Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

An Inside Look at Investment Banking

My name is Hannah Kim, a rising junior at Babson College. To start off my blog, I will start by talking about how I got my summer internship.  My internship search was long, stressful and it was one that required much persistence. I applied to countless internships through the Babson Portal, internships.com and even cold e-mailed multiple firms. The total amount of applications I sent was about 200-300. From those applications that I sent, only about 15 emailed back saying that they would give me an opportunity this year or next year. In the end, I had the opportunity to interview at about 5 places and from those 5 places, I was able to obtain my current summer internship at Diamond Capital Partners investment banking.

Investment banking is one of the top finance careers you can get after graduation. I wanted to get an inside look into investment banking before junior year and see if it would be the right fit for me. Diamond Capital Partners is located in the middle of Century City, right next to Beverly Hills. The location was perfect and the Santa Monica beach was only ten minutes away from my office. I was so excited to step into the investment banking world and be located next to the top investment banks in the world. Being next to the top investment banks gave me inspiration to work hard and get excited about my sophomore summer internship. The business suit clad bankers and lawyers were all around me as I first stepped into the office building. I could not wait to meet the team and start my first day as an investment banking analyst.

As soon as I stepped into the office, I was given an introduction to the team and was placed on a task right away. The other interns helped me adjust and taught me the ins and outs of CapitalIQ, research databases and the basic knowledge I should know while working here. I was pretty lost at first because it was different than what I learned at school. I understood all the financial terms that the upper level bankers were talking about but it was not as clear cut as it was in school. However, I was able to solve this issue by asking the other interns and researching on my own. With my experience at Diamond Capital Advisors so far,  I love my time here and my interest in investment banking is growing by the day.