Good bye!!

Hi all,

Well, the time has come.. this is the last week of my internship!!! This week i will do my final presentation, and we will also know if we have an offer for the full time. Regardless of the outcome, I am very happy with my internship. I have enjoyed working at Citi and I am impressed by how this company has overcome their bad times and reinvented themselves. Citi’s current strategy reflect their learning process from past mistakes, and their self-awareness capacity to take the best of what they have and only fight the battles they can win.

I think this is what we, as professional, should also do this kind of exercise to have a successful career. I think that the more conscious we are about our strengths and weakness, the better professional decision we will take. I will definitely do it after a finish the internship. Now, I want to share with you 10 pieces of advice that our last summer speaker, Citi’s Vice-president, gave to us. I think it was the best speech of the summer, as he talked what should be also keep in mind to have a successful career.

1. Know the difference between data and insight

- data is now commoditized with advent of Internet

- the way to add value is to bring out the insights from the data that are not available elsewhere

2. Learn how to focus on the big picture

- even early on in our careers it is important for us to break out of our narrow scope and understand the reasons for our work

- don’t be afraid to ask managers to explain how work fits into the puzzle

3. Learn how to prioritize

- always more things than you have time for, though many of those end up falling by the wayside anyways

- time is a valuable resource and using it effectively is an important skill (time management is crucial)

4. Learn how to be self aware

- we all have a tendency to overestimate how good we are

- need to understand core strengths and development needs

- don’t be afraid of asking for frank opinions from others

5. Need to ask for feedback real time

- feedback tends to be sugar coated because frank feedback usually is met with pushback

- does a disservice to me and the organization as I am not addressing the development areas and reaching my full potential

- feedback at 6 month or 1 year mark is based on an image that the reviewer has formed over that time, will not be as specific and actionable

- should ask for feedback after every meeting/presentation while thoughts are fresh on the mind of the reviewer

6. Learn how to take intelligent risks

- people tend to look for easy targets

- best coaches are those that push you beyond the limits of what you thought was possible

- sometimes we need to go outside of our comfort zone

7. Learn from mistakes and move on

- if we are not making mistakes, we are being risk averse and doing things that are too safe

- successful people make mistakes but thought process that led to mistakes are sound

- no one gets better by being right all the time

8. Focus on exploiting strengths, not mitigating weaknesses

- no one is perfect, successful people capitalize on what makes them distinctive and find people to complement them (need to be self aware)

- as an exercise, we should be able to easily articulate what our core strengths are

9. Need to find sponsors in life

- not the same thing as a mentor (who gives the same advice to everyone)

- sponsor believes in you, creates opportunities for you, protects you, and promotes you

- be aware of the common types of sponsors

- Care Giver (parent figures),

- Visionaries (inspire to do great things)

- Sages

- Relentless Coaches (push you to go beyond what you can do)

- Godfathers (help you as long as you help them)

- understand who are the people who will truly be your sponsors (be aware what type of sponsor they are)

10. Pass the Wall Street Journal test

- need to be very careful about what you send around in emails

- not private communication - emails are stored on company server

- will what I am about to send via email be embarrassing if put on the front of the WSJ?

Hope you enjoyed and find as much valuable as I did, and hope you enjoyed the rest of summer before going back to the school.

Best,

Shila Arias

Great week!

This past week has been crazy! This has been the group project week, when we work in groups of four in a project for a different area than we are working for our individual project. We only have 5 days work on it, it is a full time project but still time is really short. In my case, my project was in the Marketing Area. We were assigning to design a new strategy for mobile banking, generate new ideas to improve the mobile experience and double the number of users by the end of next year.

When I first heard about the project, I was really excited because I think it is a hot topic now, as baking is changing and digital channel are getting more and more important. At the same time, when I thought about group project, I remembered MAP. This group experience has been amazing, I think Citi has done a great job about choosing people that has similar characters. Besides that, I think what I learned in MAP about group management helped me to be a better team member.

Well, we finished the project on Friday really late, but we are done. We are going to present on Thursday, so I will let you know how it goes. I would like to spend a few lines telling you about something else about Citi. I knew I was joining a great company when I entered Citi, I also knew they have had serious problems during the crisis (and those we one of my concerns). Being inside, I have been more than surprise about how they see the past times and how are they see the future of Citi. They have a very clear strategy and what they want to be and everyone in the company is aligned. I still don’t know if I want to stay with Citi for the full time, but it is because of my personal goals. But I can say is that this is a really good time to join Citi, as they have a great challenge ahead, how to execute the great strategy they have and how to bring the company to the leading place they have in the past.

Hope you enjoyed the post and hope you are enjoying your last internship weeks. I will keep you posted.

Best,

Shila Arias

A month already!

