WSO Podcast | E195: WSO's Finance Research Internship | Weekly Meetup #1
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In this episode, I'll be chatting with WSO's new finance research intern team and answering specific questions about the internship itself, career planning and more.
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WSO Podcast Episode 195 Transcripts:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and Chief Monkey. And this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, I'll be chatting with ASOS, new finance research intern team and answering specific questions about the internship itself, career planning and more. If you're interested in applying to this internship and joining the team, you can find the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I'm just hitting record right now for people who aren't able to join. Welcome to the first weekly finance intern team meeting. I'm excited to kind of just answer any questions you guys have. Welcome to the team more formally. And yeah, basically, Nabeel is here with me. We're we're happy to answer questions, not just about the internship, but also about any career questions you have. We want to make sure we're giving you guys as much value as you're giving us throughout the internship. We're very excited to have you on board because, well, Nabeel and I, we've been working on we've been working on this program for many months to kind of get it ready. And just recently, we decided, I think we thought we were ready and we're going to scale it up. And so that's why the team has gotten so big so fast. We're actually starting to put the feelers out there, let more people know about the opportunity. So that's where we're at now. I think it would be great to just introduce everybody. So for people who don't know. My name is Patrick Curtis. I'm the chief monkey and founder of Wall Street Oasis. And I've been doing this for 16 years as my gray beard. Gray beard shows. Nabeel, you want to introduce yourself a little bit?
Nabil: [00:01:59] Yeah. I mean, I take care of the internship program here. I'm Nabeel. I'm based off in Abu Dhabi, UAE. So, yeah, the team's huge paychecks pays off. California.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:10] Brag about your background.
Nabil: [00:02:12] Oh, no, I'm not going to do that. No, but a little bit. Yeah, I worked with the audit and strategy that investment, and then Patrick gave me a good alpha giant. So help build this huge community, because I thought that was a great opportunity, because WSC helps us a lot. Yeah. So we all come here, get get information. And I came to the internship as well. If you guys don't know. So yeah, I mean, I've been where you guys are, so I have that experience. Definitely. If you want help during the internship, feel free to bring me pretty much anything. I'm here, like, hopefully full time. Yeah, unless I'm sleeping.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:53] Nabeel came through and when he started writing immediately I said, I have to bring this guy on full time. He's a genius. So I snatched him up as fast as I could. But no, honestly, we're really happy to have everybody on here. I think we can open it up. We can talk about Nabeel. Why don't we talk a little bit about the internship and maybe how best to maybe just describe it on a resume or something like that? That might be helpful for you guys as you're going through, because I think. We initially were calling it the CEO internship or writer internship, but we changed it specifically to try to make it more valuable for people going through it. Because you are researching finance topics and said, why don't we make it a research analyst internship and then it makes it more relevant for everybody's resume because we know a lot of people here are obviously targeting careers in finance. So we changed the name of it. It's still the same internship. It's just you researching finance topics, writing about them, helping us on the SEO side. So for people who weren't aware, the whole goal of this is to help improve the quality of our content on the site, get long form content such that we're able to rank better in Google and give more value to the to the community itself. So people have like these references and these resources when they're, when they're looking. So hopefully that's helpful. So you want to talk a little bit about like. Resume. Yeah.
Nabil: [00:04:07] I mean, how how this helps your career. Like, from how I look at it, let's say. So what I do is pick up topics that are helpful for my future career. Like where I want to head. So if I want to learn more about valuation, if I want to learn more about finance, I'd probably go to those sections. Pick up topics and then write on them. But then it's not just about like picking the topic Google. Right. We would probably learn the topic, understand it, and then write from our understanding, like from my own understanding. That's how I'd go about it, definitely. You don't I don't think it's a good idea to just do it, like put so many articles out. It's kind of pointless. And then how does that impact your career? Your CV is, Hey, you know what? Once you've learnt a lot about finance from this thing, you could definitely showcase it. You could showcase the modeling classes that we provide. Once you do it, you could showcase that which is a big help, especially in interviews. And.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:05] Yeah. So I'll add to that. I think not only just having the title of finance research analyst in turn is helpful, but I think doing the actual writing is helpful for potentially down the road if you don't end up in finance, if you actually end up doing any sort of work for digital marketing or anything like that. Understanding how SEO, how sites rank for specific content is actually super valuable skill to develop. So that's good. But then more importantly, with all the free courses you'll be getting as you put in the hours, having that on your resume is just another way. It's just another bullet point or several bullet points that let you get those buzzwords onto your CV. So the discounted cash flow evaluation analysis, precedent transactions, comps, all those things that employers are going to be looking for and that a lot of these resume screeners now kind of just automatically search for.
