Finance Internship Benefits when getting a full-time offer?

akybaky
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:56:30 +0000

So I was actually in this same dilemma last year. I had an offer from JPM IT and Microsoft. At the time it was a no brainer for me, it didn’t make sense for me to do IT at JPM as opposed to tech for a tech company so i chose microsoft hands down. Another reason was because I was convinced that it was impossible for you to move from IT to front office. I was completely false. My interest was in finance and so I hated soft dev from the start. If i could do it again I would choose IT, if only for the reason that your exposed to the world of finance and you gain an understanding of how certain things work, like the trading software. you are so well versed in that area that you can make that switch to front office because you understand whats going on. Being from MIT I know a lot of guys that started in IT but are now in front office positions in IBD, Sales, or traders.

That said unless this is your junior year internship it may be worthwhile just to explore the other option. I did and if nothing else I realized what I didn’t want to be doing, and this summer I’m actually going back to work at JPM as a Banker. So I mean if your interest lies in finance i would suggest IT, if they don’t then it may be worthwhile to delve into software dev, if you have another chance to come back to finance.

And i just read your second post, one of the things that helped me out in the interview process was Microsoft on my resume. I was interviewed by 5 people (at a superday) and all mentioned the fact that it was pretty impressive.