An initiator and a leader

Before entering the business school, I had the experience of leading a team. As a leader, I had all kinds of responsibilities in the team, such as assigning tasks to team members, supervising the team’s work and correcting errors whenever they happen, giving out suggestion to members for better performance, and so on. However, in this summer project, I realized what an initiator is. We have an independent task several members and I were responsible for. We did not elect a leader in this task and were quite self-ruled. However, it often happened that we still needed someone to stand out and “lead” a part of work. We are a newly-formed team, and did not know what everyone was good at, but different part of the task required different skills. Understanding the situation, I stood up and asked for responsibility for several parts of the task. This is the time when I felt very different for being an initiator and a leader. When you are a leader, you are assigned all the responsibility and roles in the team. You are required to do all the work. But as an initiator, nobody asks you to do anything. You do all the work just because you want the team to work well, finish the job excellently and help members as much as you can. If you do not keep the team in mind, you won’t take initiatives to take responsibility. In my understanding, a true leader will be someone who wants his/her team to work great, rather than someone else ask them to do so. They will not care about rewards from their hard work, and will take care of their team members for the purpose of the team, not personal benefits. A leader needs to be an initiator in the first place.

A rewarding learning experience so far

The internship is coming toward its end. I liked the experience so far. It provided me a great opportunity to go inside the industry I am interested in always but did not find enough exposure to it. With the internship, I got access to the whole eco-system of the industry, from the technology trend, to the institutions involved in it, to the major players in the market, and most important, the people working in it. They are hard-working with professional training, and always explore new technologies and research new topics. They also have enjoyment in their work and complaints. But when work begins, they bring out 100% attention and effort for it. This kind of spirit impressed me. But without the internship, I will have no way to go near to these people; we are separated by the service interface, through which I require their services and they provide them, and no more beyond the request and supply. Another important point is the potential market growth identified during the project. China developed rapidly and after these decades, the accumulated effect on people’s disposable income is very obvious. They can afford more high-end products, and in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, their GDP per capita is near developed countries. So my observation is that for emerging countries like China and India, their process to become developed countries will be a new way different form history examples; they will not follow a way we find from western countries or Japan and Korea. They are big at territory and population, and there will be no way for all the areas and people in different part of the countries to become basically equally economic developed - that will require such great resources that the earth cannot provide without sacrificing welfare of other countries. The possible development way I think may be some big cities enjoying high level of development as in rich countries, and a large number of cities having medium development level but still greatly improved from the past. This medium cities will become a big market requiring a good balance of quality and price.

Going back to school with an offer

10 weeks of internship passed by really fast! There's no better way to end this summer than having a return offer in my pocket :) even thought it would be great if I haven't dropped and broke my laptop in the last week.

I have certainly learned a lot through my internship at Citi. Just 10 weeks ago, I was completely new to financial service industry, new to the company structure, and had no idea how corporate tax works. I picked up everything from scratch, made significant progress on my project, and was able to deliver my finds during the final presentation to Citi finance controller and other finance executives.

 Corporate tax is definitely not one of my expertise or the area that I would grow into, but this summer experience taught me how to adjust to new environment, absorb new information quickly, and effectively communicate with my peers and managers. No one would be able to accomplish anything in a big corporation by himself/herself. Knowing when and who to ask for help/information is essential.

The best thing about this summer is that my coworkers and I become very good friends. We established strong connections not just at work, but also on a personal level. I was recommending dress brands and shops to my manager, and exploring NYC restaurants and food trucks with coworkers.

Now is almost time to go back to school. I'm very excited to see everyone and find out how their summer went.

Last 2 weeks

My internship is coming to an end – only 2 more weeks left. I am wrapping up on the implementation of my initiatives, preparing for my final presentation and saying my good-byes.

Since my last post, I have made progress on the implementation of my initiatives, delivering tangible outcomes that will be useful for my team in the future. It has been fun and challenging at the same time – as they say, the devil is in the details! As I wrap up, I am making edits to my final presentation, rehearsing it with my manager and simultaneously, winding down my initiatives.

Last week, we hosted a lunch for bay area Ross interns at Google. It was an opportunity to connect other Rossers to Google and get the networking chain started. I believe Rossers enjoyed it and got a great chance to meet other Googler interns.

As I prepare to go to school, I wanted to highlight some of the learning I took away from this summer –

1.       The summer internship should not be viewed only as a tool to get a full-time offer – it should be viewed as a trial ground for us to understand ourselves – where we see our career going, what should be the ideal role for us for a long-term career.

