The more you try, the more you learn

Pauline and Tor reflect on how their internships challenged them to grow, what they learned along the way and how the experience helped them better understand their own strengths and interests.

Former interns Pauline Gottschlich and Tor Hillström spent spring 2026 at Altor’s Stockholm office. We spoke to them about what surprised them, what they learned, and how the experience helped them better understand their own strengths and interests. They also share their advice for anyone considering applying.

You had quite different experiences before joining Altor. What made you want to try private equity?

Pauline: I study Industrial Engineering and Management at KTH and had previously interned within Leveraged Finance at Nordea and Corporate Finance at ABG. I was quite intentional about using internships to try different things. I had seen the debt side and the sell-side, and wanted to understand what it was like to sit on the investor side.

Tor: I also study Industrial Engineering and Management, but at Lund University. My path was a bit different. I did military service after high school and have since spent time at a consulting firm and a smaller tech start-up. For me, internships have also been a way of testing different things.

Pauline Gottschlich, Former intern at Altor
“You are expected to have a view, and that it does not always have to be right”

How quickly did the responsibility come?

Tor: Pretty quickly. I remember working on a project and realising before a check-in that no one else was working on that particular piece. I needed to have something to bring to the discussion. That was when it clicked that you cannot always wait for someone to give you the next task. You have to help move things forward.

Pauline: That responsibility can definitely feel a bit uncomfortable at first, but those are also the situations where you learn the most. You stop assuming someone else will check everything five times after you. People are actually going to use your work, so you take ownership of it in a different way.

What do you feel you have learned?

Pauline: For me, it has been learning to think much more commercially. Coming from banking, I had done financial analysis before. Here, the questions became broader: Is this actually a good business? Why? What could it become?

But internships also teach you something about yourself. The more you try, the more you understand what you enjoy, what you are good at and where you have the most potential.

Tor: I have been surprised by how broad the learning is. You look at so many companies and industries, including plenty I barely knew existed before.

You also learn a huge amount from the people around you. Sometimes it is just sitting in a meeting and hearing which questions are being asked. You are never the smartest person in the room, which is probably a very good place to be if you want to learn.

You were both part of a larger intern group. Does that help?

Pauline: A lot. It gives you a group of people who are going through exactly the same thing.

Tor: We also have different backgrounds, so people know different things. Someone may understand financing really well, while someone else has worked in a particular industry or already dealt with the problem you are facing. It gives you people to bounce ideas off.

What advice would you give someone thinking about applying?

Tor: Be curious about businesses, not just finance. Think about companies you come across in everyday life: what makes one business better than another, and what would you want to understand before investing in it?

That mindset is useful both in the interview process and once you start. It is probably more valuable than trying to memorise the “right” answers.

Pauline: I would say: just apply. I think people can convince themselves that everyone else will know more, have done more internships or somehow be more prepared.

But there is no single background, and you are not supposed to arrive knowing how to do the job already. The point is that you learn.

Published: Sep 17 2026