Well, it amazing how time goes by, it has been a month already since I started my internship. I am definitely busier than I used to be the first days, as I am working in a project, I don’t have daily tasks to do. In the beginning, my usual day was divided by doing research and meeting with some people that can give me more information about the product I am analyzing. Now, I got almost all the information I needed, so I am in the phase of putting everything together to build a story (as my boss says). So, as many of us, I am in the power point phase, and this is more stressful than I thought. My boss is a former consultant, so you can imagine she has high standards in presentations. In fact, I knew I had to do a final presentation to my boss, but I didn’t know I had to do a midpoint presentation to my VP, that will be this week. So, you can imagine how much I have been working this week.

Additionally, as we are getting near to the end of our program, we have more social and networking events. Unfortunately, I had to miss one happy hour because I had a very early meeting the next day. I was sad, but I knew this following week we will have even more events, so I felt more relieve. This week, we will have breakfast with HR representatives, the usual lunch and a scavenger hunter event. So I will definitely have fun.

And to end the week, as most of us have been really busy, some of the Summer Associates decided to go out for dinner on Friday. What rally surprised me is that we went to a Peruvian restaurant, without my recommendation, so you can imagine I was more than happy. I had a Peruvian friend visiting me for the weekend, so i went with her, and we really liked the food, and my friend did also. We had a great time and most of us couldn't finish. Here is the photo of us, I was really happy that people from Italy, Brazil, the Philippines, and of course, US, could enjoyed Peruvian food.

I will keep you post!

Shila A.

Balancing work, training and social events

So, I just finished the third week of my internship. In fact, I would say it is the second week in terms of real job as the first week was almost full-time training. Now, I have clear the objective of my summer project. I have to analyze the strategy of an existing business card and create a new one to replace it, so it is very interesting and challenging at the same time. I have to recognize that I was concern if I would finish my project in the time that I have, so I started to plan how I would approach the project and set weekly goals. As my assigned manager is a vice president, she is really busy and difficult to talk with. This is why looked for a person within my group, whom I can ask and talk more easily. He is a senior manager and is helping me a lot as he has a great experience in credit cards.

In parallel, as part of the Internship program, Citi organizes a speaker series program where, once or twice week, different senior representatives from the bank talk to all Citi Summer interns. So far, we have heard the CEO, CFO and Chief of Technology Office. Additionally, we, the Consumer Summer Associates, have weekly lunch sessions with different senior managers from the Consumer Banking group, so they can talk about their areas and let us know beyond the areas we are working on. So far, I can say that I have learned a lot from all this sessions, and equally importantly I have heard amazing stories about professional experiences within Citi.

Last, but not least, we also have social events included in the program. For example, we have had happy hours with ex-summer associates (and now full-time employees), or networking events with Consumer Banking senior managers; and this incoming week we have a picnic with the Finance Summer Associates. Besides this, we have named a Social Chair in our group, so we also have our own happy hours and weekly lunches, so we have a lot of social activity.

I feel really lucky to been in this program, as not only I am working in a great project but also, I feel Citi is really concern about us to learn more about banking and Citi. And obviously, I am having a lot of fun with my peers in the program. As I mentioned in the previous post, our group is a really diverse group, you can see it in the picture I above. We took this picture in our visit to Citi’s Union Square branch, Citi’s flagship branch in NY, as this is how they want to be in the future. It is great; I suggest that if you are in NY, you go there!

Hope you enjoyed the post.

Shila Arias

Settling down in NY

Hi all,

as many of my friends, this has been my first week of internship. I started on Monday 13th and I arrived NY the day before (sunday). And here comes my first advice, try to arrive at least a few days before your internship starts to settle down in your new home. I couldn't come before because I was working in my home country (Peru) in a 5 weeks internship, and I just finished the to work on Friday 10th. Thanks God, I already had an apartment, which made things easier, though I didn't see it before (only from photos). Thanks God again, it is much much better than I expected... It is gorgeous :) I am so happy with it!!! Well, I arrived and just had time to buy the basic things.

Sooo the first day arrived... Citi wanted to welcome all the summer interns, so we all met in one of Citi's building in Manhattan. We were around 200 summer interns from different programs (Finance, Human Resources, Investment Baking, Consumer Banking and other that I don't remember now). After this welcome, all the Consumer Banking Interns moved to our building in Long Island City, Queens. We had two days of general training about Citibank and Consumer Banking. On Wednesday, each of us moved to our areas to meet our bosses and group. I met my boss, who has a great and long experience in Credit Cards. Though, he is pretty new in Citi US as he has been working in Australia and China for Citi for the last 4 years. I am very happy because I am sure I would learn a lot from him. I already know about but my project, which is analyze and propose a new strategy for a existing business credit card. It seems really interesting and will keep you posted about it!

This week has been about know the company and group where I am, and I really enjoyed it. However, what I enjoyed most is the group of SA (Summer Associates) of my group. We are 16 interns from different universities and backgrounds. Definitely, we are a diverse group, there is people from China, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Philippines, Peru (me) and US. We are a rally nice group and we get along really well, this is why we already had a first happy hour and we have named a Social Chair to organize social events each week. I think that by the end of the summer, not only I would have learned a lot about banking but also earned really good friends!!

Keep you updated in the next post, hope you are all enjoying the summer!!

Shila