2.       Delivering on the project is quite important and at the same time, it is also important to keep connected with peers who are interning in other companies to understand and remain connected to the Ross community

3.       Finally, as school is about to start, I think we should all take the perspectives that we have obtained seeing a company function and apply it to the classes we are all about to take – this will close the feedback loop and ensure that the learning we obtained during the summer gets consolidated

That's a wrap folks..

Hello all,

It is over! 10 weeks flew buy. I am actually sitting in my flat/apartment in Ann Arbor as a write this at Woodbury Gardens. As much as I enjoyed living here during the school year, my wife and I are looking around the unit and realized we already miss living in downtown Chicago!

The final week of work was climatic as it was the week I wrapped up my work and more importantly received the decision whether I would receive an offer or not. However I already did my year end presentation the week before, so that pressure was off.

In regards to work, to be completely honest my week was rather slow. My project was a in a bit of a state of flux as my job manager throughout the project had been assigned to another project so his replacement was busy trying to keep his head above water. The senior principal assigned to the project was on vacation in in South Africa, and another team member was about to take vacation for her wedding. Furthermore I had actually handed in my major deliverables the week before. So I was kept busy with "busy work" to support my peers. Mostly building charts in excel, and providing analysis on 1000's of pages of data received from the client.

In reflection, I really enjoyed my summer. Loved Chicago and Boston, developed new business relationships, realized I didn't know anything about excel and powerpoint, and found out the importance of being able to write/tell a story.

At the beginning of the summer I felt my consulting experience was atypical, and I was at a disadvantage from my peers. When assigned to my project, the work was scattered and the team was over whelmed. As such I did not feel I received the direction I needed to truly understand my tasks. In those 2 weeks I was excel modelling for one day (task cancelled), building case studies in power point for 2 days (task cancelled), worked on a brainstorming initiative to develop next generation ideas for the client (task cancelled). Then to start the 3rd week of the project, the entire project was cancelled.

In addition, as mentioned above my team mates were re assigned, went on vacation and one of the senior most members on my team was brand new to Booz, and not necessarily interested in my personal development.

But what I realized at the end of the 10 weeks was, there is no typical consulting engagement. It is very difficult to answer the question "What is a typical day in consulting?" Each intern had a completely different experience. We all learned at difference paces, in different places, with different faces. Overall it was a challenge on one's ability to adapt to an ambiguous environment and provide value.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have spent more time developing my Excel skillset before arriving to work. In addition I would have tried to have more fun while I was in Chicago/Boston. There was a lot to see and do in both cities, and I may have been to occupied with trying to make a good impression and working late hours. With proper time management it is feasible to work hard and play hard.

So in conclusion last Friday I met with my senior and junior mentors to discuss wether or not I would receive an offer...after a lengthy discussion the verdict was......

One last week for summer internship

This will be the last blog that I post for the summer. It’s hard to realize that my internship with Citibank is just one week from completion and new semester is about three weeks away. Looking back to the past 9 weeks with CitiMortgage in Ann Arbor, I think it’s been a really great learning experience for me and I had some really good time during summer as well. I think for this last post, it’d be a good idea to pause for a moment by looking back this summer and to reflect on new things that I learned.

I started my summer internship on the second day that I came back from holidays after travelling half dozen countries. So I was still jet legged when I was sitting in Citibank’s conference room with other 35 summer associates for the orientation week in New York. However, it was so exciting to meet and know many new friends and colleagues from other business schools around the country. People in Citibank really made us feel welcoming to the summer internship program and we are all looking forward to it. After getting back to Ann Arbor office, I was assigned to a new project, which involves interviewing and hiring new staff for an operation center in Danville, IL. The process was tiring and I spent lot of time working on this project. But the experience was valuable to me not only because of the satisfactory results that we achieved in Danville, but also because of the exposure to recruitment and coaching process. I am sure that some of great takeaways that I learned will be of help for my future career. The final highlights for the summer were the two week group project in New York with other associates. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it was a difficult and stressful assignment for us. Luckily, all team members worked very hard on this project together and senior managers made themselves accessible to the questions that we had and provided great feedbacks on our projects. Life outside of work in New York was always exciting. I went to over a dozen nice restaurants and bars with friends during the restaurant week. It had been a great dining and social experiences and we had lot of fun.

The internship is about to finish but the learning process will never end. There will be new business challenges every day. What kind of banking products shall we offer to customers to make their life easier? How can we capture more market share from competitors in US and globally? What shall we do to be a responsible lender and make profits to shareholders at the same time? As a MBA graduate and future business leader, we should keep asking ourselves those challenging questions, work harder and smarter in an increasingly competitive market so as to make companies not only survive but also thrive in the market. Good luck everyone and see you all back in Ross soon.

