Is the internship market cooked or am I?
Feeling pretty deflated and wanted to see if others are in the same boat or if I'm missing something obvious.
I'm in my penultimate year of a Commerce degree at UNSW with a distinction WAM. I don't have society involvement on my resume as my commute to campus is long and I work 3 days a week so it just hasn't been realistic. That said I've done a couple of case comps and placed well, reaching semi finals and finals.
I've been applying broadly for summer internships across Big 4, bank, mid-tier, boutiques, even cold emailed smaller local firms. My areas of interest are insolvency/restructuring and asset management so I've been targeting firms accordingly, but no luck anywhere. Not a single human interview. Just VI then rejections or silence.
A few things I'm trying to figure out:
- Is this a market thing right now, or is my profile just not competitive enough yet?
- Are grad roles actually easier to land, and is it realistic to get one without any internship experience?
- Should I take a gap year and do some unpaid internships to build up my resume and coming back for the next internship cycle properly?