<p>Hey, I have a potential internship opportunity at an asset management firm that does fundamental/core/value analysis mixed with socially responsible investing. The firm is really small, so I might do a lot of operations tasks as well. Through your experiences, do you think this would be a valuable experience? The trade-off would be, for example, time spent on healthcare modeling research.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I posted this on the mba forums, but nobody seemed to reply, and it's kind of urgent.</p>
<p>seems interesting but what do you want to do more? the internship or healthcare?</p>
<p>I really want to delve deeper into investing, but a potential problem is that the firm is very small, so I might need to do a lot of basic work (operations stuff and basic research), and not a lot of challenging/educational stuff. I was wondering if you have any experience in how these internships usually turn out.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply.</p>
<p>I'm guessing there would also be an upside to the size of the firm, mainly that you'll actually get to know people and networking is always key in the industry.</p>
<p>from my experience, working at smaller firms makes you more knowledgeable just because of the one on one orientation and the guys are usually friendly in helping you out.</p>
<p>when working at a larger firm, i notice these guys are busy doing whatever and make you do the grunt work.</p>
<p>The problem with smaller companies is the lack of training or formalized training program. However, the good thing about smaller companies is that you get to do a wide variety of tasks and have more opportunities to make an impact.</p>
<p>I know many people who have done next to nothing (ie fill the coffee machine) for their entire internships. Often, big companies will hire people just to fill quotas with no idea what these people will be assigned to do. </p>
<p>In my first "real" job, I started with 21 other recent college grads. Some of these new hires hit the ground running and made a contribution on day 1. However, some didn't do anything of substance for an entire year (not because they didn't want to). Hell, I was hired to do java development and I didn't even look at java code until my 3rd year. </p>
<p>If HR at a large company asks a manager if they want an extra body (intern, new hire) do you think the manager will say no? Of course not. Even if he does have an idea of how he will utilize you, it's quite likely that priorities will change and there will be no need for you by the time you are actually on the job.</p>
<p>Anyways, you are putting too much emphasis on what you will learn. I do realize that learning is important and it will certainly make you feel better to have accomplished something. However, the main value of internships are: </p>
<ol>
<li>Potential full time offer upon graduation</li>
<li>Experience on your resume.</li>
</ol>
<p>Regarding #2, this is quite important, but keep in mind that your 3 month internship will be condensed into a couple of bullet points. Even if you didn't learn anything during that time it is quite likely that you can spin your experience in a positive way.</p>
<p>vectorwega made the best point possible.</p>
<p>point of an internship is to put it on your resume and hopefully lead to full-time.</p>
<p>notes i wanted to add: most internship i've been to even at large institutions do not provide training. big companies are good because it looks good on your resume, but through my experience i like working in small settings because interaction is greater.</p>
<p>I'm currently a freshmen, so full-time offers are not a concern. I've heard some people say that it'd be good to do something non-finance freshman summer, since it's a good possibility that I would be in finance for the next couple of years--however, I was wondering if it would give me a slight advantage next year to have done something in e.g. asset management this summer. Is this advantage significant?
Thanks for the replies above!</p>
<p>at this early stage, most people expect you to know nothing. </p>
<p>so if you can find a internship that is non business related but you can gain valuable experience then go for it.</p>
<p>people like to look for leadership, teamwork, interpersonal skills, communication, analysis, etc.</p>
<p>so if interning with greenpeace offers those capabilities, its better than working at merrill lynch making coffee and photocopying work.</p>