Final thoughts- Never stop learning

-Hi everyone, I am one week away  to finish my internship, so this last blog may reflect some mixed feelings. Of course, I want to go back to business school, but as I’ve been saying before, my internship has been a great experience.  First, I had relevant and very interesting projects, second I have a great work-life balance that allows me to take advantage of NYC and third, New York itself, which is a great city to be in the summer with tons of free activities.

To wrap up my blog series, I am going to talk about the final presentation. During my last post I talked about a group project, do you remember that? Well, once we submitted the project, we needed to present to the top senior leaders of the organization, our managers and the rest of summer interns. Basically the auditorium was filled with around 50 people. The combination of the quantity and quality of the audience were factors that created a very stressful, and busy week. I am not the type of person who likes practicing presentations, but given the context, we practiced 6 times. The good thing, is that the official presentation wen very well. We were able to convey a heavy-data-driven project, and all our international accents with some fun examples, which helped to engage the audience and make the presentation more interesting.  Two big take aways of this final presentation: Again, a group works in which is important to establish roles and identify peoples’ strengths to divide better the presentation and set a positive tone, or simply manage the flow.

 Also, as international student, I would say that I had to step back and be humble to asses this US professional landscape, learn more things and be very open to feedback. Back in Mexico, I was so used to give presentations to big audiences and important people that I hadn’t had feedback for a long time ago, but in this context, I did, and it made me change my mindset for good, as I realized that there are always ways to improve. This conclusion was a constant during my internship. I got 6 years of work experience before coming to the MBA, and, at least for our group project, I was the one with more experience. I can say that this professional experience definitely  helped me to navigate Citi as a big organization, create good networks, solve business problems and approach the things that I was asked to do.

However, sometimes experience may cause less willingness to learn or take feedback. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the things that I learned from many people, as I’ve been saying, Citi is a very diverse organization, in every sense.  I found that I always had something to learn. Yes, I know, an MBA candidate has to be open to learn always new things, but the truth is that many times it is more a mantra than something that people take into practice. So, this summer I really practiced doing this, learning by doing and being very open to feedback with a true willingness to improve. Which in the end, may turn to be a good impression when feedback is internalized and put in practices. Not only for the summer, but also in general for a good professional life.  Finally, I think that by keeping this mindset, I am going to leverage more on my Ross classmates and learn the most during my last MBA year.

Thinking about China Market Size

China market is attractive to many global industry leaders. However, during my internship, it became clear that not all customers in different regions can afford quality goods and services. So why is China market attractive to those multi-national companies? For example, the customers we visited in Beijing and Shanghai have a higher disposable income level, and the demand for high quality goods is strong, even the foreign brand products are expensive considering the costly R & D expense and all taxes during the import. We saw that the products purchased every day by the customers are in the mainstream catalog in the US market, keeping pace with the global technology update. Although it is still rare to observe cutting-edge products here, it is understandable considering those new technologies did not originate in local markets and the adoption will take some time. However, China market is huge and definitely segmented. When we visited the Tire 2 cities, things changed. The popular products are often one generation or two older. The customers are quite price-sensitive. The distributors are seeking not the best products, but cheap ones that can just do the same job. From our observation, it can be concluded that there are three types of markets co-existing in China. One is high-end, one is middle-end and the last is low-end. With a big population and great difference of social development between regions, business people can find in China market similar to developed countries, market of medium profit potentials and market of poor countries. Although only high-end market in Tier 1 cities are the targets for global players and they already penetrated these market quite well, the growing medium market is quite attractive to them as well. They can develop medium quality products with better price to explore the market now, and also build brand names and roll out high quality products when this market matures in the future. This promising medium market of high volume should be the shining point that attracts global companies.

Final Presentations, Client Deliverables, Internal/External Networking

Hello all,

Coming up to my last 2 weeks I have 2 major items to complete to round out my internship experience. Each intern is expected to present a year end presentation to their peers, as well as other full time Booz employees from their local office on Friday August 3rd. Forutnately the presentation is a low pressure environment, and is meant to be fun. The most valuable take away I will enjoy from the presentations, is that I will get to see what my 12 other intern peers (from the chicago office) worked on their entire summer. The 2nd major item was highlighted in my year end assessment, which is I needed more analytical experience (I may expand more on this in the next post).

The presentation itself is 5-8 power point slides, highlights the key take aways, learnings, and my contirbutions to the team and project. It also highlights the fun take aways outside of the actual work experience that each person experienced (in my case my 5:50am golf match with a senior partner, and the night I hung out with Shaq in the hotel lobby).

After 8 weeks I feel like I have a strong handle on the company culture in regards to the Chicago and Boston offices. And the reason I specify the office, is that I feel the culture and community of your city will have a profound impact on the people.

