Hi Camilla! Thank you for taking time to speak with Investment Society today. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m Camilla. I’m a senior. I’m an Economics major and a Chinese minor. I'm from the Washington DC area. After graduation, I will be working in banking.
What did your day-to-day look like at HSBC? What was the recruitment process like for the Corporate Banking Analyst Summer Program?
I can start with the recruitment process. It started in the fall semester. There was the on-campus Career Fair, and some representatives from the bank were at the Career Fair. I spoke to them there, submitted the applications, had an interview on campus, and then I was invited to a final round ‘Super Day’ interview down at the New York office a few weeks later. The Superday was a few hours long, a mixture of technical and scenario-based questions. After the interview, I received an internship offer shortly after. All in all, I think it was a pretty standard recruitment process compared to other banks and financial firms.
The internship was virtual last summer because of the pandemic, so I was interning from home. I was placed on a sector team within corporate banking. The day-to-day — it varied a lot depending on what was going on with the team, but every day all the interns, we had financial training, which included basic accounting, basic financial modeling, how to read financial statements, some basic Excel. The training was very useful. I learned a lot that way. I also worked with my team. We had team meetings, and I helped out with different projects — whether it be doing research on the industry, reading credit reports of different companies and writing info on that, helping out with different tasks for transactions. I also had an intern project. Those are most of my main tasks.
In addition, there were networking events, meetings with my team to hear what colleagues are working on, coffee chats with other departments. We also had a good amount of intern events as an intern class to get to know each other and learn about the different parts of the bank.
What is the most important thing that you learned from your position at HSBC?
I think that as an intern, being exposed to all the different operations at such a large global bank was one of my favorite parts of the internship. HSBC and a lot of the other big banks operate in a lot of business lines within finance, so they have investment banking, commercial banking, sales and trading, wealth management. I think, as an intern, being able to be exposed to all those different operations and see how they all work, how they work with each other, how they work with the clients was one of the most important takeaways.
I think also working many different projects and working very closely with my team, learning about their career and about what they do. It was all very eye-opening, and I’m excited to return!
What skills or qualities do you think are necessary to succeed in the role you were in?
I think taking initiative is a very good quality to have and not being afraid to ask questions. I think being curious is very important as well. If there's a topic you hear about — maybe from a coworker working on a project that you find very interesting — asking your coworker some questions about it, trying to see if you can get involved is great.
As an intern, at any company, you're put in a really unique position. You're only there for a short amount of time, so to make the best out of your time there, try to be exposed to as many different departments, as many different projects as possible to learn about and see what you are interested in, can all help you build a potential career in the area.
Also, I think also learning to be on a team is quite valuable. A lot of projects were working with other departments, so collaboration and clear communication was also very important.
How did you spend your previous summers? How was the transition into the finance industry given your previous summer internship experiences?
I had done an internship in finance before at an investment advisory company so I did have a little bit of exposure to equity research, looking at financial statements of a company, seeing how the market works, so I had a little bit of exposure, but I had never interned in banking.
I took finance at MIT before, those classes are very helpful. Taking classes in finance, accounting, those really developed my interest in the industry, and the technical skills, but I think doing the internship in itself was a great way to be exposed to some things you learned in class and it's a great way to see if you're interested in pursuing a long-term career in the industry.
What activities would you recommend students who are interested in finance do? What experiences students should expose themselves to?
This is a good question as well. I would say for Wellesley students, I would definitely encourage to cross-register at MIT. There are a lot of great courses there that can be really hands-on in finance, accounting, and general business. A little bit closer to home on Wellesley’s campus, there's a lot of great clubs, like Investment Society, Career Education. There's a lot of different events that bring back alumni and hearing alumni panels is very useful. Attending a lot of different events, even say like summer internship panels from current Wellesley students, seniors or juniors, is good, to be exposed to different experiences and to think if you'd be interested in that. I would also say trying to follow the news of what's going on in the economy and in the market once a day or once every few days, just reading some of the top headlines to make sure you're aware of what's going on and to have that in the back of your mind is very useful. I think just trying to get exposed early on would be good, and if you want to just start very simple, just reading some financial literature, like the different news articles, is a very easy way to start and see where the market is at.
If you're an underclassman, I would definitely encourage to just attend some of the different recruiting events in the fall, even if you're still too young to apply, just to see what's out there so you can look ahead to future years or to see if you're interested in general and the different companies and the different lines of industry.
Is there any other advice that you would like to share?
I would say, while being a student, just trying to be exposed to as many different things as possible. If you have an interest, don't be afraid to go for it. If you're presented with an opportunity—something you don't think you'd be interested in but you're not really sure if something catches your attention—just trying to pursue it to the best that you can, whether that be a class or a club or an internship or some sort of research opportunity.
One more thing, just trying to get involved with a lot of different finance clubs and the different student clubs on campus. They are generally a great source of community and being able to meet other students with similar interests is very useful. When you're going through recruiting or you want to learn more about a topic, it's a great first place to start and talk to other students who probably would have the same question and the same interests as you, and then you can build off from there.
Lastly, what is a great book that you’ve read recently?
Also related to finance, but there's a lot of books if you're interested in getting into the weeds of day to day life in the industry. If you're interested in what life in finance is like, there's a lot of classic books like Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. I started reading that over the break! For fun, I read Little Women last year, which is one of my favorite books. That was a good story. A fun fact outside of reading, outside of the finance—for fun, I'm on the ski team at Wellesley. That's probably one of my favorite things to do on campus.
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