My name is Tela Wittig, and I am a junior Diplomacy and International Relations student. I have taken a convoluted path to my current internship and career field, changing my focus from international criminal law and law enforcement to international business. It was through this journey that I came to intern at CressCap Investment Research.
CressCap is a small, innovative company that has essentially automated many of the functions of a financial analyst through fractal analyses of stocks’ fundamentals. Although investment research is considered far removed from the international relations education I received, my assignments have been shockingly compatible with my skillset. I recall coming into the office for my second interview as well as my first opportunity to meet with the whole team. They asked me several questions about how I had found out about the internship and why I had decided to follow through with the application. Through these questions, it was clear that they were beating around the point that I had no finance, sales, or programming experience – the skills most natural to FinTech startups.
My final interview was with the COO who asked me outright why I wanted to work at CressCap and what I wanted out of this experience. I answered without hesitation that I had made a commitment to moving into the private sector and I intended to learn. Then we went through the CressCap website, and I explained the grammar and style changes I thought would improve their external image. I suppose it’s just lucky that I walked into a group of people who are invested enough in their business that they appreciate that kind of criticism from an interviewee, but the chance I took paid off. Since then, I have found the office to be a great place for expressing myself and feeling heard.
Today, I am three months into my first experience in finance. My passion for the finance industry has grown, and my new knowledge has helped me identify and express what I want to do in my professional career. I am working hard to learn all that I can about running a business, including sitting in on meetings, asking questions, and working within our systems. Moreover, while learning new skills, I have also come to realize that there are many aspects of my international relations education that I can maintain as I move farther into my finance career.
In the finance sector, it turns out that reading, writing, and language skills are key. This has worked to my advantage in many ways. My education in Diplomacy and International Relations helped me improve my writing and analytical skills. In addition, I worked as an English writing and grammar tutor on the Seton Hall campus. These experiences helped me realize my love for the English language and further advance and improve my Chinese language education. I know now that I can pursue each of these subjects in conjunction with finance and make myself indispensable by possessing coveted language skills and expertise. As a result, I was chosen to work with CressCap’s CEO to write weekly contributor articles for Forbes.com with top and bottom international stock picks using our platform’s analysis. In this way, CressCap has been an exceptional experience because it has allowed me to tailor my unique skillset to the tasks at hand. This has brought all of my passions together to create something I really love to do, which is an exceptional opportunity at 20 years old. I highly recommend the internship for students who want to learn about finance from the ground-up and increase their marketability in the private sector.
