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hey everyone my name is cameron and in today's video i'm going to go over some of the biggest takeaways that i've learned from applying to over 150 internships now as you can see from the title of this video i have applied to a lot of internships you can probably see the spreadsheet uh on the screen right now going through all of them i think the final tally was 179. now this certainly you know required a lot of time on my end to apply to all of these internships but now that i've kind of gone through the process i'm really excited to kind of talk to you about what i have learned i know there are some other videos on youtube that are pretty similar to this but a lot of the times they are made by either recruiters or people who maybe have gone through this process but their tips might just be a little bit dated just because they might have done it a couple of years ago i'm also going to try to make my takeaways be at least valuable to you i don't want to just have cookie cutter responses and say make sure you have a strong resume make sure you network things like that anyone with any intellect would be able to understand that so before we go into the first takeaway uh just a brief background about myself my name is cameron galbraith i am a junior finance major here at the university of florida and i really had a goal for the summer of 2021 of obtaining a strong valuable internship that will provide me a ton of technical financial skills that i can then use later on in any financial career that i might decide to go down i have had some internships in the past if you look at my other videos you might be able to see that so this is all just kind of a brief background about me so you kind of understand uh the situation i was in going into this whole process so now that you know a little bit more about me let's get into the first takeaway so i have a feeling that this first takeaway is going to be something that the majority people might not want to hear and that is that school matters now obviously i go to the university of florida which is by no means a bad school whatsoever but at the same time i do understand that it is not harvard it's not penn it's not stanford or even you know michigan when it comes to the business world and kind of the reputation that the business program might have your school is certainly not the be all and all by any means but at the end of the day it is important and it is a great way for you to get your foot in the door at the same time though if you do go to pen this doesn't mean that just going to pen is going to instantly give you the internship you'd still have to have strong things on your resume this also means that if you go to a school similar to let's say fgcu that doesn't mean you're completely out of the running for any internship if you have the right experience and you are the right fit the internship is certainly possible and obtainable so my goal is not to sound negative in any way i really just want to emphasize the importance of your school so if you are a student in high school and you're considering different colleges that you want to go to maybe one has a stronger business program than the other this is definitely something to take into consideration the biggest thing to know is that if you go to kind of a target school this is certainly an advantage it gives you a leg up over everybody else so the first takeaway was school matters but the second takeaway is that networking matters even more this was something that was made extremely clear to me through this process of applying to so many internships i was able to find that the internships that i really networked for and i was able to kind of use connections that i might have had or that i was able to foster those internships and those applications were able to go a lot further now this doesn't just mean you know family friends or things like that you this doesn't require you to have a strong family connections by any means it can be as simple as just having a really strong linkedin game i'll go deeper into linkedin in a later takeaway but it really is just important to reach out to people at a specific company whether it's their recruiter or maybe someone who is an analyst in a position that you are hoping to go into after graduation anything like that just getting your foot in the door and just knowing someone who works at the company is just a huge step up and a huge advantage when applying for that internship now on a lot of applications they might ask if you know anyone at the company if this isn't an option on the application a lot of internships um ask for a cover letter and that is a great opportunity to kind of plug who you might know at the company and how you know them and that's just a great way to kind of help you out a little bit further into kind of getting deeper into the application process just speaking of my own personal experience my step brother knows someone who works for citibank and so he was able to put in a good work for me and i was able to get to the final round um super day of citibank which as you know is one of the largest banks in the us and the internship program was um very prestigious savvy i did not get that internship um which i'll kind of talk about later on but that's just really an example of how networking and knowing people and just having them vouch for you can really get you very far in the final round i was up against people from all different ivy league schools all the other top uh you know public universities it was definitely a very competitive field and so i was able to see that network that i might have had really just did pay off um to kind of get me into that position it wasn't the only reason i was able to get there but it certainly did help this kind of goes into that first takeaway and you know the reason that the top target schools are what they are is because of their networking obviously a lot of people who maybe went to these schools then go on to work for those bigger companies the goldman sachs jp morgan things like that so over time you know the relationship has really formed and that is why the schools become the schools that they are uh and their reputation and are able to gain the reputation that they have within the business world so just a brief rundown of those first two takeaways number one school matters but at the same time networking matters even more so number three is to have a strong linkedin game now i'm sure if you've watched videos somewhat similar to this people have said something along the same lines but i really just want to emphasize just how important it is i'm always blown away by how many of my own peers don't have linkedins and they think that that's normal and that people on linkedin are just so far ahead of them that is not the truth and it's so easy to make a linkedin and it just goes a long way luckily here at the university of florida they really emphasize uh the importance of linkedin there is an introductory business course that all business majors need to take their freshman year and in that course they require you to make a linkedin and kind of build it up and really