“The first thing to know about your internship is that it’s not school,” said Bryan Lapidus, FPAC, Director of FP&A Practice at AFP. “It’s an audition of sorts.”

Most students assume that success in their finance internship will be graded on a similar basis to what makes them successful in school — Excel skills, financial modeling and finance acumen. While you do need to know those things, the company is really treating the internship as a non-continuous evaluation of how you operate.

“The ultimate question is whether they want to hire you,” said Lapidus. “To get there, they want to know you operate: how you move through ambiguity and uncertainty, what your mindset is, are you a giver or a taker — are you there to help the company move forward?”

What does a finance intern do?

Finance interns are expected to help finance teams support existing processes as a way to learn the business and make sense of data. This can take the form of helping to prepare forecasts, analyzing budget variances, evaluating business drivers and communicating financial insights.

Common finance intern responsibilities include:

• Assisting with budgeting and forecasting
• Supporting FP&A projects
• Conducting variance analysis
• Preparing financial reports for managers or leadership teams
• Building, updating or maintaining financial models
• Analyzing financial data to identify trends, risks or opportunities
• Gathering data from other departments for reporting
• Supporting month-end or quarterly reporting cycles
• Preparing presentations or materials for leadership meetings
• Assisting with ad hoc research and special projects
• Learning company financial systems, such as ERP/EPM platforms
• Identifying process improvement opportunities

What are employers looking for in a finance intern?

Understanding the responsibilities is only part of the picture. The more important consideration for employers is not what you do, but how you show up while doing it.

The assumption when you’re hired is that you can learn to do the technical work. When you walk through the door on your first day, organizations are evaluating your growth attributes of judgment, communication skills, adaptability and professionalism.

Drawing on two decades in corporate finance — including experience recruiting interns for the American Express Company — as well as AFP’s research on finance intern programs, Lapidus says students who understand that distinction are often the ones who make the strongest impression. His advice for finance interns takes the form of the “four L’s”: leadership, learning, leverage and linkage.

Leadership: Show initiative without overstepping

Leadership is the capacity to translate direction into action by earning trust, making good decisions and enabling others to do their best work. As an intern, you can demonstrate leadership through:

• The way you accomplish your work.
• Showing responsibility and judgment, even before you have authority.
• Building trust.
• Asking smart questions.
• Making work easier for others.

Lapidus explained that the first 30 days of an internship aren’t about dazzling people with technical brilliance or proving mastery. “They’re about listening,” he said. “What’s really going on in the company — and in the department? Who owns what? How are decisions made? Where does value actually get created?”

As an intern, your job early on is not to fix everything, but to understand the system you’ve stepped into and how you can contribute meaningfully within it.

Trust the process of learning, observing and getting up to speed. Your insight and capability will surface naturally — in conversations, in questions and in the quality of your work.

“Don’t try to reinvent the company on your first day, or even your first 30 days,” Lapidus said. “It’s all a process.” As you learn, focus on demonstrating these leadership fundamentals.

Bias for action

Bias for action is the ability to see a problem and move toward a solution without waiting for a formal invitation, handling ambiguity. “Are you sitting there waiting for your boss to tell you what to do? How do you show initiative? How do you show that you want to be there, that you're excited? How do you extend yourself?” said Lapidus.

Ownership

This is about taking full responsibility for a project’s outcome, not just the tasks assigned. “When somebody gives you something to do, do you say, ‘Well, I'm waiting on this. I'm waiting on that. That's somebody else's responsibility,’” said Lapidus. “What is your role in owning the things and taking responsibility for getting them done?”

Professionalism and communication

These are the signals you send every day through your responsiveness, clarity and follow-through, turning good work into trusted work. “This includes how you respond, how you write emails, how you present yourself at meetings, how you talk and how you receive feedback from others,” said Lapidus.

In addition to the above, Lapidus advises students to keep one crucial question in their back pocket: What does great look like?

“It’s a signal,” he said. “It says, ‘I'm clarifying what you want me to do,’ and it communicates your point of view on doing the work: My goal is to be great.”

Learning: Show curiosity and seek feedback

Demonstrate a growth mindset

Actively seek feedback, ask thoughtful questions and adapt quickly. If you do these three things, they signal to employers that you have the mindset and adaptability to grow.

