Want a banking internship? Here's how diversity organizations could help
Finance is an old boys’ club - or it used to be, at least.
Banks are trying to change that reputation, but it’s still hard as hell to get into a bank internship - students in the UK sent dozens of applications on average, and a majority of applicants didn’t receive an offer at all.
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Given how competitive investment banking internship positions are, every little helps. Data from Trackr, formerly the Bristol Tracker run by University of Bristol students, suggests that candidates backed by diversity organizations have a few advantages over those who aren't.
The data shows that diversity and non-diversity candidates submitted similar numbers of applications – 55.4 and 52.7 on average, respectively – to financial services internships, but with very different results. 12.9% of applications submitted by diversity candidates led to interviews, compared to only 7.3% for non-diversity candidates.
The higher interview rate didn’t mean a higher offer rate, however. Non-diversity candidates received offers from 17.6% of the interviews they attended; diversity scheme candidates, however, only received offers from 14% of interviews. That’s a 20% discrepancy.
Students from diverse backgrounds lack the knowledge and networks that those with banking parents have. To overcome those sorts of disadvantages, students turn to organizations that exist specifically to help disadvantaged students, such as SEO London, Rare Recruitment, or upReach.
upReach, for instance, works with a number of banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank. Those banks provide (often exclusive) networking opportunities for upReach “associates” (as they call their students). “Someone from a lower social background is less likely to have the kind of networks and the support possible to really gain those internships and work experiences in a really competitive field,” James Murray, upReach’s program manager for finance, explained.
Other diversity organizations, such as Rare, offer similar benefits, including upskilling events, interview prep, and special insight programs. Rare works with ethnic minorities, whilst upReach works with students from “lower socioeconomic backgrounds”, as Murray calls them. Prospective upReach associates have to have attended a British state school and their student finance records have to have shown a family income of less than £42,620.
How successful is this sort of support? Trackr’s data combines a number of charities’ work, and Murray didn’t want to speak for the aggregated statistics - but he did note that students who work with upReach have an enormous application success rate of 62%.
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