get you started on that whole journey i was lucky enough to have linkedin before that so i've really been building up my network for the last couple of years and that's really allowed me to have a very strong linkedin profile now anyone can tell you this but kind of the reason i decided to include it in this video is because uh for a specific amount of time i had the linkedin premium membership and with that membership you're able to see exactly who views your profile and i was able to see after i did a higher review interview or any other interviewer maybe someone was just reviewing my application i was able to see uh on linkedin exactly who from that company uh reviewed my linkedin profile and maybe took an action from there this might be kind of scary to think about at times just because you had no idea that maybe a managing director was taking a look at your linkedin profile but it's definitely kind of cool at the same time too so it's definitely important to kind of start your linkedin now if you don't have linkedin get going on it it's going to be so valuable moving forward but definitely kind of something that's pretty obvious but i just wanted to emphasize for this video number three have a strong linkedin profile now the fourth takeaway is something that i know may sound a little bit pessimistic but the takeaway is don't rely on others when you are applying to internships no matter how many that may be you are going to be talking to a lot of different people you may have initial phone calls with someone where it's not an official interview or you might have first-round interviews over the phone that are just brief 20-minute conversations regardless of what the exact interaction may be the person is going to tell you things and a lot of times it's easy to kind of take it as fact and believe everything that they say but it's important not to get too reliant on what they said and you know keep your options open again speaking from my own a personal experience a couple months ago i had an initial conversation with a recruiter from another large bank here in the u.s the conversation went extremely well i felt i was able to answer each of their questions to the best of my abilities and you know i was very satisfied with my answers and clearly the recruiter was as well because at the end of the conversation she expressed to me that she felt that i was a great fit for the company both culturally and kind of as far as my experience went she mentioned to me that the super day for that specific internship wouldn't be for another couple of weeks but she would of course keep me updated and send me the information whenever she could i left this interview feeling extremely thrilled this was a a large large bank and the city that it was based in was you know very exciting to me i of course was thrilled to kind of hear from her herself that she felt i was a good fit and i felt that for sure you know that meant that i would move on to that super day interview well as a matter of fact as the weeks went on i didn't hear anything from this recruiter i even reached out to her a couple of weeks later on down the line through email and did not receive a response and this is from the same person who said to me that she felt i was the perfect fit for this internship and that she herself would 100 percent vouch for me to be in that super day round this really just opened my eyes to kind of the idea that uh you know don't completely rely on anything that anyone says i understand that this may sound somewhat negative and to not be able to trust people and i think it really is important to be able to trust people but at the same time i think it's just important to always remember not to put all your eggs in one basket this is definitely something important to remember not just for applying internships but for all aspects of your life this experience certainly opened my eyes a bit more to you know you could say the heartbreak of the internship application process but at the same time i was able to learn from it and for that it was a valuable experience so now after going through four different takeaways let's get into the fifth and that is to get ready for those high review interviews now if you are similar to me and you are applying to any of the bulge bracket banks all of these banks are going to require you to take kind of an introductory first round interview through a software known as higher view if you are completely unfamiliar with higher view or modern view i know there's a lot of different names for different softwares they're all pretty much the same and it's just a way for the company to kind of automate a lot of the internship application process so instead of talking to someone uh in person or through a video cam one-on-one the first round usually includes pre-recorded questions that are you know spoken to you through a video usually from someone at the company and then you are required to record your response um through your camera on your phone or through your macbook um whatever it may be you record that response then you send it into them they try to simulate a real world interview experience just because a lot of the banks they only allow you to have one attempt which can be certainly nerve-wracking some of them allow for two but regardless it is certainly kind of a nerve-wracking experience especially if it's something that you haven't done before and especially considering the fact that they may only give you 30 seconds to 45 seconds to prepare for each question now i mentioned this on the list just because after applying to so many internships i have gone through my fair share of higher view interviews a lot of them do kind of ask you the same things just because they might be those introductory interviews where they really just want to learn a little bit more about you and see if you uh you know are capable and are somewhat intellectual up to a certain degree so because of this the the questions usually are somewhat behavioral they might ask you about some previous experience that you might have i really didn't have too many technical questions those usually come later on in the internship application process but you really just have to be able to explain your own experiences and explain them well but at the same time it's important to be able to explain them briefly which you might be able to tell from this video i'm not too good at doing it's definitely something i'm working on but overall it's just really important to kind of familiarize yourself with this i think kind of my experience on youtube really did help me as far as talking to a camera it's not as foreign of an idea to me but this is kind of take away number five let's be ready for those high review interviews um there's a lot of things you can do to prepare for them i'm sure there's just kind of you know practice questions out there if you haven't applied for internships yet and you're just you know extremely uh prepared you want to get ahead i'm sure there's a way to practice but at the same time you know just practice picking up your camera and recording kind of your your elevator pitch uh to your camera roll like i said before this is