Advice on Intern Hiring

June 18, 2024

by a searcher from University of Georgia in Denver, CO, USA

I'm curious if anyone has any insights on specific schools where you've had success in hiring interns. Here are the criteria I'm focusing on (none of these, however, are "deal-breakers").

Students who truly value the experience. My hunch is that those from non-target schools might try harder since real M&A experience is harder to get for them. I plan to offer them real experience and learning, but will also need them to do mundane tasks like data scraping, data entry (ex: Salesforce), LinkedIn outreach, etc.
Universities that provide access to premium M&A-specific tools like Cap IQ and Pitchbook.
Competency in Excel, PowerPoint, and basic financial acumen.
Schools that offer academic credits for internships.
Ideally, students who are willing to work for minimum wage.
- Strong inbound interest generated via their schools bulletin board / job-posting platform (i.e., a decent pool of candidates to select from).
- Excellent writing and editing skills.

I'm receptive to any and all recommendations or experiences the community is willing to share.

Reply by a searcher
in New York, NY, USA

I've had success posting on LinkedIn and Search funder with a clear job posting and a link to an application (I use a typeform application link), where they submit their application, and then we follow up with a more detailed assessment for the candidates whom we'd like to take further in the process. We then score the assessments, and invite the top-performing candidates to an interview. The candidates are typically undergraduates from a variety of backgrounds (target and non-target schools) who are looking for financial-related internship experience. Typically more so freshmen and sophomores, but we have juniors / seniors and master's students as well. The key is the thorough screening throughout the process (i.e., initial application, assessment task, and interview).

Reply by a searcher
from University of Mysore in Seattle, WA, USA

I hired 3 interns over the last 3-4 months and here's my top 3 takeaways.
1. The "school" you hire them from is less important than their inherent hunger to get work done. I have found terrific interns from 2nd and 3rd tier schools and poor interns from Ivy Leagues.
2. Having TIME to hand-hold and mentor them is key. My advice is NOT to hire interns if you dont have time to mentor and coach them almost daily / weekly. Giving instructions and having them "learn" on their own is a recipe for no work getting done.
3. Hire Juniors and Seniors not Freshman or Sophomores. They are more serious about the work since they need to get a job soon. Most interns will "wait" until you tell them specifically what needs to be done and spell it out for them.

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