Nabil: [00:05:53] So and if I could add to that, so one of the most important skills you learn here is writing and then writing for an Internet audience. And I think that's probably the biggest skill to have in this age, because that's how you communicate your ideas to the public, right? So if you say, hey, this is my idea, I want to go out and present it, you're going to do it in one of two ways. One is speaking on a stage like public speaking, and two is writing, writing to an audience. And I think being part of this internship kind of improves that skill a lot because we'll be working to make sure, like, we'll be reviewing, we'll be telling you these are the points that you've got to address. This is where you could improve and trying to hold the audience attention. And that's what you could like. That's what's going to get you and those in the future, too, because definitely wherever you go, people are going to ask you, hey, what have you done before? Yeah, you could show this. This is my portfolio of what I've done, the models I've created, the reports I've written, all those things kind of matter a lot. So you could definitely put that on your, on your CV as part of research writing internship, right?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:00] So the specific topics you researched, you could even have a listing of those on the CV and that'll that'll just be like just another set of buzzwords you could put on there. And so and by doing it, you actually become an expert in or you should be if you're doing it right. So that's, that's kind of like our five minute spiel, I'll call it nimble of, of just where we see adding value to your CV and helping you get more interviews. The courses themselves, we think, are if you if you leverage them, you actually go through them, you take them, you do the quizzes, you do the exercises. It doesn't have to be during the internship, but having access to those post internship, we think gives you just another leg up in terms of whether you're even if you're not going to invest in banking, if you're going into corporate finance, if you're going to any sort of like FBA role, anything where you're working in Excel and you need to manipulate data, I think these courses are going to help you with that. So hopefully you don't just go through, put in the hours and then not leverage the courses.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:56] Just make sure you leverage the courses and it's nice for a bullet point in your CV, but it'll actually make your life a lot easier once you get on the job. If you've gone through them and it's not there, not so long. And ideally we micro chunk D, we made them fun, we gamified it. So it's not going to be anywhere near as boring as some of the other financial modeling training out there. So I encourage you guys to give it a shot once you once you earn those. So I think with that, I don't know if do people have questions do people have questions about their specific situation? I want to just be available here. We got another 20 something minutes where I'm happy to answer specific questions about your situation or I keep ranting and raving here, but I'd love to be more of a kind of a back and forth for people who who do have questions, whether it's about the internship or just career specific stuff. Anybody. Anybody want to raise your hand? Looks like Lolita wants to say something here. You have to unmute you. Yeah. There you go.
Lolita: [00:08:56] Hi. Bad day. Hi.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:56] Nice to meet you. Hey.
Lolita: [00:08:59] Thank thank you for thank you guys for this opportunity. So I'll just go with the brief introduction about me. So I'm a graduate student majoring in statistics, so I have took a keen interest in the fintech and I looked into it and then I found the quantitative developer to be my, you know, relevant to my educational background and like my interest. So how do you think like I have seen like what we write, like regarding the research and report. Of course I would know a lot about the topics I'm going to write about. So how do you think like this can help me? And of course I have gone through like I look at your daily emails and all like it keeps me updated. And so I just want to know like how this can be like helpful to me. Like, how should I make use of this a lot so that I would gain and get deeper understanding.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:54] And you're targeting fintech, you said like what specifically in fintech, like VC, like you want to work at a VC fund, you want to work within a startup, fintech startup or so.
Lolita: [00:10:05] Yeah. So unicorn status is not a problem, but it's just like how much I can learn, like quantitative developers, what I'm focusing on.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:13] Quantitative developer, you said yes. Got it. So like more on the tech side.