Chicago: Is a large office with a small town feel. There are over 200+ employees, but within the office there are several "communities" based upon industry practices. Whether those practices be IT, Financial Services, Engineered Product Services, CPG, etc each group has it's own network. And if you are considering a consulting career, this is a significant differntiator at Booz. Booz does not offer the generalist approach to consulting. Rather it provides a soft alignment model that has it's pros and cons. If you feel already have an idea about your passions (i.e., you love SOAP!!! ..CPG), even if you don't have experience in that field, I highly encourage you to consider Booz & Co. By joining the CPG practice you can ensure that your early experiences will be focused on that practice, and thus devleop your expertise earlier in your career.

This accelerated development is reflected in culture of the organization. So back off my tangeant, back to Chicago. The people are extremely friendly, and helpful. On Friday's in the office I have never felt intimidated to introduce myself to a Partner, Principal or other senior member to learn more about their practice. The challenge is, they are quite busy, and you may need to schedule time with their admins.

As this business (Consulting) follows an apprenticeship model, that is reflected at all levels throughout the organization. Every consultant was once a junior person who didn't know how to write a slide, present to a client, or manage a Vlookup function. They all learned on the job, particularly through trial and error and the support of their peers/mentors. Without that support, and formal/informal training, this business does not work. Once you get into the firm (and likely any other firm), it is in the best interest of everyone involved to ensure you are succesful. And that has been apparent throughout my entire summer. A great example is my job manager, entered booz with little to no experience using Excel. 5 years later he is one of the Excel rock stars who leads begineer and advanced internal training. He did not take any formal courses, rather learned by trial and error and support of his mentors.

A last point on Chicago, I love the city. For a big city life, the prices are much cheaper than others (New York, London, Paris, Toronto (my home town), and the space is much larger. I've never seen a downtown with such wide streets. As such, people in general are happier. I feel there is less stress to life in Chicago. People afford a higher quality of life with less money and it's reflected in the smiles and attitude.

A few words on the culture in Boston. Awesome city, incredibly small considering it's history and successes (do they ever lose in sports?!?!). The office itself is very small. Less than 15 people at any time (15 is generous), and the office essentially revolves around 1 or 2 clients. I feel it's a great place to work and learn from a project perspective, but because it is so small I don't think I would learn as much from a Booz culture perspective. In addition my networking opportunities are limited versus a larger office.

The counter to that may be with less people, there is less competition to stand out?  But that is a factor you need to consider when choosing your home office

That's all for now

Signing off
Omair

"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."

They say that all good things come to an end – such an apt description to describe the end to my summer internship. Now that my final presentation’s done and dusted, I’m currently wrapping up my other white paper (yes, overachieving interns work on two projects) and basically tying up loose ends in my final week at Amazon. It’s been an intense two weeks reviewing and revising the white paper that was up for presentation to my VP; I’m sure I’ve got 90% of the content indelibly burnt into my brain now.

Nonetheless, it’s over and now I’ve got a few weeks of downtime to get my belongings shipped back to Ann Arbor and travel back home to catch up with family and friends before semester starts afresh. While I’m looking forward to the rest, it’s a bittersweet moment as everyone heads off in their separate directions at the end of the internship period. I’ve made great friends from different schools and have truly enjoyed being able to discover Amazon and Seattle with such an amazing crew. Even now, plans are afoot to organize a catch-up session down the road in a better place. I hear Miami is really nice in the spring…

You might ask at this point, how have you been spending your last few weeks in Seattle? Well, glad you asked! It’s been a whirlwind of good Seattle food, hiking up Mount Rainier, pigging out on dim sum in Vancouver, gawking at supercars at the local Cars & Coffee gathering, grilling burgers on the rooftop on a balmy summer evening, hunting down the best dessert in Seattle (El Diablo, Tango Restaurant & Lounge), getting strafed by F-18s while working, watching dogs leap 20 feet into a pool and listening to the British rock band The Fixx play during my lunch hour. So yes, it’s been a REALLY boring summer.

Reflecting back on my Amazon experience, I can say that I’ve been very fortunate to be given the opportunity to work with a truly great firm and some amazing colleagues. We’ve all been assigned business-impacting projects with ownership over our work whilst being given lots of support throughout the summer. This truly exemplifies the entrepreneurial and fast-growing nature of the firm and shows how Amazon stands apart from its rivals. It’s been a great learning experience over the past 11 weeks and I have renewed faith in Bezos’ vision in the firm.

