Every morning I walked along with suited up professionals, familiar faces on newspapers and even directors of Investment Banks I had met earlier. Back in office, right away I could join the morning briefings for sales and traders, there was so much to learn about economic trends around the globe and more importantly the underlying implications.
Shortly after that, I would return to my seat and begin work. As I was the only intern on the entire floor, my roles were really flexible. I was assigned tasks that were not only challenging but also meant to let me learn what I wanted to learn, such as market research on emerging customer groups, reviewing client investment portfolios which involved studying a vast amount of securities and financial tools, as well as translating Risk Disclosure Statements used in the sales of several types of Options and Bonds. The fact that they really valued my input and would actually use the documents I prepared in the real business environment was a huge motivation for me to perform, perfect and persist, among which the last has usually been the hardest thing to achieve in a long internship.
But beside the technical knowledge, there were also other things that I picked up – the attitude at work, friendship and insights into my own future career. Working at a bank or any office is nothing like school. Discipline is a much bigger issue and so is interpersonal skills, this is something one can only learn through practicing. It is also the latter that earned me friends as well as connections that I can keep for a lifetime. My colleagues were all extremely helpful and friendly and I still keep contact with them now. In fact, I may actually be attending the wedding of one of them in the coming February! Last but not least, based on my first hand experience I've also finally learned a much clearer picture of what the financial sector is like and this certainly helps me with choosing my career path.
I believe the internship was truly worth the holidays spent. It was absolutely an amazing thing to include on my resume but I would say what I gained from it as a person definitely outweighs the value it adds on paper. It's beyond doubt that I would recommend all of you to go for such an internship and challenge yourself to something more.
(Howard Yeung , a year-2 student, BBA Programme)