Lolita: [00:10:17] More on the tech.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:18] Because you want to have that finance background where you can for fintech, they'll be like, oh, interesting, she has this finance angle. Yeah. So I mean, obviously what's going to matter more for you to get the developer role is showing the chops on the development side. Right. Like they're going to test you and quiz you on that. But having the finance internship, I think, will help make you more attractive to fintechs because you're going to understand kind of more topics. I'd probably it depends what fintechs. It's such a big word, right? What does that mean? Like is are you working in fintech, like consumer facing B2C or doing more B2B like large banks? Is your clients like who? Your clients. Right. And so I think it depends on what you end up with, but. I guess you're asking like how do you. Yeah. Because you have a.
Nabil: [00:11:05] Yeah. I mean one most important. So I love developing stuff. I love coding and all that. One of the most important things when you are developing stuff is being able to use Google. Being able to find, okay, how do I get this done? Going to Google, finding that code and then how do you integrate that into your platform? Right. And I think most of the research revolves around that, how it's not about how much you know, it's about how resourceful you are with the tools given to you. And generally, that's what the internship is all about at its very basic level, like, hey, if I don't know this particular topic, how am I going to approach it and understand and then write for an audience that's fodder. So now when it comes to developing stuff, it's the same thing I a program. There's definitely going to be someone who's done. The Court So how do I go there, get the court Understand the basic, and then implement it in my in my program. That's the place where development would come in another place I would see as understanding all the concepts like. What metric affects what other metric and like that whole chain of stuff. But I don't know if you're going into equity research like, you know, understanding companies and all that, then if that's the kind of player you're looking for, then it makes sense to learn each of these topics and the intricacy intricacies involved with each of them on the valuation.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:30] Valuation in particular.
Nabil: [00:12:32] Exactly. And then technically, if you're working in quantity, have huge data sets that you that you work with. So understanding how each of them can be manipulated to manipulate another another, whether you call it ratio or metric and all that matters a lot. So I would probably approach it from these two angles. And then of course, modeling is like we do have the is it still up? I'm not sure. The machine learning thing. I think it's still up. Yeah. Yeah. The machine learning. Right. Yeah. The python one. Yeah. So I think that could be helpful to because that's written from a finance perspective. Perspective. Exactly. So you could use that too. So yeah, I mean there's a lot you could learn. And then again at the end, it's all about writing like no matter where you go, the major part of writing code is documentation. So making sure that everyone understands what you've done. Exactly.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:24] People can read your code once you leave it.
Nabil: [00:13:26] Exactly. Yeah. So it's probably going to help you with that too. And I don't know if it does this answer the question. I hope this answers the question. Right. I don't.
Lolita: [00:13:37] Know. Yeah, it does. It does.
Nabil: [00:13:38] Okay. Thank you. That sounds good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:41] Anybody else? I have questions or. Nabeel, you have anything else you want to add?
Nabil: [00:13:45] Not for that particular situation. Yeah. I mean, I think we got something in Chad to just let me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:52] I think that's someone saying that they got an internship with BNP, but they want to do this during the summer. I think that's shaheer.
Nabil: [00:14:00] Okay.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:01] Yeah, you guys can if you're if you don't want to take yourself off mute, you can put questions here in the chat as well. We're happy to answer it that way.
Nabil: [00:14:11] Yeah. And to answer that question, just bring me on slack and I'll change the date to whenever you prefer. That shouldn't be an issue. If you want to start in the summer. Yeah. Not an issue.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:22] Yeah. We're flexible on the start date in terms of. I'd love to hear where everyone's from or where everyone is in the world. I'm in California and Amenadiel is in UAE. He's it's past midnight there for him. So sometimes it feels up til 8 a.m. his time, meaning he worked through the night and I said, What are you doing? What about that's he's a completely nocturnal now. But yeah. Is there anybody?
Nabil: [00:14:46] Oh, we have two people raising hands. So George and Brandon, we love to.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:50] Brandon, you want to. I'm asking you to unmute. See? There you go. Go ahead, Brandon.