Finally, before I bid you all farewell, do check out the Kindle Fire if you’re in the market for a well-priced tablet with an excellent supporting ecosystem of content and apps. It offers more than 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, books, magazines, apps and games, as well as free storage of Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync for books and movies, a 14.6 ounce design that's easy to hold with one hand, a vibrant color touch screen, a powerful dual-core processor – all for only $199. To learn more about Kindle Fire, visit www.amazon.com/kindlefire.

Till next time, ciao.

This is what $30 million looks like (250 GTO)

This is what a British rock band looks like (The Fixx)

This is what the best dessert in Seattle looks like (El Diablo)

This is what the Sound of Music looks like (Mt. Rainier hike)

This is what a heart attack looks like (Fried Snickers)

This is what... ah, if you don't get this, then you're just not techie enough.

Powerpointing away..

Hey folks!

Time has just flown by- I'm already in week 10 of my internship- 2 more to go..

While the excitement of going back to Ann Arbor and seeing my friends is immense, I am also very sad- since I had such a great time here in Seattle, with the MBA interns from the other B-schools and at Microsoft. I am in the process of developing my final presentation(s) and writing out a white paper documenting all my work.

I will be presenting to three types of audiences:
1) Exec: CFO, GM and Directors
2) Revenue Finance Group consisting of analysts, managers and senior managers
3) Directors from other departments who are interested in the topic of my project

As I refine the individual slide decks for each of these presentations, I am extremely cautious about my audience, the key messages I want to leave with each group and the level of depth/ complexity I want to go into. My mentor has been extremely supportive in providing me feedback on my slides do far. One thing that has really helped me is that from the beginning of my internship, I used Powerpoint slides as a tool to run meetings and gather information. While it consumed a lot of time, it also helped me develop a story as my project progressed and now I am completely comfortable with the story-line for my final presentation.

Creation of the slide deck early helped me in another way as well- as I met with business partners and other team mates for their inputs on my project, I also got their views on the way I visualized the slides. Believe me, I have changed every slide in my deck atleast 7-8 times now. This makes me extremely comfortable now that any audience, no matter how different, will be able to understand the slides as they incorporate the feedback of so many people.

As you can tell, I am dreaming powerpoint right now...and am proud to be working for the company that developed this great tool- Powerpoint! I am also super excited about the new Office 2013- I have had a chance to test it (or dogfood it in Microsoft terms) and it was far beyond my expectations! So watch out for this great product! You can see the customer preview on the site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

Now back to slide number......:)

Final Presentation

It is the second last week of my internship. And I just finished my summer final presentation. It is not used to judge whether we could get a return offer or not. It is just a way to showcase what we have done and what we have learned. Each interns has 15 minutes to do the presentation and followed by 5 minutes Q&A. Most interns only worked on 1 project, but I have worked on 3 short ones. So I presentation went a bit longer. Even though I didn’t have much time to practice my presentation, I still felt very confident when I was standing in front of the group. I guess the business school life and the consulting experience have really prepared me for thisJ. I also feel that it is very helpful if you could make the presentation funny and interesting. It will help the audience to concentrate to the presentation.

I did learn a lot from my summer experience.  I learnt that consulting is about details. Yes, you do need to solve the problem, but at the same time you should make everything as perfect as you can. Consulting is about building your brand and network. In a consulting firm, one is always looking for next project to work on.  You need to make yourself known to others. You need to build you reputations in the project you worked on.  There are always people willing to help you, but you are your own master.  Last but not least, consulting is about expertise. Almost every project you work on is either a new topic or even a new industry. To really solve clients’ problem, you will need to do extensive researches on the topic even before working on the project and continue improving you knowledge along the way.

Last week, final thoughts

It is a little crazy to think the last week of my internship is upon me. Five days from now I’ll be on the other side of the world exploring the mysteries of China with a group of my fellow MBAs. But before that a lot needs to happen – my final presentation, wrapping up my projects, final lunches and drinks with my team and fellow summer associate, cleaning, packing,… - the to do list seems to go on and on.

The fact my summer is coming to a close means fall and full-time recruiting are right around the corner. So it is reflection time. I used to work and live in New York City before business school – the Greatest City in the World as New Yorkers modestly call it. And I loved it! My goal was to go back there for the summer but it didn’t quite work out. I gave Chicago a try and I have to say that although I wasn’t very enthusiastic at the beginning I’ve been really pleasantly surprised. It is a beautiful city – a greener, cleaner, less packed version of New York. There are tons of great restaurants and a lot of neighborhoods that have a unique character. And there are tons of outdoors events – just this weekend the city is full of visitors from all over the country (and even abroad) who are here for Lollapalooza (or Lola as the locals lovingly call it) – an annual music festival that brings in performers from all over the world. All in all, I have really enjoyed it here.

