This is what it's like to be an intern at JPMorgan - Mike Bird

This is what it's like to be an intern at JPMorgan

• Mike Bird
 
•  

• Nov. 4, 2015, 2:00 AM
• 572,862

Business Insider, Mike BirdSophie, the JPMorgan intern we shadowed for a day.

Around this time every year, thousands of university students start thinking about internships at big investment banks, many of which run some kind of programme for people aspiring to get into the world of finance and banking.

Most banks have deadlines around November. So if you're looking for an internship and haven't yet applied, you'd better get going.

From the outside, the world of banking can be pretty intimidating, so we decided to take a look inside and see what interns do day-to-day.

In August this year, we got the chance to go inside JPMorgan's London office and shadow one of the bank's hundreds of interns.

Interns at the bank spend 10 weeks working over the university summer holidays, with the ultimate goal being a full-time job with the bank. The intern we followed, Sophie, studies economics at the University of Cambridge, and she was kind enough to take us through a day in her shoes.

This is what she got up to during one day as a JPMorgan intern.

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It's an early start. Interns like Sophie have to be at their desks by 6:30 a.m. in London's Canary Wharf.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

JPMorgan's London headquarters is this 31-storey tower on Bank Street. The bank bought the tower in 2010 — it had previously belonged to Lehman Brothers.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Sophie, the intern we followed, worked in global equity sales. She was there for 10 weeks in the summer, having completed other internship periods at the bank previously. The desk essentially sells shares from around the world to largely UK-based clients.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

This is the setup at Sophie's desk, with one of the thousands of Bloomberg terminals in the building.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Interns come to the programme through a few different avenues, but for most there's a battery of numerical tests, assessment days, and interviews before they get anywhere near the job.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

The equities sales desks were largely all there before we arrived at 6:30 a.m. The first job for Sophie was to bring together content for the morning email to about 1,000 clients.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

For regulatory reasons, that email isn't sent directly by interns, and all correspondence goes to a permanent analyst on the desk first.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

At 7 a.m. analysts brief salespeople in the European equities morning meeting, before markets open.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Analysts are both in the room presenting and calling in from other cities around the world to give briefings.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Once each individual presentation is done, there's a round of quick-fire questions from the floor.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

It's definitely an international office.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

And people are able to customise their desks as they see fit — with this chair, for example.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Sophie worked on a corner of the colossal equities floor. One storey up, the fixed income floor is similarly enormous, and that's still just a small chunk of the bank's London operation.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Even looking out east, away from London, there are some pretty brilliant views from the higher floors of the building.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

The morning email goes out at 8 a.m. For the rest of the day, Sophie had meetings with other analysts and clients of JPMorgan.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

As markets open in Europe the whole equities floor got a little louder. By 8:30 or 9 a.m., it felt like a lot later in the day than it actually was.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

After the email is sent, a smaller analyst meeting takes place among the immediate members of Sophie's team.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

The JPMorgan canteen is pretty sizable, with a big range of food on offer, including a sushi station.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

It's a busy place, and there's no shortage of places to refuel within the building itself. When we went it was taco Tuesday, which is apparently particularly popular.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

This Starbucks is just around the corner from the canteen, and it gets very crowded later in the day.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Later we sat down with Tim, vice president in global cash equity sales, who is Sophie's boss and who went through some of the details of the internship programme with us.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Most of the interns on the programme are hired by the bank to work permanently: "We have an incentive to train them as completely as possible, so there's essentially no difference between an intern at the end of their time here and a first-year analyst."

Business Insider, Mike Bird

The actual desks get a hand in the recruitment of their interns, too, and there are opportunities to move around JPMorgan if they find another part of the firm they think they would be interested in.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

One of the misconceptions about the interns is that you have to have a financial education. Tim told us: "Of course some people will start out with an academic advantage over others, but within three or four weeks that gap gets closed pretty dramatically."

Mike Bird, Business Insider

Sophie said the most surprising thing about the internship was how much responsibility the interns took on. Though regulatory requirements mean they can't advise clients directly, they draft reports for clients and attend meetings with them.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Tim said the ability to self-start was crucial for successful interns: "At university you have this very structured life with particular weekly obligations. Once you start working, you can't spell out exactly what you'll do from Monday to Friday."

Mike Bird, Business Insider

Interns in Hong Kong, London, and New York all follow essentially the same internship programme — and those who become first-year analysts will meet for several weeks of training in the US.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Among the other perks of the job, there's a well-stocked sweet shop by the canteen.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Alongside the sweets and chocolate, there's a Krispy Kreme station, making it a little surprising that there aren't more-enormous bankers wandering the halls.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Thankfully there's also a gym — we couldn't take pictures inside, but it's well stocked. Between the coffee shops, newsagents, gym, and canteen, it feels as if there are enough amenities for a small town.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

If you're at JPMorgan and you want to do hot yoga with your colleagues, this is the place to be.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

A lot of the interns and employees carry these coveted and symbolic gym bags into work — they're given to employees at JPMorgan and feel like an optional part of the uniform for young investment bankers.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

Later in the day Sophie was required to give a presentation on a large European stock to a room of analysts and other interns — the presentation of 10 to 15 minutes mimics what analysts are required to do when they're with clients.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

The analysts then offer probing questions — it's a friendly but rigorous process that's clearly meant to push the interns in the way it would when done for real.

Mike Bird, Business Insider

Afterward, a quick trip to a different coffee shop — though most of them are around the canteen, there's one just off the edge of each trading floor as well.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

At the end of the day there was an address from one of the most senior staff members at the bank to all of the interns, held in JPMorgan's London auditorium.

Business Insider, Mike Bird

JPMorgan won't disclose how much the interns are paid, but they're effectively being tested for first-year analyst jobs reportedly paying around $85,000 (£54,200) before bonuses.