Brandon: [00:15:03] Okay, so, yeah, I'm from Canada, I'm in the GTA area and I did actually have a question, very specific question. I've heard that there's sort of like the situation where you can get pigeonholed into like an industry. So let's say I started on some version of real estate finance or I guess like real estate investment banking or advisory. How hard would it be to sort of exit out of that if I really genuinely wanted to be in tech? And I guess to follow up with that, if I was given an opportunity to work. Bank branch or unrelated field, which one would probably very generically add more value to the CV, do you think so?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:36] I'll take that. So I think. You know, the quick answer is it depends, but if let's I'll give you some examples to frame it a little bit better so that you get a get a sense. So let's say you were like you're an undergrad, right? Or No? Yeah, yeah, undergrad. You're an undergrad. And your first job out of school is in FIG. Right, fixed income. So you're like dealing with these companies that have completely different financials. Your first two years that are out of school are dealing in this completely different way of looking at three statement. The three same models are different. It's actually much more complex, right? It's difficult.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:13] But let's say you do those two years and you don't get to become a generalist like in terms of evaluating other businesses. And you then like you go to a private equity company. At that point I'd say, yes, you're pigeonholed if it's your first job at a school like let's say it's real estate finance and like a year or two go by and then you're able to mix it up and do something else. I think that's probably going to serve you best in terms of option value, like keeping the most options open for as long as you can. Now, getting narrow and focus isn't necessarily bad right away. If you really love the asset class, if you're like super into real estate, like commercial real estate, and you're like, This is super interesting to me. Or You're super into trading bonds and options and that's what you want to do and you go down that niche, that's fine. I'm a little bit biased in the sense of I feel like an investment banking analyst role is a great foundation for a huge breadth of careers. And that means like going into like more of a generalist program where you're getting like doing M&A and that type of stuff and just evaluating different industries just because you can then go to like generalist. You can go to a lot of different stuff. So I think in that sense.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:22] You know, and when you say it, does it pigeonhole you? It also depends on you. It also depends how good is your background. Did you have like a, you know, a top scores at your school? Are you a super great at networking or. Because never is it impossible? I never say it's impossible to go from one place to the next. What makes it just increasingly harder as time goes on is if you stay in that niche and in that in that pigeonholed for like too many years, too many years being like getting on to three and four years where you're only working in that asset class and it's going to start getting hard, harder and harder and harder. It doesn't mean you can't ever do it. You can be in ten years in real estate finance and suddenly transition and convince somebody to give you an associate role at a generalist investment bank. You could write. It's just going to be it's just going to be harder, like your odds are going to go down and might take you longer to make that transition and more networking. Blood, sweat and tears. So that's what I'd say. It just depends on on like how narrow you go. You said so. You said tech. Are you like, what do you mean by tech specifically? Like VC type stuff or like where you'd be investing or like you doing your own startup?
Brandon: [00:18:27] I'm not early stage like P essentially. I've talked to like a few of it, a few coffee chats with some of the local firms that specialize in like growth equity type type places. Yeah. Yeah. And the way that they've described it, it just sounds like it's a lot of fun is the right word, but really intriguing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:54] Yeah. And so and then so what you're concerned is like if you go somewhere where you what are you thinking of going into? It's like real estate. Finance would be tough to kind of go there. Is that what you're.
Brandon: [00:19:07] Yeah. Well, so I don't know if this is the same thing around the globe, but like the Canadian banks are really shrunk the internship programs this year. Some of them are even just like one position or one one job per position again, essentially. So I'm looking at broadening my horizons, leverage my network a little bit, got a couple of interviews hooked up for myself, but they're in real estate advisory and investment banking type businesses, so that's really all I've got on the go right now. And I'm wondering how I guess how hard my uphill battle might be.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:27] You know, if there's a growth equity firm that deals in real estate then the easier but. But yeah it's going to be harder than getting into a generalist analyst program but you can only get what you get.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:36] You just get you take the best offer you have. Right. And you just you move on from there. And what I'll say is a lot more important than where you're starting is like, is your are your habits every week. And habits, meaning like your networking habits, your skill improvement habits, your daily habits. It's so much more important than like, Oh, the job I got out of school wasn't the exact job I wanted. Like when I got my private equity dream job and end up getting fired within four months. So there you go. Like you think you've made it and then like you get slapped in the face. So it's, it's one of those things where. Honestly, it's a lot more it's going to be a lot more important for your career, like how you're actually positioning yourself long term. And so you can do other things for your CV to make yourself attractive to the growth equity shops, I guess. Question for you, the growth equity shops you'd be interested in, who are they pulling from? More generic kind of IB places.