So I started asking myself – do I really want to go back to New York or should I give Chicago a try full time. I have been thinking about that for the past few weeks, I’ve passed through a couple of stages and the jury is still not out on it. But I think this summer has once again made me realize how important it is to be open to new experiences and try to make the best out of any situation because when you do so previously unimagined possibilities open for you.

So long and thanks for the fish tacos.

My last week was more hectic than I wanted it to be, with the final presentation just a couple of days before the end date which led to some serious late night, crunch time work. Less time to polish up my deliverables any further; I had to concentrate on documenting everything and wrap up my last initiatives on the job.

Some food for thought for future interns:

• Use the time to figure out whether the work-life balance is right for you.
• Start networking early.
• Allow yourself time to understand the culture, the people and the project.

My internship is now finally over and I'll be going home in only a day from now. I'll be packing some Dell swag and a couple of small mementos, but mainly fond memories. If only I could pack a few fresh tacos, too! Austin was a great companion and will be missed. Not feeling too reflective at the moment, just looking forward to the trip back home.

So long and thanks for reading!

Last week

Last weekend in New York City, and last week of internship. Just this past week, all the interns gave our final presentation in front of 5 managing directors. We were given a specific company and had to make a pitch to the company based on what we think is the best strategy for them. The presentation actually turned out to be harder than I thought. Everyone in the intern pool was assigned into random groups, and that made meeting up really difficult. I work "early" hours compared to other interns who cover industries, and so, the other interns would tend to schedule meetings late at night and were prepared to stay till 4am since they could get in at 9am, while I have to get in at 7am. Aside from logistics, we also found out that not many interns have the technical knowledge needed. And it was extremely challenging to juggle the presentation with daily work demands; we could be meeting for 5 minutes and someone would get a call to work on something immediately. Overall, it was a mad scramble to pull the pitch together, but all of us managed to complete it and my group was pretty confident and proud of our pitch.

Looking back, every week was very different and very challenging. Everytime I start to get the hang of a certain project, a new project comes up and I have to pick up new skills and knowledge again. It was stressful at first, but I got use to having curve balls thrown at me constantly, and I stop getting all tensed up when something new comes up. It has been a very dynamic 9 weeks, lots of pressure to perform, lots of expectations, but that's what makes this industry so interesting. I definitely learned a lot about this industry - the culture, the work, the politics, etc. Even though it has been a very tough 9 weeks, I also like that I have been pushed to my limits and I've proved to myself that I could handle a high stress environment. I've met so many intelligent and extremely hard working individuals at work, and people that I meet in the industry never fails to impress me. The hours may be long, and I don't get much of a social life, but the dynamics of this industry never fail to attract me, and I will still choose to work in investment banking.

8 weeks into internship

As my internship continues, I have started implementation of my initiatives – this past couple of weeks have been quite insightful into how to run effective meetings, get consensus, close feedback loops and tie loose ends. As I continue implementation of my initiatives my final presentation date too has been scheduled and it is in a couple of weeks – this is my moment to shine and get visibility to the senior leaders within my group. I feel great and at the same time, there is a huge adrenaline rush as I begin preparing for the final presentation, creating slides, doing dry-runs. My team mates have been quite supportive and I cannot believe that in less than 4 weeks, my internship would have ended!

On a separate note, the intern group is having a lot of fun – we have been doing several activities, both fun and educational but most importantly, a great way to get immersed in the company’s culture.  Yesterday, we organized a mini-Ross Googler lunch and it was great meeting some Ross alumni who are now working at Google – get to learn about their experiences and get tips on how to do really well in the internship.

On the personal front, evenings have been great – meeting up with friends, going to movies, planning trips – it has just been fantastic! Ross interns in the bay area also have been getting together quite often through events organized at people’s homes – a couple of weeks back we had a potluck at a friend’s place and it was great reconnecting with fellow Rossers who are working in different companies and connecting with interns from other schools. Thanks to all the folks who have hosted events at their places.

As my internship comes to an end, I feel happy to have created impact thus far and I am looking forward to starting school in September.

7 weeks into internship

At the beginning of this summer, financial service industry was a completely new area for me. In the past 7 weeks, through working and attending summer speaker series, I have learned so much about the industry. Digitization and urbanization are two of the biggest trends impacting people’s life. Financial service industry has certainly evolved around these topics as well. The whole industry has invested billions of dollars to develop technologies that provide better, faster and cheaper financial services. Financial institutions will continue making investments in technology in the future, and technology will continue shaping the industry.