kind of that introductory interview so it's really important to be able to ace this so you can move on further into that internship application takeaway number six is to be focused now this is something that i probably didn't do a very good job of this is kind of how i was able to apply to so many internships and that was because i really wasn't too targeted as far as the internships that i was looking for i'm a finance major so i know i want to go into finance but if you know anything about finance you know there are so many different kind of realms of finance that one can go into now one of the most popular and kind of one of the most prestigious is investment banking so a lot of these investment banking internships are kind of a great example when that school does matter now for a lot of those large bangs they only allow you to apply for i'd say on average three internships per year so it's really important that you kind of decide exactly what you might have the best chance at going for i think this might have been a mistake i made for some of the internships just because of my experience and my school that doesn't really set me up to get that investment banking internship with goldman sachs but let me remind you the takeaway is to be focused so if you do want to go into investment banking stick to it apply to tons if not every investment banking internship you can apply for when you do this it really gives you a lot of experience into learning about kind of that industry you'll learn a lot through research on company research on the position and that just really helps you later on in the process because they're going to ask you so many questions about kind of your experience and why you want to work for this company or why you want this specific position so it really does help to be kind of focused and to be narrowed into a specific division just because then you're really able to taper your experie ces and your resume to that specific industry now for myself i really wasn't sure exactly which industry of finance i wanted to get into so i applied for pretty much everything up to a certain degree so because of this i ended up having interviews for all different industries within finance whether it's investment banking or corporate banking whatever it may be everything in between i had a lot of experience with this and i think it might have hurt me just because with each different uh industry that i might have been having an interview for that was another thing for me to research another thing for me to prepare for look at kind of the classic interview questions that might be asked on that so if i was a little bit more focused i would have just kind of a lot more experience in that specific thing and that would make me just a lot better during the interview process now i understand it might be hard and it might be early for you to kind of figure out what you're passionate about but the earlier you can do that and you kind of decide on that and really taper your experiences and your resume moving forward it certainly will pay as dividends so this is something that i definitely struggled with in this last recruitment process i just wasn't super focused i wasn't super tailored during my internship hunt so hopefully you can kind of learn from my mistakes and that is takeaway number six be focused now finally the last takeaway is to be persistent now i've heard a lot of people in the past kind of compare the internship hunt to the dating world simply because it really at the end of the day is a numbers game the more internships you apply for the better eventually one is going to work out for you this is definitely something that i learned just because i applied to so many internships it really was kind of you know very rewarding to see the hard work pay off and move forward in certain applications and you know get offers from others it is definitely a rewarding task and it's something that's not possible if you don't put in the time the effort and you stay consistent and persistent a lot of people make the mistake of only applying to five internships and then you know what happens when you don't move on in any of those and the deadlines have already passed this is certainly a position that you don't want to find yourself in and so that is why i applied to so many i really wanted to you know hedge my losses and to be available just to see kind of what the world would throw in me i really can't emphasize it enough but it really just is important to stay persistent i'll throw a picture on the screen of that famous image that we've all seen whether on instagram or in a classroom and that is just that you never know how close you are to kind of finding that gold mine or finding that diamond you know it doesn't matter how many internships you apply for it's not about how many internships you get rejected for it's about that one internship um that you do get this really is kind of the biggest takeaway from all of this and that is just to stay persistent don't ever give up if you really want something you know keep pushing keep working at it and eventually you will get it all of us are so lucky to live in a world where everything is available to us online if you if you really want something and you work hard at it it is certainly obtainable and don't let anyone tell you otherwise this is probably the biggest takeaway i've learned my entire life and that is just to stay persistent and kind of the internship process is certainly kind of a perfect testament to that i will talk a lot more about kind of how my internship experience went and kind of the results of it in a future video but i really just have to say um just that the persistence is really what pays off and is where it gets you to go places that you want to go so with all this being said and with all of my rambling these were the seven biggest takeaways that i learned from applying to over 150 finance internships just going over them again very briefly number one school matters but number two networking matters even more number three is to make sure that you have a strong linkedin game and number four is a reminder not to rely too heavily on others the fifth is to get ready for those higher view interviews because whether you like it or not they are coming number six is to be focused and kind of to know exactly what industry you want to apply for and number seven finally be persistent i hope you guys enjoyed the video and i hope it isn't too long but at the same time even if it is i hope you found value in it and i hope you learned something i know i've been kind of m.i.a on youtube for the last couple of months trust me i've been grinding this is kind of a testament to that but i promise new videos are coming soon this is really just my goal to be able to help you guys and to help as many people as possible and to just share my experiences uh with you like always if you have any questions at all you can reach out to me on instagram this is my handle right here at galbraith or just drop a comment below i'll respond to anything and i really just want to help you guys out with all this being said i hope you guys enjoyed the video and i'll see you the next one you