Brandon: [00:20:30] So one of them is fairly up north and I guess like Canadian Geographics makes it so that and I guess for them they're just pulling straight out of school because like Ottawa is essentially just like 5 hours away from Toronto where all the main IB firms would be. But in some of the ones down here, I don't know, I've found that generically Canadian is just kind of like a good mixture of like they're looking for either brand new people or people with IB experience.
Brandon: [00:21:02] But generally if you have no experience, you should at least have a master's. It seems interesting.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:13] Yeah, I'm not as familiar, but I would say like, well, try to make the connections as strong as you can with that place up north that you want, because it's much more important if you can get the job that's relevant. I always say do that. Even if it's at a at a, even if it's at a place that's not as name brand, right. As strong a brand. But just just because you're going to be in that kind of mindset, like if you already know that it's a huge advantage because then you can kind of just position yourself for an opening when it does when it does happen at the shop that you do want to be at. Yeah. Fair enough.
Brandon: [00:21:32] Yeah. Yeah. That's helpful, for sure. But no, that's okay. I had I had a short part to that. But like, how how loyal do you think they are for, like, branch level employees who want to move up? Just generically speaking. Would that be a better option?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:45] Branch of employees. What do you mean? Oh, you're talking about like at the bank.
Brandon: [00:21:52] Scotiabank. Scotiabank, for example, has like an internal lateral.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:07] Internal lateral within banks.
Brandon: [00:22:12] Yeah. Yeah, essentially.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:15] Have you seen anybody else do it on LinkedIn?
Brandon: [00:22:25] From my school. The only person that I know that's been successful. And I did start out as a teller. But we don't have a lot of people who got into IB who graduated high school as a teller.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:35] I have a lot of references, like it's a tough battle. Like, is there any other like higher up? Places like that you could get to. That's like more middle office.
Brandon: [00:22:42] No. You know, I actually didn't I didn't get into many any of the programs. It's tough. I mean, I'm sure you've heard the story before, but I'm like as non-target as essentially can get right now. So yeah. Now just didn't get drafted.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:01] Essentially what's going to I mean, what's going to be more important, like I said, is like for people like get get the relevant skills and the relevant as relevant a job as you can of where you want to end up. And then just work from there and like it doesn't mean it's going to work out for you and be perfect and all rainbows and butterflies, but it means it's going to give yourself the best shot, you know? Yeah. So I think we. Feel free to email us too. Okay. I think George has been waiting for a little bit. Let me unmute, George, and then. Hey. Hey, man. How are you doing?
George: [00:23:23] Pretty good. So basically I'm in the process of transferring and it's my sophomore year, so summer analyst 2023 is currently in the process, but I haven't heard back from the schools that I'm transferring to yet and the deadlines because it's even more expedited this year. It seems like they're closing before I might hear back. Should I just not even submit? These are what do you think the best the best way to go about this would be?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:48] You're saying you're out of you're out of school right now and you're trying to.
George: [00:23:53] I'm currently at a like a like a local name with like like a community college, basically.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:59] So your your fear is that if you apply right now with that name on your resume, there's no chance. Basically, yeah. Have you now worked or talk to anybody within the firms?
George: [00:24:08] Yeah, a little bit.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:09] So is there a way for you to float that to them and get into a process?
George: [00:24:15] Yeah, I could try. I was kind.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:16] Of hoping that that's your best before. Yeah, because if you. If you drop it into the resume. Drop. You're right. You're probably not gonna get picked out. Yeah.
George: [00:24:25] And then on top of that, do you have any tips for non alumni networking? Basically, just like do you have any like I haven't had I've had a pretty low.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:35] Conversion you have in common use. So what do you do for fun.
George: [00:24:40] I played basketball.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:41] And bat find basketball players. Find people who are formerly. Are you good? Did you play competitively?
George: [00:24:48] So my first two years I my first two years of college, I was in Switzerland and I played in the Swiss Pro League.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:53] So yeah, done, done that. You find people who worked who go to like more target schools, talk to you and see basketball for you and see basketball players, Duke basketball players, all target schools. Explain that. How you used to play Semi-Pro Switzerland whatever yeah that's your in man that use that and keep kind of like hammering that angle to try and get your resume and they say, hey, I'm transferring here. Where are you transferring to or where do you think.