Few years ago, Citi redirect its strategy to promote responsible finance and to focus on its core business. Through my work at Citi tax, I can certainly feel these changes going through the whole organization. There were many successful spin-off transactions during the last 2 years. They are part of the execution of Citi’s strategy to get out of the areas that are not in line with the company's strategy so that we can focus on customer and services related business. These spin-off transactions are also a result of higher liquidation and capital requirement in financial service industry after the 2007 financial crisis. Banks started to act more conservatively, and authorities are trying to figure out better ways to guide the industry.

In terms of company culture, Citi promotes diversity and encourage employees to gain exposures by taking positions in different functions, products and regions. I was amazed by the level of mobility and the amount of transitions people could make within Citi. Lots of people that I have talked to have taken advantage of Citi’s global representation by taking international rotations. Their exposure to different circumstances and challenges not only provide them the full-picture view of the organization, but also enable them to bring the best practice together, and come up with innovative ideas.

It was an awesome experience!

Hey guys… here I come, for every beginning there must be an end. It was an awesome experience having this opportunity to learn what I couldn’t have learnt in the classroom regarding hi- tech industry. I was able to build on my existing skills while contributing globally to Dell’s growth.
The feedback from my manager after my ten-minutes final presentation to the executives on my 11-weeks summer project, was a reflection of my performances, as I quote “solid impression…Patrick….good speed and tone…congrats…you grow under pressure”!  Well I wouldn’t expect anything less than that from him because in last two weeks to the final presentation, the course of my project changed more than four times which put me under intensive pressure. This was no one’s fault but the complexity of the project and dynamic nature of the industry.
This summer project has offered me more than enough opportunities to learn beyond my imagination. I was able to leverage my interpersonal skill to grow my network within Dell and hi-tech industry at large. I have tremendously built on my ability to collaborate with team in order to get my assignment done at as when due. Working under pressure has been the order of the day for the past ten weeks, which has greatly informed my fast learning and growing ability. Also I have been able to take advantage of the fortnightly project update presentations to develop my power point knowledge and presentation skill.
I would love to mention what I would have done differently, considering the short period of summer project; probably I should have pushed my manager to narrow down my project scope from the beginning which could have given me ample time to be deeper in a particular area.
However, it was great working with awesome people at Dell.

A Great Learning Experience

After nearly one month of interning, I really learned a lot from it. Healthcare industry is a totally different area for me, although I am interested in it for a time. During the internship, I met the doctors and nurses in person, watch operations carried out in the operation rooms, and observed the patients during all the time. Hospital’s mysterious feeling was disappearing day by day when I watched all kinds of routine work happened in it. Surgeons, who I used to think were super smart and whose jobs were too complicated for common people to understand, became common too. Their work is comprised from detailed knowledge of human bodies, carefulness and attention, and long-time training for more accuracy and efficiency. However, I was still moved by their spirit of professionalism when they cared every small thing related to potential danger to the patients’ health. When you see them washing their hands so thoroughly before operation, or disinfecting patients’ body so carefully, you can feel the responsibility in their hearts. Through the internship experience in this summer, I witnessed something precious that people do not care for the sake of money.

Another knowledge I obtained from the project so far is a deeper understanding of market potentials. I used to put focus on the maturity level of a market, thinking that only developed market could afford high margin goods and hold great profit potentials. However, during market research and discussion, I found market growth rate can be another standard for evaluating a market, even though the market is relatively new. Considering the growth aspect of a market would provide a more comprehensive view of the market for a long time. I have met with real examples of such views these days. When two comparable competitors entered into the same market, one cultivated its brand and sales force early on even the market was a small one; the other was just unwilling to invest more resources than the profit the market could bring then. However, after around 10 years, the first player enjoyed a much more solid market share while the other one is working very hard to catch up.

The finale

12 weeks….it is indeed amazing how time flies.  In 12 weeks the sun has risen and set 84 times, new friends have been made and colleagues have left the company.

My final presentation  to the team is on Tuesday. Here I will brief my team on the three projects I completed, giving a synopsis and producing a transition document.  My presentation will also include a list of thank yous to various individuals without whom  I would not have  been able to get up to speed.

As I reflect on my internship, I feel this has been a very eventful journey – working in the tech industry has made me appreciate the culture, the work –life balance and also the kinds of work available if you are not a hardware/software engineer.  Exposure to the job fluidity within the industry is also a nice experience……a lot of Creative Destruction taking place in the valley – exit opportunities and entry opportunities are many. I have improved several skillsets – presentation and analytical among them.

Having more fun while it lasts….is what I would encourage everyone to do so.  You will not realize how time flies. I started attending the bay area Ross Intern meet ups held every weekend and it was fabulous.  We all had similar experiences across firms/companies.  We are all also hoping that we get offers for full time positions but getting full time offers depends on several things at once – head count projections, internship performance, reviews etc.  I also recommend building your network within the company and with fellow interns in other companies as it will help improve your general knowledge about the tech industry.    Also it is important to participate in intra company events, so that you are able to greater appreciate the culture of the company.

