No banking internship: do I have a chance?

The answer is yes, you do still have chance.

However, while banks will look at the overall quality of your application, including grades, essays, extra curricular activities and motivation, you will be in a more difficult position compared to students that have done one or several internships with investment banks. The main reason is that those with previous experience will be considered a "safer" investment, and understand and accept all the challenges of investment banking. Simply put, those with experience will already know how tough the hours are, how stressful the job can be, and where they are going. To improve your chances of being accepted, follow those steps:

1) Spend a lot of time showing your interest in banking

In order to do so, you have to demonstrate that you did your own research on "what is investment banking" and "why investment banking". Have a clear rationale one why you want to go into this field, and also "why didn't you do any finance-related internship before?". Be truthful; it is perfectly fine to say that you didn't know about finance and investment banking in your first career years, but when you went to an banking event or when you talked to some alumni, you became interested. In fact, this might well be the best answer to give. Also make sure you do some reading and have a good high-level understanding of the financial world.

2) Excel at open questions, interviews and case studies

Easily said, however you will need to perform very well for interviewers to be fully convinced of your motivation. That means that you will need to make extra effort compared to your peers with banking experience. For example, the case study questions do not require any prior finance knowledge, therefore this is an area where you can do extremely well if you are well prepared. You will need to get an "extra edge" during the process to be noticed.

3) leverage your non-finance experience, make it a strength

Banking and finance internships are a nice-to-have, but in reality, there are limits to what you can really learn during a three month internship in investment banking. If you get a spot on a graduate programme there will be an intensive training programme that will teach you everything you need to know anyway. Therefore, a good strategy is to use any non-finance or non-banking internships as a strength to to convince your interviewer that this experience will help you do a good job as a banker. A few examples: if you did an internship in a corporate firm, let's say Procter and Gamble, you can say that you understand about corporate strategy and how potential clients work, which is an important skill for a banker. Also, you can even play the sector angle: if you worked in marketing at Procter and Gamble, you can say that you are interested to work with retail clients and work in an Consumer Goods M&A team. This strategy is often very effective. Same applies with people from non-finance degrees, and those with pharma or chemical backgrounds, engineering backgrounds, etc. You should stress that you understand better about those industries than a graduate that has only been doing finance.