George: [00:25:18] I'm waiting to hear back from? Like Columbia, Emory, USC?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:21] Yeah. So say I'm in final stages with Columbia or USC. But what you know what I would actually target alum. The basketball players from those schools because they're going to be like they're going to be like, Oh, cool, this guy played the same game. There's just some there's some affinity there. So they're more likely to get back to you.
George: [00:25:42] And then you would just recommend finding these people through LinkedIn, like if they have it listed.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:47] Yeah. And then most of them will have something about basketball. They're played. That's probably the best way to go about it is do like a filtered search there. But you can start with like Emory Columbia and then with each of them be like, Hey, I'm looking to transfer to Emory or for the Columbia. People say, Hey, I'm looking to transfer that Columbia. I'm hearing back soon. But just wanted I notice that you worked at X, Y, Z. I'm looking for an internship next year. I was hoping you we could hop on the phone for 5 minutes if I did. Okay.
George: [00:26:12] Yeah, awesome.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:13] And then that's going to probably it's a little late, but hopefully that's going to lead to like a couple of conversations per week for you because if you can get a couple of conversations per week, then that's probably the two processes. Okay, it might be an uphill battle, man like you may be doing this for a year and a half. Yeah. Before you get it, you can get a summer. It's not like if you don't get. So this is going to be your sophomore summer.
George: [00:26:40] Right now I'm entering. Yeah, I'm in my sophomore year right now.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:43] So sophomore summer, if you don't get the internship, it's not like game over, especially if you're doing so it looks good and that's going to open a lot of that's going to get more people to actually give you interviews because you're curious. We talked to all previous internships. They're all like, what does this wso, blah, blah, blah? And then I'll just give you a lot to talk about, which is good. So I get the WSO internship on the resume before you even send it out.
George: [00:27:05] Okay.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:06] It just puts a little another little finance stamp on there. Yeah. And then go from there. And then just like, I don't know, the, the community college and just try to make it like a small thing. The education. Yeah. All right. All right. Thank you. Yeah. When do you think you'll hear? In a week or two.
George: [00:27:22] About.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:23] Schools? Yeah.
George: [00:27:25] It could be days. Could be a month. We don't know.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:29] I wouldn't wait because a month's a long time to be sitting. Yeah, I'd start at least trying to have some conversations and just do it to those three schools that you're looking to transfer to. Because then there's a story you can tell while you're talking to them. And the basketball connection, it's strong. Okay. And then once you run out of those, people don't just stop, like just remove the basketball reference and just talk to anybody who's in finance from the school. Just pretend like they're your alumni. Yeah. Yeah. Great. All right. Thank you. Yep. Let's see who else we can chat with here. The bill, did you? Did you see the questions? Was there a question in here? Brief tutorial. Let's see here. Third year OC. Hey ye. Yeah, that's no problem. You can start the internship in later. That's not a problem. Joju says he's from London. The London people. I don't know if I'm seeing everybody on here. Some people. Sorry. Go ahead.
Nabil: [00:28:30] Oh, yeah. On the editorial. How do we go? I mean, does the manual. Right. So what's the opinion from everyone? Do you guys need a video? Or like, do you think the guy is a good enough place to start? The reason we've kept it as a guide is because you learn to process. I mean, the process, the whole documentation, right? Read through, find stuff, be resourceful. And of course you can ping me, but the guide has everything. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Patrick, what's your thoughts?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:58] Yeah, I mean, if there's if there's high demand for that, I mean, we could do something, but it's probably going to be just a bill going over the the guide and just saying, okay, now pick a topic here. Maybe it would be helpful in the bill is if we did like you picked one topic and then show them how you would start it. Would that be helpful? Guys and gals. Yeah. Yeah. So. An example would help. Cool. Yeah, I'm saying yes. So, like, maybe just show, like, how you would go about it. Do, like researching. So he'll pick one. We'll try to deliver a video to you guys. He'd pick one, show you how he would research it. Looking at the top other results, trying to get the h twos in there, all that good stuff. Yeah. Question here. How many topics are we expected to work on before the end of the internship? Great question. Maybe you want to answer that.
