Can’t land an internship for CRE Analyst for the 2nd Year in a row. Where do I go from here?
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[{"id": "gnwd41x", "text": "Are you focusing in on a niche area of the industry or casting a wide net (brokerages, family offices, merchant developers, etc...)? Is location a factor?", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "gnwgzrh", "text": "I\u2019ve come from a big 10 school myself with a similar GPA. While I couldn\u2019t land an internship with an owner/developer, I did have one with a commercial lender. I didn\u2019t really do any work that a principal would look for (underwriting primarily), mostly did administrative, process improvement and market research tasks. \n\nDid a year of grad school outside of finance/real estate but decided wanted to focus back on real estate. Similarly couldn\u2019t find any takers for full time roles. \n\nWhat broke me into the industry was I scoured job postings on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. 99% were looking for postings I did not qualify or have the experience for. Mainly focused on smaller, local shops and I contacted people in the organizations directly and essentially offered to work for free to just gain exposure. I was hired full time after working for a month or two. I would suggest this route. You\u2019re not going to get into the CBREs, Blackstone, Brookfield, etc. going this route but small, private shops you\u2019ll get responses from.\n\nNow what I would do differently was I would learn some of the underwriting/pro forma skills. I\u2019d recommend Justin Kivel courses on Udemy, usually run around $10 each and are comprehensive. Adventures in CRE I believe also have free tutorials. If you\u2019re still a student you could maybe get a student license/course on Argus as well, that would certainly stand out. Stress that you have these skills in your cover letter.\n\nIf you are still at OSU maybe you can offer to do this on the side while you\u2019re still finishing up your degree so you may have opportunities to start full time by the time you\u2019re semester is over. You may not end up with the salary you are looking for out of the gate (I didn\u2019t) but look at as a stepping stone. You\u2019ll have opportunities to be exposed to other things analysts for big shops don\u2019t working at a mom and pop. I got exposure to asset management, accounting, leasing on top of underwriting/acquisitions. By the time I joined a more reputable company I had more breadth of experience than the analysts that were working there longer than I did.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]