How to Get a Spring Week With No Experience

The single most common reason first-years don't apply for spring weeks is a version of the same thought: 'I don't have any experience — what would I even write?' The framing is wrong. Spring week selectors do not expect first-year applicants to have prior professional experience. They expect the opposite: they design the entire programme around identifying promising people before they have any.

What spring week selectors actually look for

First-year screening at large City firms is broadly consistent across the sector. In rough order of weight:

1. Academic record. A-level (or equivalent) results and predicted university grade. Most large firms have a stated benchmark — commonly AAA at A-level and a predicted 2:1 or First. Contextualised admissions are increasingly common but you still need to hit the bar the firm publishes.
2. A specific reason for applying to this firm and division. Not 'the leading global investment bank' — a concrete pull. This is the single biggest differentiator between accepted and rejected applications.
3. Evidence of initiative. Something you did that wasn't handed to you: a society you built, a competition you entered, a project you shipped, a small business you ran, a role in a community organisation.
4. Basic professionalism. A clean CV, no typos, correct division name, correct firm name. This screens out more applications than any single competency.

What counts as 'experience' when you don't have professional experience

Almost anything real counts. Selectors reading first-year applications are calibrated to look at what you did with the opportunities you had, not to expect experiences you couldn't have had. Categories that consistently work:

• Society and committee roles at university or school — treasurer, president, event lead. Named responsibilities and outcomes matter more than titles.
• Competitions — case competitions, hackathons, debating, essay prizes, Model UN, maths and science olympiads.
• Self-directed projects — a small trading portfolio you've tracked and journaled, a website or side project you built, a research piece you wrote and published.
• Part-time and holiday work — retail, hospitality, tutoring, coaching. These score better than most candidates think, especially when the bullet describes something specific (customer service under pressure, cash handling, team coordination).
• Community and voluntary work — organising, fundraising, teaching. Sustained involvement beats one-off events.
• Sports, music, arts at a competitive level — evidence of commitment and coachability.

A first-year CV structure that works

For a first-year application, a one-page CV in the following order is close to optimal at almost every UK firm:

1. Header: name, phone, email, LinkedIn. Nothing else — no photo, no address block.
2. Education: university (course, expected graduation, predicted grade, relevant modules), then A-levels (school, dates, individual grades), then GCSEs (summary line, e.g. '9 GCSEs including 8/9 in Maths and English').
3. Experience: any part-time, voluntary, or internship-style work in reverse chronological order.
4. Extracurriculars: societies, competitions, sports, sustained hobbies with real detail.
5. Skills: languages (with proficiency), technical (Excel, Python, SQL if genuine), certifications.

Writing the motivation answer without experience

The 'why this firm, why this division' question is where nearly every rejection at first-year stage happens. A strong answer without professional experience follows a three-part structure:

1. A specific, public reference to the firm's work — a recent deal, a business line the firm has grown, a strategy the firm has articulated, a report the firm has published. One or two sentences.
2. A specific reason it appeals to you. Not 'I've always been interested in finance'. Something anchored: a module you took, a book that changed how you thought about the sector, a competition, a family context, a comparison between two industries you considered.
3. One concrete example that shows you've already started acting on that interest — a case competition, an online course completed, a piece you wrote, a society you joined.

Under 250 words is usually enough. Longer answers rarely score better; they usually score worse, because they signal a candidate who couldn't identify what mattered.

The mistakes that filter out otherwise strong candidates

• Recycling the same motivation paragraph across five firms with the name changed. Recruiters spot it in a line.
• Confusing divisions — writing 'investment banking' in an application for markets, or 'M&A' when the division is capital markets. Read the division description before you write.
• Burying A-levels or leaving them off entirely. If you have strong A-levels, they are your single most portable credential at first-year stage.
• Padding the CV to two pages. Recruiters read the first page; the second page dilutes the first.
• Overclaiming skills. Listing Python because you did one online course is rarely a good trade — it invites a technical question you can't answer.
• Applying at the deadline instead of within the first three weeks of a portal being live — see the timeline guide below for the sector-by-sector windows.

If you don't get a spring week

Not landing a spring week isn't the end of the pipeline — it's a much smaller setback than it feels. A strong penultimate-year summer internship application still routes you into the graduate scheme, and the summer-intern-to-graduate conversion rate is higher than the spring-week-to-summer-intern rate anyway. Use the summer of your first year for something signal-heavy: a smaller-firm internship, a self-directed project, a serious extracurricular. Then apply broadly to summer internships in September of your penultimate year — and this time, you'll have experience.

Track it from day one

First-years typically apply to 10–20 spring weeks across sectors. Deadlines are staggered, video interview invites arrive on random days, and one missed follow-up costs a slot. Use a tracker — spreadsheet or purpose-built — from the day you submit your first application. Sign up for a free account and everything you send lives in one dashboard.