For a finance student, what type of business is the best place to apply for an internship?

Your resume should always tell a coherent and convincing story no matter what stage of your career you are. I will speak from my experience. I have done my undergrad in Mechanical Engineering, but was not always in to it. So I took couple of Business and Finance courses and that really sparked my interest in that field. I worked for couple of years doing a job that was a blend of Engineering and Finance and then pursued a Masters Degree in Finance to further expand my knowledge and horizons. So now I have a story in my resume that tells why I am interested in a job that required a bit of Engineering and a bit of Finance skills.

Next thing is Finance is a huge field. Broadly it can classified into Plain Finance and Quantitative Finance. Plain Finance typically involves Corporate Finance, Portfolio Management, Investment Banking, Equity Valuation, etc. Quantitative Finance also called Mathematical Finance involves a combination of Finance, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science concepts. This type of expertise will lead to jobs as trader or analyst at hedge fund or stock trading companies. Having such clarity of what career path you like can help you developing a story for your resume right from your college days. If you like Plain Finance, you can take more advanced courses at school, join an investment club, and search for plain finance internships, which can be found at most companies (finance or non-finance firm). If you like Quantitative Finance, again you can take more advanced courses, also develop your programming skills (especially C++), and expand your math skills. If you happen to like your internship experiences, hopefully they can lead to a full-time job at those firms, which is an ideal way to transition to a full-time career path. On the contrary, if you are not sure which part of finance you are interested, no harm in trying out both type of internships and see for yourself which one you like more and can see yourself doing it for the next 10 years.

Finance is a great field to be in! My recommendations are to get in contact with your College or University Career Services. Generally, there are job fairs on campus searching for college students looking for internships. Depending on the type of Finance you wish to practice you can apply to any company such as technology, oil & gas, telecommunications and more. It really depends on the type of finance work you wish to do and where you would like to live. However, I do believe you will have better luck applying for a finance internship through your schools career services because they have schedules listing job fair days. Secondly, create a professional LinkedIn account and start networking with individuals who work in the field, or company you are interested in, including HR. You do not need to know them specifically to network with them. You can message on LinkedIn asking about internships or questions about the organization. Networking is key! This is more of a successful route than applying simply applying to a company's page since your LinkedIn profile is a more extended version of your resume.

Intern at the kind of business you think you might like to work for. Like a trial run at the real thing so you will know if your thoughts on what you want and what reality are match up close enough to go down that road. Your target company for work is an excellent place to intern. A good internship will result in a BIG step up in any interviews for full time employment.