How to get an internship

Most advice about internships is about the application. Almost nobody loses an internship at the application stage — they lose it in a twenty-minute conversation they had never practised. This is what actually happens, in order, and where the attrition really is.

1. Apply far earlier than feels sane

The single most common reason a good candidate gets nothing is timing. Competitive internship recruiting runs roughly a year ahead of the internship itself, and the deadline that matters is not the one on the careers page — it is the point at which the firm has already filled the class from earlier applicants. Banking and consulting open earliest and close fastest. Technology and industry run later and more sanely.

If you are reading this and the applications are open, apply now and prepare afterwards. Preparation improves with a deadline. A closed application cannot be reopened.

2. Expect a recorded interview before you speak to a human

This is the part people are least ready for. Of the 194 individual seats we have researched, every single one includes a one-way recorded round — questions on screen, a short window to think, a fixed time to answer, a camera, and nobody on the other end.

It filters hard, and it filters on things that have nothing to do with how good you would be at the job: talking to a lens, managing a countdown, not trailing off at the end of an answer. The first time you do one should not be the one that counts.

3. Know what that firm’s round actually tests

“Interview prep” as a single activity is the wrong model. A first-round investment banking screen, a consulting case and a product interview share almost nothing. Preparing generically means being mediocre at all three.

Across the banks we have researched, the mix comes out at roughly half behavioural questions, a quarter technical, and most of the rest cases. The surprise is that behavioural questions dominate even in technical seats — and they are the ones candidates prepare least, because they feel like the part you can improvise.

You can read what a specific firm asks firm by firm, across 74 of them.

4. Prepare the answer you will actually be judged on

Looking at what is scored across every seat, communication is assessed more often than any other dimension — more often than technical knowledge. Then motivation, then collaboration. That ordering surprises people, and it is the whole argument for practising out loud rather than reading.

Concretely, the things that cost marks are almost always structural rather than factual: answering a different question than the one asked, saying “we” where the interviewer wants “I”, reciting a CV the interviewer has already read, and giving a “why this firm” that is really a “why this industry”.

5. Rehearse out loud, then read what you said

Reading question lists silently builds recognition, not the ability to speak a structured answer in sixty seconds while someone watches. Those are different skills and only one of them is tested.

The fastest improvement available to most candidates is reading a transcript of themselves answering. Almost everyone finds the same thing: the answer took ninety seconds to reach the point, and the point was in the last sentence.

Practise an interview for your firm

6. Treat the rejection as information

Internship recruiting is high-volume and largely feedback-free, which makes it very easy to repeat the same twenty-minute mistake across thirty applications without ever learning what it was. If nobody will tell you why, the only way to find out is to put the same performance in front of something that scores it.

The short version

Apply earlier than feels reasonable; deadlines are softer than class sizes.
Assume a recorded round, because effectively all of them have one.
Prepare for the specific seat, not for “interviews”.
Behavioural questions are half of everything, including in technical roles.
Rehearse out loud and read the transcript. That is where the points are.

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Falas is not affiliated with or endorsed by any employer named. Simulations are independent practice based on publicly described recruiting formats.