Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

First Weeks Working in Israel

My name is Jacob Spitz, and I am a rising junior undergraduate student at Babson College, concentrating in Finance. I am spending this summer in Tel Aviv, Israel, interning for Deloitte in the M&A and Business Development division. This is my first time in Israel, and I am greatly enjoying it so far. I arrived in Israel about two weeks before my internship to explore the country prior to working. Throughout those two weeks, I traveled across most of the country, from Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee to Tel Aviv and Old Jaffa to the Negev Desert and Masada and to Jerusalem and the Western Wall. My two weeks were spent gaining familiarity with this new place in which I will be spending the next two months.

In Tel Aviv, the location where I am working is called Azrieli Center (pictured below). Azrieli Center is a complex of three skyscrapers with a shopping mall at the base of the Center. The Azrieli Center Mall is one of the largest shopping malls in Israel. Each of the three towers is a different shape: a circle, a square, and a triangle. The circular tower is the tallest of the three, and it is the second tallest building in Israel. I am working in the triangular tower during the summer.

Looking back on the first two weeks of my internship, I have already recognized several differences between American and Israeli work culture. First and foremost, the work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday is considered the weekend in Israel, and most stores are closed on Saturday. Working on Sundays certainly takes some time to get used to. Another difference between American and Israeli work culture is how much more casual and less bureaucratic the atmosphere is in Israeli businesses than American businesses. Additionally, the work attire is a lot more casual as well. Polo shirts are fairly common work attire, and dress shirts are worn in more formal industries; suits are almost absent during my commute to work.

Azrieli_Towers