Balyasny Asset Management welcomed 85 interns this week, making this the largest intern class in the history of the program. This group of interns is spread across BAM’s global offices with representation in the US, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Toronto. The interns join BAM across various front office investment teams – covering all strategies, as well as middle back-office teams. This year’s class is also their most technical and diverse class since the program’s inception in 2016, with participants ranging from undergrad, masters, MBA, and PhD levels.
Founded in 2016, the BAM Intern Program strives to grow and develop the next generation of BAM leaders. “The program has evolved a lot over the past couple of years. We are more competitive and technical than ever before and have more than tripled the number of interns we hire each year”, said Hannah Dinardo, Head of Campus Recruiting. “We were able to really grow the program during the pandemic by hosting 12-week remote internships when a lot of other firms had cancelled their summer programs or cut them down. These remote internships were widely successful for BAM and this helped open the door for more hybrid and off-cycle internships, allowing us to expand our program even further.”
Due to the pandemic, the past two summer intern programs were held fully remote. This summer marks the return of in-person internships, promoting BAM’s culture of collaboration and providing more opportunity for this group to expand their network with one another and the broader firm. Interns are provided with extensive internal networks and resources to collaborate, setting them up to be highly effective contributors and leaders during their program and beyond. “BAM is in the midst of a massive growth and there are so many great opportunities for our interns after their internship ends to join teams as full-time contributors”, said Dinardo. “Our campus hiring mirrors our overall growth and we hire based on the demand and needs of the business. While we still hire for fundamental roles, our program has pivoted to be highly technical and quantitative. Majority of our roles are quantitative researchers and analysts across front office and middle back-office teams as well as software engineers, data engineers and data scientists.”
BAM puts training and development at the forefront of the program, with mentorship playing a key role. “Creating a culture of mentorship for our interns is imperative to their success”, said Dinardo. “Mentorship allows our interns the opportunity to engage with BAM leaders and learn from them, offering new perspectives and insights that help pave the way for them as future leaders.”
The firm looks forward to exploring new ways to expand and evolve the program, with continued efforts focused on recruiting individuals from diverse backgrounds. “We have our eyes set on big goals for this program”, said Dinardo. “We are highly focused on targeting diverse talent, as diversified ideas and perspective are what drive innovation and success. We are also striving to recruit more women into the program and help bridge the gender gap that exists within the finance industry.”
This intern class will be with BAM throughout the summer months, with many of them wrapping up their internships in August. “The return of in-person internships is only the beginning”, said Dinardo. “We are excited to continue meeting the demands of our firm and growing the program – all while developing our bench of junior talent and the next generation of BAM.”
