Reflection
So it has been almost 3 weeks since I have finished my internship with deVere USA in New York, and I would like to use this blog post as a reflection of my experience. For 2 months I have worked as a Summer Investment Advisor directly working under the Senior Investment Advisor of the company. My main task was to use excel to build a financial model/scenario of what the outcome of the client’s investment will look like, and using these data and the track record of our firm and the partner companies and include it in the PowerPoint presentation to provide to the client. As a sub-task, I also had to look for potential clients through LinkedIn (using the criteria search) and trying to find their contact information (e-mail, phone number) so that I can have my boss reach out to them. Once my duties were clarified, my goals were as follows
- Increase the conversion rate (The number of clients transferring their pension fund to a product the company offered)
- Communicate with my boss actively for potential assignments to new projects
- Feed more names/contacts to my boss.
Looking back, I feel like I have done a pretty well in terms of these goals. I was able to increase the conversion rate using my PowerPoint materials from 60% to 80%, received an offer to work for a side business of my boss. One thing I was not really able to accomplish was feeding more names/contact information to my boss. It was the first time for me to actually look for potential clients and execute a very sales-oriented task so I struggled in this area. But since, sales is an aspect of business that is required in any industries, it was good that I realised I need to improve on this area. Another area, I personally regret is not acting with more independence. When I say independence, I mean exceeding people’s expectations by doing new things. I feel like I was not able to contribute to the firm in a new way, and wish I spent more time on coming up with ways. However, at the same time, if I focused on new ideas, I probably was not able to increase the sales of the firm as much so it is a debatable topic.
Overall, I had a great experience in New York and was able to narrow down what I really wanted to do in the future.