Dear People,

I just completed my internship with the B&F team at SAM and was disheartened to hear that I was not even given a callback. As I approach my final year, I would like some guidance from seniors on teams in B&F hiring freshers. Will strategise internships then.

Willing to pay for specialised advice. I have huge student loans and my parents are ailing. I have no-one in my life. Please help me.

See, as an A0 it's really hard to get into Banking and Finance because there are just not enough vacancies at A0 level. Good firms fill them up with Day 0 hires who have no idea what they are doing. That's why there's always vacancies A1 onwards.

However all is not lost, I would do the following if i was in your position:

1. Get at least one good banking related article/blog in a reputable place like India corplaw/cbcl.

2. Start connecting to b&f partners and associates on LinkedIn to see what sort of work they are doing, who is in which team etc.

3. Try targeting Tier 2 firms first so you can learn the ropes of b&f. Phoenix, juris corp, Wadia Ghandy, Indus are good places to learn.

4. Leverage those to get to and impress bigger b&f teams that hire A0s. Manisha Shroff (Khaitan), Leena Chacko (CAM), Abir Dey (Saraf), Anand Shah (AZB) etc.

5. Don't waste your time with JSA, TTA, SAM, Trilegal as they won't hire 99% of the time.

6. If everything fails, try to intern at Tier 2 places in your last semester. Phoenix, Wadia Ghandy, KLaw, SNG, Juris Corp, Samvad, Dentons are good options and hire A0s regularly.

7. You'll be able to move to a T1 within 1-2 years easily after that so do not despair. Remember it's a marathon not a sprint.

All the best!

No you are not cooked, you can still make an impression. Never take an interesting lightly but still don't keep your hopes too high.

There's a serious lack of freshers who have solid b&f work experience, so you will get somewhere easily by the time you graduate. Plus 2026 is far away, you have enough time chill

JSA and Trilegal are solid internships and you'll learn a lot

Thanks dude, but I'm literally not getting replies from Dentons, and other T2 - T3s as well 💀, Ive honestly mailed so many partners/ PAs, the IT teams finna block my email ID. Have previous internship at SAM Banking for 2 months on my CV, papers in places like IRCCL, not the best grades tho, what do I do helppp

Okay so basically you share a feedback form with the team and everyone enters their feedback. The Training Guide(s) looks at it and either write to HR recommending a Callback, PPO or neither. The Partner is consulted obviously. This takes about a month. Most teams require callbacks for hiring. Some couldn't care less. Honestly its better to do it in person, I interned with an extension (good feedback) online and still somehow got rejected.

dont waste your time interning at SAM B&F - the team is known for stringing interns along with false hopes, making them do long assessments/paralegalship, only to reject them in the end. They are nothing more than free labour to the team - I have seen this happen to many good candidates too. they just don't seem to want to hire freshers.

Bumping this up. Ive interned with JSA and Trilegal banking, recieved good feedback, but failed to convert. What do I do, now that I am graduating in a bit? Im from a Tier 1 NLU and risk being jobless. I'm willing to work for lesser payscales as well, can someone pleaseee assist me? I have loans approaching.