My final notes: Work diligently, Network Broadly and Appreciate fully!

Group project in New York

An important part of our summer internship program at Citi is this two-week group project in New York. All associates working for different business functions in commercial banking are pre-assigned to groups of 6 to 8 people to solve a real business case, come up with recommendations and present them to senior leaders at the end. It’s essentially a five-day internal consulting project designed to evaluate our performance in leadership, business acumen and teamwork spirits. It was an intense and highly pressured project, which covers five markets in three different continents, serving over 10 million potential customers.

After this group project, my internship has only two weeks left. Apart from saying time flies, all of the interns that I met in New York, including myself are anxiously waiting to see if we will get return offers with Citibank. Therefore, every team member is working really hard together, trying to come up with some brilliant business ideas that can solve the real business cases for the bank. In earlier this week, summer interns from all business functions and all study programs were gathered at the Bank’s New York headquarter for the speech delivered by Vikrum Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup. In his speech, Mr Pandit talked about the importance of integrity in the world of finance and Citi’s transition to more transparent and responsible lending since he took the helm during the global financial crisis. The conference room was filled with over 600 summer interns, both undergraduate and graduate students from all the top business schools around the country. It was a great event in the summer.

Besides work, New York is always a great place to be in terms of social life and nice food. Talking about food, I arrived just in time for the New York restaurant week, which lasts for three weeks with about 100 participating restaurants. I went out several times with my fellow summer classmate to some nice restaurants in New York and had some really good time there. Lastly, I just hope that our team presentation in front of some very senior people in Citi goes well next week. Fingers crossed.

Diversity, Exposure, Cooperation and Work-life balance.. Loving NYC

Hello friends. This was my 7^th week , one more week down in my internship at Citibank., so I have 3 more to go. This was a veeeeeery busy week, for me that I really care about work life balance, I can say that the past days were the only in which I really had to stay late. This week was about working in a group project, which basically is solving a business issue for a division that is not familiar to the team, and working with 7 people. It may sound easy but it wasn’t. The big challenge was to deal with so many people in this team, so I had to go back to my MO classes and take many useful tips. 

Another thing that happened this week, was our speaker series with Vikram Pandit Citi’s CEO. Needless to say that it was great, very smart guy who was born in India, and very down to earth, even charismatic. Which takes me to the first topic of today, the company culture. Which has three major components.  First, diversity across divisions and business units. It is very natural to see people from everywhere interacting with each other. Which make sense as they are know as the global bank. Citi is not the biggest bank in US, nor in the world, but is the only bank that has presence in more than 180 countries. Hence, diversity plays a critical role and you see this in all different levels. A CEO who is from India, another who is from Mexico,  directors from UK, Venezuela, Italy,  China, and you name it. For me it has worked very well, as being international student, you feel that you are in a very open space where they are willing to promote and develop people from outside of US. 

Another important component of Citi’s culture, is it openness with senior management.  This speaker series with our CEO is only a good example, but we’ve had had this type of thing with other very senior leaders along the summer internship. Twice per week to be more precise.  This exposure not only has helped to understand other areas of the organization, but also to get worthwhile tips about personal and professional development. I found this very relevant, as in my previous work someone told me once. “In a company it is not only about delivering and working hard, you have to develop leadership behaviors and get exposure from senior levels” The latter helps not only to learn, but sometimes it may connect you with someone who share your background.  Another aspect that I have enjoyed so far, is the cooperative culture. It is important to note that I work in consumer banking, whose culture may vary from Investment Banking and Sales & Trading. Departments that are also part of Citi, but that require more daily hours, which changes the dynamic of the work. 

Well, as I was saying, in consumer banking it is very common to work in cross-functional teams, and being evaluated by your pers. This two things push the cooperation among team-members, as you know that everyone needs from everyone, and that your rating or the decision of hire or not hire will depend on the evaluation of your teammates. I enjoy working and interacting with people, so it works for me. However, it may be people who like more the individual work. But as I said, there is no good or bad, the only important thing is to understand, and look for the right fit. 

So far, I have had a great experience at Citi, and I love that they foster these three things on Citi’s culture: Diversity, openness with senior leaders, and cooperative teamwork. And probably, I will add another component that creates a good environment, good work-life balance. Here In NYC I ‘ve had the opportunity to read, work out, work, and go out on a daily basis. Which at least for me, is a great experience. This is it for now; I hope you have enjoyed my stories so far; I will be posting soon my last one. See you until then.

Miguel