The final word from Sears…

This has been the most exciting, eventful and somewhat dramatic two weeks of the internship. I am almost done with my time at Sears and it is time to wrap up and say goodbye, atleast for now.

I had my final internship presentation scheduled for the middle of last week, almost a week and a half before the end of the internship. I wasn’t certain that I would be able to work right up to the end, since my baby’s due date and my internship end date almost coincided at the end of this week, and therefore planned ahead. This foresight was invaluable! My presentation was at 3 pm on the 7th of July and three hours later, right after I got home, I went into labor!!! That was the end of completing the internship on the planned schedule. I am home recovering and going back to work for a few short days to wrap things up and complete a final performance review. It has been very rewarding to take on two very differently challenging projects at the same time and complete them both successfully.

Regarding the presentation itself, I started working on the power point at almost the six-week mark, making notes and draft power points of what I wanted to communicate. My bosses were very accommodating of the need to make a well-crafted deck and supported me in many ways such as creating a rough outline, providing detailed reviews and feedback on my analysis, setting up schedules with my audience of CFO’s and VP’s and providing overall feedback on the slide deck. I was very happy with and confident of my slide deck for the presentation and took a couple of hours going over every detail in the slides and preparing for possible questions, while rehearsing the script for my presentation.

The presentation was attended by business unit CFO’s and VP’s and also included other Finance interns for the summer. Both my managers were present. I presented my findings and left time for questions. The presentation was well-received by the audience. My manager told me I had done a good job of the presentation and of handling follow-up questions.

Working at Sears has been a great learning experience in terms of Corporate Finance, the Retail industry, good management practices and self-discovery. I am hoping that I will get an offer before the summer is up.