Re: Switch industries after internship?
[#permalink]
16 Jun 2008, 22:50
I totally agree with what Lepium said. My friends who interviewed for consulting tell me that firms hire more second years than first years - which basically means that they plan to take people who did other things during their summer internships.
Most banks, on the other hand, say that they hope to hire most or all of their full-timers from their pool of summer associates. This means, of course, that there are few if any spots left for people who didn't do banking over the summer. This is especially true during a tough economy. This past year, few banks returned to campus for second years, and here at Darden it seems people had some limited success jumping to another firm after spending the summer in banking, but I don't know of any that joined the ranks after doing something else for the summer. When things are slow, firms are able to fill their needs from their summer class, and those who do get offers are more likely accept. With things are crappy as they are right not, I wouldn't be surprised if virtually zero (can't predict if there will be a crazy outlier) firms came back to hire full time associates next fall.
All that being said, spending your summer at a top MBA destination will give you the most flexibility. MBA recruiters are competing for the same pool of talent, so they will know which firms attracted the best candidates during internship recruiting, and thus are highly selective and have the best talent for poaching. Top firms in Fortune's survey of firms most popular with MBA students includes usual suspects like big 3 consulting firms, bulge bracket banks, Google, Apple, GE, P&G, Microsoft, etc.; and you can some highly selective destinations that were too small to make the survey (PE/VC/HF, especially if they are well known). Spending your summer at one of these places will give you the best chance at switching the following year. So if you can't decide between consulting, banking and general management, it might make sense just to take the internship that offers the best name recognition so you have more options come 2nd year.