Seeking feedback shows the employer that you want more and that you can do more. “Feedback is a gift,” said Lapidus. “How do you get better if you don’t know what you could be doing better?”

Thoughtful questions, also referred to as second-order questions, go beyond the how to the why — in other words, why does the company do it that way?

“When you’re given a task, don’t just accept it and walk away, because everything is connected,” said Lapidus. “What do I need to think about? What could I do better? Whatever it is, dig deeper. Show curiosity.”

Adapting quickly means learning, unlearning and relearning. The idea here is that you come into a company knowing certain things from school, but the workplace is a different world. Ask yourself: Is what I know applicable? Maybe you need to learn something different; maybe what was taught to you in school isn't what is being done here, or how it’s being done here.

“Whatever it is, you have to be willing to change your mind about what you know — or what you think you know,” said Lapidus.

Part of that is also a willingness to dive into new software, AI tools or methodologies. “This is your superpower,” said Lapidus. “This is your opportunity to teach people and to bring that AI-first thinking in. Even if you don’t have the skills, you have the AI-first mindset.”

And of course, you’ll need to learn the current/legacy systems. “These companies are also going to have their own systems for you to learn — ERP/EPM, other tech stacks,” said Lapidus. “That's part of the configuration AI is going to run on top of. These are all things for you to learn, and things for you to show you're learning.”

Understand the company culture

An important aspect of learning is being a cultural anthropologist. “Don't just focus on the work; focus on the people,” advised Lapidus. “What are they doing? What are they saying? How do they talk to each other? Who has authority and who has info? Those two aren't always the same.”

Take the time to understand your boss's communication style. Find out what platform they prefer to communicate in, e.g., Teams, Slack, email or text. What is their expectation of when you’re going to respond? Do they expect a response on weekends? “If you get an email at 9:47 p.m., are you supposed to respond right away or can you wait until the morning? You can have that conversation ahead of time,” said Lapidus.

The types of questions you’ll want to answer for yourself include:

• What is the company history?
• Who actually contributes during meetings vs. who is on the invite?
• Who responds instantly on Teams vs. once a day?
• What does “ASAP” really mean here?
• Do people tend to send long, formal emails or two-line informal emails?

Understand how the company makes money

Equally important to consider is how the company makes money. A valuable resource to help you answer this question — and think it through like a strategist, not just an analyst — is the Business Model Canvas. It maps the key elements of how a company creates, delivers and captures value, giving you a framework to see the company as a whole, not just the spreadsheet in front of you.

“A finance team that just manages by spreadsheet only sees the world in terms of what is in a cell on a screen,” said Lapidus. “This number is up, this number is down. It’s hard to really support decisions with a limited view of the world.”

Leverage: Build relationships and expand your opportunities

“Leverage is all about scaling impact,” said Lapidus. “You want to develop advocates. You want other people to talk about working with you when you're not in the room. You do that by building relationships, delivering good work, asking good questions, delivering on time and being responsible.”

As you build relationships with people in the company, learn about their career paths and what the company offers in terms of career development.

“It’s networking, but it's really learning about people, you're learning about the company, the different kinds of work that you did not know existed, and the career paths open to you. In the process, you are building a team of people who know you, understand your potential and can help you along the way,” he said.

Linkage: Determine whether the company is right for you

Linkage is really about fit. The first three “L’s” are about what you deliver to the company and how the employer views you. But it’s also important for you to determine whether the company is the right one for you.

“You’re also interviewing them,” said Lapidus. “It's got to feel right. It's got to be a good opportunity for you relative to other offers and your personal situation.”

Even if you end up hating your internship, you gain the knowledge that you would rather be doing something else.

“Hating your internship is a wonderful thing. Loving your internship is a wonderful thing,” said Lapidus.  “As long as you are learning, growing and adding skills, your internship was a success.”

Close out the internship strong, with intention

The final weeks of your internship matter just as much as the first. As you close out, be intentional: wrap up your projects cleanly, document what you've done and express genuine gratitude to the people who invested time in you.

If you’re interested in a full-time role, tell the company; don’t assume your managers know. Ask for feedback and a reference — and stay in touch. The relationships you develop during your internship are the foundation of your future network. These are the people who can speak on your behalf and perhaps even open doors you didn’t know were there.

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