Financial Representative Intern

I initially came across Northwestern Mutual at a career fair at my university while I was searching for internships. While Northwestern Mutual has a "home office" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin most of their operations take place at their "field offices" throughout the country. Generally, an average sized city can have 3-5 offices in the network. Upon turning in a resume with them I was contacted two days later by a recruiter at the office closest to where I lived and asked to come in for an interview. My initial interview was with the recruiter and was more of an initial screening and time to get to know one another. Apart from the recruiter telling me about Northwestern Mutual and how the internship would work the recruiter asked general questions related to my hobbies, academics, career interests, etc. Upon completing the first interview I then interviewed two weeks later with the College Unit Director who asked me more in depth questions and also provided me with a task. That task was to contact 10 people that I know and conduct a short survey with them concerning their view of financial planning. The exercise was not to collect data rather to see if I could call on people in that manner. I had my third and final interview a week later in which I brought back the completed surveys and spoke with another individual who was a full time financial representative and also was the previous College Unit Director. (The CUD position is generally rotated every few years.) The interview process was rather easy but was a good process for what they were looking for and how they searched for new interns. All the people that I have dealt with (50 or 60) at Northwestern Mutual have been very nice and down to earth but they do expect you to work very hard. The hardest part of the job for either a full time financial representative or a financial representative intern is phoning people to try to build your client base. If you can't deal with rejection or convulse at the thought of calling people in this manner then this career is probably not for you. If you don't mind it though then it can be an exceptionally rewarding and relatively easy career. Some final thoughts are: the interviews took 45 minutes to 1 hour each, be natural and personable in the interviews (they aren't looking for quantitative mental giants they're looking for strong communicators), the interview content does not really require much preparation outside of familiarizing yourself with the basics of the company and coming professionally dressed and acting in an equally professional manner. Above all tell the truth and be honest with yourself! The internship and career are not for everyone.