Nabil: [00:29:53] Yeah, I mean, that's a frequently asked question to depends like if you're writing, like, a lot of heavy content. Not a lot. But from what we notice, it takes about 4 to 6, 7 hours. Like, depending on like if it's a huge article, it's definitely going to take like six, 7 hours if it's, like, less than 1000 words. Yeah. Shouldn't take too long.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:11] And the short end, at least a couple of hours for a short article. Up to 5 to 5 to even four. There's been one that was like, I don't know, 5000 words in just making interview one 10,000 words. It was crazy, like 15, 20 hours at least. So I think probably an average of around 3 to 4 hours per article to write it. I'm guessing maybe five. If you're if English isn't as natural to you. So I'd aim for around five or less. So then you can do the math backing into the internship. So 30 plus. 30 plus.
Nabil: [00:30:47] I try to take more time, if required, to deliver on quality rather than quantity, because there's absolutely no point of delivering something that's not the best you could come up with. It would be better if the quality is focused on first and then time. Like, of course, if you write three articles you're going to be much faster. The first article you wrote when you write the third or fourth article. So if you don't focus too much on time, but on the quality and then keep putting in the consistent uhs, you don't actually have to worry about time. We don't we don't bother. We just look at quality and see, okay, that's a good improvement. This is what we want at the end of the day. Not like, yeah, just dump in some articles and then you know, that doesn't help anyone.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:24] So we'll be looking for the group to have some people probably step in alongside and to be able to help edit as well. So like if you're doing a good job on that and like you clearly have mastery of the English language, you have high finance knowledge, you're putting in the hours and the activities high. There will be some people that will probably tap to say, Hey, will you help us? Because we expect the team to continue to grow. And so to be able to probably be drowning and know about a week trying to review everything and get comments back and feedback back. So there is that opportunity as well as kind of things progress and we get a feel for how everyone's doing. Welcome, Liam. So you just joined anybody else? Rob has. Rob has his hand up. Let's see. Hey, Rob.
Rob: [00:32:09] Hi. How you guys doing? Good. How are you? Good. Just to introduce myself. I'm a sophomore at Fairfield University in Connecticut playing finance and computer science. But my first my question kind of is so for my first article, I want to write about valuation, like how to value a company because I have an interest in trying to break into investment banking. And I've been like applying to those internships. And I know that's like even in your interviews, walk me through a DCF that's like a big thing.
Rob: [00:32:36] So I kind of that's what I wanted to write about. So going about picking the topic, do I have to go into the Excel? I know I messaged Nabeel the other day about this, but like, should I go into the Excel and like find on that list like valuation and then kind of just put my name down or because I know you're supposed to, we're supposed to share a link somewhere. And I was like trying to figure out where to share the link.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:58] Great question. So valuation is a massive topic. There's probably hundreds of articles under valuation. All right. There's like very specific articles. And what you'll notice, because this is an SEO play, SEO meaning search engine optimization, when we have a topic, it's not we have an article on like projecting the balance sheet. Then we have another article on forecasting balance sheet, basically the same thing. But there's a reason there's two articles designated for. It's because there are different search keyword terms. We're going to have different keywords and variations on that. So what I'd say for you and Nabila, I think we're starting everybody off in the skills section, correct? Yeah. Are there.
Nabil: [00:33:39] Yeah, there's valuation. There's a whole subset on the skills called valuation where you could pick up any of those topics. And to answer your question on picking up. Yeah, just put your name on. There's a column called a Google Drive. Yeah. So whenever you go into Google Drive, you can click on share, pick the topic of I mean, pick the option that says share with everyone and it gives you a link. So you just take that link and copy to the Google sheet. So then I can or any of the reviewers can go to that sheet and review it and leave comments.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:08] That we create. Didn't we create Google Docs that are going in there?
Nabil: [00:34:11] So Oh yeah. Now I think yeah, that's done as well.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:13] Now we've already we did it for you. We ran a script that has all the Google Docs already ready. It has a checklist at the top just to remind you what to check before you. Yeah, yeah. Go under. Go under the skills. There's a whole section on valuation with probably, I don't know, 80 articles that we want to write. 100.
