.
Unfortunately, off-cycle internships are even more competitive to get into than summer internships. At French bank BNP Paribas, the off-cycle acceptance rate is just 0.2%.
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