JSOM Internship Experience
JSOM Internship Experience
This past year I interned at PRO Unlimited onsite Goldman Sachs as a tax analyst in the Mutual Funds department. I helped with several different tasks; quarterly diversification tests, analyzing shareholder investment trends, and computing state tax due. My experience at this internship heavily pertained to my education in school and allowed me to better understand and apply the material learned in class to my real-world experience at Goldman.
I learned two vital skills from my internship, the first being soft skills. Goldman was my first real job and it taught me a lot about how to interact in a professional environment: both online and in real life. Before Goldman, I did not know there was specific etiquette in the workplace, especially in the way one communicates in a professional workplace (emailing, IM’ing, talking to your manager and coworkers). Working here taught me how to conduct myself professionally. What not to say, how to act, etc. This valuable skill is one I know will help me long term.
The other most valuable skill, of course, was the experience itself. I learned the ins and outs of mutual funds – what they are, why they’re a good investment idea, who usually invests in them, and was able to apply all the knowledge I learned in the classroom to the tasks I did in the workplace. One of my main responsibilities at GS was diversification tests for our mutual funds. What sets mutual funds apart from other investments is that mutual funds are diversified. The IRS requires quarterly diversification tests on each mutual fund to ensure the fund’s securities are diversified and to ensure the fund isn’t too heavily invested in any one security – this was my responsibility. This was done by dividing each issuing entity’s investment by the total assets in the fund to ensure no security has more than a 5% investment. The process involved in computing the total assets for the fund consisted of separating all the derivatives in the fund and evaluating those by GS standards. This taught me a lot about the different derivatives and how they are evaluated in a real firm. I have learned about futures, forwards, spots, options, etc in my classes but I was able to learn more about them by actually separating them within a fund and got a better understanding of them. Although I performed many tasks throughout my time here, my main one was diversification testing. All the other tasks gave me a better understanding of the financial make up of any one mutual fund and a basic understanding of the tax treatment for a mutual fund.
Overall, this experience was very rewarding to me. Not only did I learn about the inner workings of the financial industry and tax, but I got to network and build relationships, as well as hone my excel skills, which I know will come in handy as a Finance student.
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