Freshman Year
A suitable internship should relate to your future development, career plans, and application direction, ideally with a progressive and complementary relationship.
Most students can only intern during summer and winter breaks, and freshmen generally have little chance to enter good companies. My advice here is to start thinking about and planning your career direction from freshman year. There are many career paths in business—look online or check where previous graduates have gone.
Business majors include economics, finance, human resources, business management, marketing, accounting, financial management, supply chain, and more. If you plan to apply in finance and your career direction is also finance, such as more specific areas like funds, investment banking, or securities, then your internships should ideally be directly at fund, investment banking, or securities companies.
During freshman year, it's best to understand what job positions exist in each path, what the work content and nature are, what representative companies are in the industry, and what the industry status and future development look like. These are all questions you need to research and understand in your spare time.
At the same time, start building awareness to enrich your resume. Specifically, from freshman year, you should be preparing for what's ahead four years later. Start setting up a resume framework; with a framework, or rather a blank slate, you'll have a plan for your college life and know which areas to work on and accumulate.
One thing to mention here is that during freshman year, besides accumulating knowledge and practical skills, you can also build alumni connections. Pay more attention to alumni lectures held by your school, or even activities like the xx-grade alumni reunion. Attending lectures or volunteering at events are good ways to get closer to alumni. Generally, alumni from your own school are quite friendly.
If during your interactions, alumni see your early awareness and planning compared to your peers, as well as your enthusiasm and interpersonal skills, they could become a very important resource for you to secure your first internship in sophomore year.
Sophomore Year
By sophomore year, it's best to have a field you want to try out. With over a year of accumulation, including knowledge and the practical skills developed in student organizations, you can boldly apply for internship positions.
At this time, make full use of all available resources, whether alumni or your family’s social network. If opportunities arise, try them out.
If you're majoring in investment or international finance, the ideal career directions might be, in order of priority: investment banking, funds, securities, consulting; then financial departments of large enterprises, Big Four accounting firms; and then other types of companies.
In the early years, business students should pay close attention to applications at the Big Four accounting firms—they're excellent springboards into top companies.
The Big Four are not only globally renowned but also have a broad business scope. Although primarily focused on accounting and auditing, they have many lines of positions. Moreover, the Big Four are very friendly to lower-year students, even designing training programs specifically for sophomores and juniors.
If you can't find a better internship in one focused area, you can consider related companies based on career bandwidth. For example, if no suitable opportunities in securities funds are available, you can fall back on consulting firms, fund companies, or investment banks. Because their business relevance is high and skill requirements are similar. Such experience is quite convincing for both study-abroad applications and job searches.
Junior and Senior Year
In junior year, you can intern at different companies within a specific field. For instance, if you choose the consulting industry, you can take several part-time project assistant internships at tier 1-tier 2 firms.
At this stage, brand reputation is highly valued. If you're applying for securities investment in finance, your internships should preferably be in well-known companies in the securities investment field to be more competitive. If you're applying for management, internships at consulting firms are best, and MBB is undoubtedly highly reputed.
Tips
1. Early planning is very important
With early planning, you start one step ahead of others. Even if you're a slow bird, you can surpass others through continuous learning and accumulation.
2. Job roles should be specific, focus on learning practical hands-on methods
Taking finance internships as an example, if you choose to intern at funds, securities, or investment banks, and more specifically, if your future career direction is funds, then the internship position is best as an investment analyst assistant or investment manager assistant.
Because the core of fund work involves analyzing and forecasting market trends, discovering and evaluating high-quality projects, negotiation and due diligence, post-investment project management, as well as fund raising, investor relations management, fund management, and legal matters, etc. Internship tasks can be basic, but they must be the practical skills required in fund work. Although some errand-running is sometimes unavoidable, it can't be all errands. Menial experience sounds just as good but is useless. It can fool people, but when it comes to interviews, it easily shows.
3. Quality over quantity in internships
Each internship period should preferably not be shorter than three months, with three months to half a year being optimal. Although only some schools and programs require interviews, the application essays for study abroad need to be written professionally, with depth and substance, and genuine practical experience is necessary. Students who haven't truly practiced easily copy others' hyped experiences and inspirational stories, producing templated, formulaic essays.
Three Key Points for Resume Writing
Goal-Oriented
Writing a resume is not to show how amazing you are, but to make the interviewer feel you are competent for the position. Specifically, you need to understand what qualities and abilities the position you're applying for requires and reflect them in your resume. Therefore, sort through your past experiences, write a summary for each, and add several tags.
For example, a business competition experience can be tagged as analytical ability when applying for consulting; it can be teamwork and leadership when applying for FMCG; and when applying for a sales position, it can be communication skills. Different tags correspond to different stories and descriptions; which one to use depends on the relevant industry and position. In short, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Tell Stories with Data
Use numbers, not adjectives. Compared to "successfully held the campus Top Ten Singers event, receiving enthusiastic participation from students," "led 12 members of the Arts Department to organize the campus Top Ten Singers competition, which lasted 2 months over 3 rounds, attracting 300 registrants and over 10,000 spectators overall" is more attractive.
Revise Repeatedly
Meticulously polish the content, grammar, format, layout, and even punctuation. Show it to different people for different revision suggestions. Show it to someone who doesn't know you and ask for their first impression. Such revisions will increasingly result in a more appealing resume.
Format and Layout
They can directly affect the first impression HR has of your attitude.
Resume Submission
It is very important to read carefully and strictly follow the company's required submission method. When sending an email, don't just attach the file with nothing else. Here, it is recommended to pick out in the email body a few points from your experience that best match the position's requirements, and express some enthusiasm for the company, as well as your ability and commitment to ensure the internship duration, etc.
Embellishing Internship Experience in Applications
If the program highly values quantitative skills: in application essays, emphasize how much data you processed in your internship and what data processing software you can use.
If the program favors leadership & cooperation: then write more about the group tasks you've done, what you did, what role you played, and how you handled teamwork.
Connecting internship experiences in personal statements and essays: mainly use phrases like "in this internship, I realized my shortcomings / developed an interest in xxx, so I..." to provide transitions and demonstrate step-by-step planning. Find the alignment between internships and applications: "my abilities and qualities are what the program wants in a qualified student," and "the program will help me achieve my career goals."
