Finance internships

Hi I’m going into my first year of uni. My dream is to be a full time trader. Right now I’m not passionate on being a trader for a bank or hedge fund for several reasons. I’m thinking of being a part time financial analyst for a few years before being a full time retail trader and if I’m not successful I’ll switch to being an institutional trader. Should I take financial/market analyst internships or sales and trading internships at banks/hedge funds. If I take analyst internships and later want to be a bank trader can I use the analyst internships to apply for a trading role or will it be irrelevant or not specific work experience?

Thanks,

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Ali 2737372

Not sure if anybody told you but switching between job roles in the finance sector is incredibly hard.

Most employers would expect you to remain committed to the role that you initially picked. For example, if you initially wanted to become a financial analyst, they would expect you to remain a financial analyst for the duration of your career.

Picking a career then later changing your mind suggests to them that you are undecided on what you want, and it's a reason to cast you aside especially when they have thousands of applicants to choose from (many of whom can be from Oxbridge and other world class universities).
Also, I have not seen jobs for part time financial analysts, especially for junior levels. Usually financial analysis is a full time role, especially when you weren't shown the ropes of the job. It's usually when you're very very senior with many years of experience in a wide variety of industries do you ever get the option of doing part time analysis, and even then you don't necessarily get part time roles for that sort of job.

If you want to become a trader, go straight into trading internships. It's ill-advice to go into any other role.
Whilst it's not impossible for you to transition into another role in finance, it's extremely difficult especially with the competition involved. You would need an incredibly good reason for the transition, and to say because you felt like you would "prefer a change" is not going to cut it. You would also need to be very clear on how the 2 roles are related and what you can bring from your experience in previous roles into the new one.