Interning at a fund-of-funds

Hey guys. I would love to get your advice and thoughts.

So I recently finished my first year of b-school and just started an internship at an emerging markets fund-of-funds, evaluating both PE and HF managers. Unlike most of my classmates, I’m actually not interested in security research but prefer asset allocation, portfolio construction, and risk management. For my post-MBA job, I’m targeting 3 areas:

  1. investment strategy within the asset management division of a major bank

  2. multi-asset research at a major mutual fund such as Blackrock

  3. big fund-of-funds such as PAAMCO, Blackstone alternative asset management, Grosvenor, Permal, etc.

The fund-of-funds I’m interning at is very small, but I like my bosses (both very smart, one was a former partner at a megafund PE firm) and the work seems reasonably interesting, although it’s too early to tell. I’m trying to get a sense of how I should leverage and market this internship when I recruit for full-time for the jobs I mentioned above. My primary concern is that manager research might restrict me a bit for the strategy/research roles.

Just out of curiosity, did you try for your target areas for internships and just couldn’t land them?

How is the pay for post-MBA level at a fund of funds by the way?

Pay is solid. It’s stable, but obviously upside isn’t as huge as say security research at a hedge fund.