Internships for first year Economics student at banks or consulting firms: tips?

[LobeliaBaggins]

Not sure where to ask this, but asking it here. We are foreigners in the UK and unfamiliar with the system, so please forgive any stupid questions. DS is a first year student at one of the top 5 unis in the country for Economics ( a so called magnet uni for banking and finance). He has good grades. He has been looking for summer internships at banks and consulting firms, and done a bunch of interviews, and not been able to get one. TBH he has little work experience because of the pandemic.

Are these internships hard to come by for first years, and is it more usual to apply in the second year? Any tips greatly appreciated. It is all very different in our home country.

Bank of England do a first year one, but a lot of them tend to be for 2nd and 3rd years.

www.bankofengland.co.uk/careers/early-careers/our-programmes

It is possible but be prepared to make several applications. DS did a consultancy internship after A Levels (pre pandemic) and two summer banking internships in his first year (both were online due to the pandemic). Last year (in his second year) he targeted half a dozen super competitive summer internships and secured a place on one of these. Good luck to your DS with his ongoing applications.

Thank you both. I guess he needs to be more persistent and keep applying. I generally stay out of his business but I thought I would ask in case we have missed anything. I just remembered Student Room might be a good place to ask too.

Far more for second years I think. Cast the net widely and apply for loads. Don’t just target big names. Something is better than nothing.

Thanks @TizerorFizz. DS has just got a bite from a small financial services company. He is likely to go for them. Totally agree something better than nothing, and he may learn more from them than a big company.

@LobeliaBaggins
That was always my view. My DD1 volunteered with the NT. Learnt a great deal. It was not connected to her future work but it was valuable. She built up the cv a bit later with directly relevant experience.

Aim to get on a Spring week in first year. These are typically now needed to get onto a full summer internship in 2nd year

DS didn't have the opportunity for a 'spring week' in year one of uni due to the pandemic - he was in year one from 2019/2020.

He did secure a summer internship with one of the Big 4 Consultancies for the summer hols of his second year and they offered him a permanent position once he gradudated. It can be a good way to secure a permanent position, and left him free to concentrate on his studies in Year3.

Good luck to your son. Some of it is definitely a numbers game - you only need one place to say 'yes'!

For context, DS has an economics degree. Not sure it would count as a 'Top 5 uni', I presume Oxbridge, Warwick and LSE are included here? Not sure where else!

blametheparents I would assume UCL, which offers a similar quantitative economics degree.

OP, landing an internship is tough. There are far fewer at the end of the first year, and the competition is fierce. There will be a lot of help available from the careers office, and also from his peers, many of whom will also be applying. (DS seemed to get a lot of information from students in the year above, who had already gone through various application processes.) Simply applying and hopefully being interviewed, even if he gets nothing, will help him for the next year. He could also think a bit outside the box. Are there any internships in bank back office operations outside London, any chance of picking up a temp admin job in the City via a recruitment agency, something related say in the public sector? In his first year DS was kindly given a free place at a summer school run by one of his lecturers, in his second he got an internship in a related bit of the public sector (though by then he was already lukewarm about banking as a career) and in his third year he worked as a research assistant for one of his professors (he was staying on for a Masters). He was effectively runner up, both in his second and third years, for internships he really wanted. Sometimes things don’t break your way.

It is worth attending as many University networking events as possible, and anything else offered. (DS got paid to be a Guinea pig by an accountancy firm designing their own recruitment process.) And look out for the 2 week spring schemes. One of DS’ friends did one with Goldman Sachs which led to the offer of a really well paid summer internship. Unfortunately two weeks with Goldmans put her completely off the idea of banking as a career!

Good luck!

It's so competitive, he needs to hang in there - I went to Oxford, and several of my friends sent 100s of applications for both internships and graduate programs. Which country are you from? Could your ds get workexperience in your homecountry? Otherwise, almost everything is worth applying to and doing, i.e. not only the Big4 or American investment banks, but also building societies like Nationwide, public sector, university departments. I don't know which university your ds is at, but Oxford had it's own jobcenter with temp jobs locally and within the university. It's probably better to have something practical on your CV as a first year than nothing, even if it is for admin or retail work, and helps with finding more relevant experience later. My dh applied to McKinsey after graduating, and they sent him away to gather some more work experience, so he co-founded a start-up and ran this for a year or two, before joining McKinsey. So it really doesn't matter how big/well known the business is where you get your experience. A small start up might get you exposed to more aspects of business than a large bank, and they might well be desperate for anyone to work for them for free.