Nabil: [00:34:31] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:32] Literally grab whatever you want and go to town on that. I just want to get some clarification. Thank you. Yeah. And if there's any other questions, just shoot us, shoot us a note and we'll probably get I think maybe I think that would be helpful in the initial video.
Nabil: [00:34:46] Yeah I'll do that. Yeah. I it done. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:51] Of course, we got people from London, Connecticut, Canada. Where else? Where else is everybody from?
Nabil: [00:34:56] India. Someone's from Saudi studying in Poland. So we are quite a.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:02] Quite a wide variety. And, Lalita, where were you from? All right, where did Lily say where she was from?
Lalita: [00:35:08] I am from India, but I'm currently doing my master's in Texas.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:12] Dallas and Dallas, Texas? Yeah, very cool.
Lalita: [00:35:16] Now that I am native myself, I have a question. So I am curious like this for you, Patrick. So I'm curious about like how like what made Nabi do like. Like he was one same thing, right? So what made you like, became like. Yeah, come work for me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:35] Very easy. So initially when we started the program, I was doing a lot of the reviews myself because it was new. I wanted to see what was happening, so I was like, I was on the lookout. We probably had like 20 or 30 people going through. And so I could see people who most, I'd say about 80% were college students. And then there was probably 20% were like young finance, 15% young finance professionals and a few more senior folk. And without knowing, like the backgrounds, everybody came, not like looking at the resume, then reading the reviews, I was reading the content and just saying, Wow, this is really good. Like I didn't have a lot of edits for it. And then consistently he was working very hard. He was putting in the hours, he was having high activity and high efficiency. And so I said like this is and I knew I was looking for somebody to help manage the program. And so I wanted somebody to help manage a program that that understood exactly what we were looking for, was following the direction, was getting making sure they're doing that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:27] And so it was just it was just a quality issue. And then then the question was, can I afford him? And so so then that started the conversation started saying, hey, where do you work and how much are they paying you? Yeah. And so that was that was a question. And then we talked about. Yeah. So in terms of why is very easy to know. I knew this was a team that was going to be growing and it was an initiative that Wall Street just wanted to go after and it was important for us. Long term community is the lifeblood of the business, but we also want to make sure that for certain keywords we're ranking well such that we can continue to get people in through the door, into the community and foster that, foster that, so that we can continue to grow. So it was really just I knew I was already looking for somebody out of the 30 or so people. I don't know how many people had come through. 50, 30, 50 by that point.
Nabil: [00:37:17] Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. That's so I left.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:19] It was just very clear. And to be fair to the other interns, it wasn't that they were bad, it was just they hadn't worked. A lot of them hadn't worked full time. A lot of them had minimal finance background, like an internship or what. Nabeel had worked as an investment associate. Yet you had your CFA, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is the.
Nabil: [00:37:36] Cfa you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:36] He has a bunch of other, few other designations that just made everything from accounting to, to the markets to everything. It was very clear he had a very good kind of broad, broad depth of knowledge across finance, which was which is obviously very valuable to to this internship because need a good writer, need to have finance knowledge, need to be a hard worker. And so all those things kind of came together or luckily I was able to afford him.
Lalita: [00:38:03] That's definitely inspiring.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:04] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Um. Brendan. I know we do have other Canadians. It's not just you. Here we go. Anything else? I think that's it. We're a little bit over time, but I think for the first one, that's fine. We'll release this video. Am I missing somebody else, Nabeel? That's raising their hand.
Nabil: [00:38:29] Not just Brandon, but I don't know if that's strong.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:32] Yeah. Brandon, do you have another question?
Brendon: [00:38:29] Sorry. No, I just. That's fine.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:48] That's fine. Well, if there's anything else. Feel free to hit us up on Slack. We. If there's other suggestions on things you want us to cover during these sessions, whether it's like resume reviews, mock internships, we can do whatever you guys want, whatever's most helpful. My background just for people who don't know. I worked in I went to liberal arts college in Massachusetts called Williams College. I did investment banking for two years at Rothschild in restructuring. Then I did about four years in private equity investing in businesses like health care, businesses, business process or business services, which is like a catch all at a company called Tailwind Capital. And then I ended up getting my MBA from Wharton from 2008 when the world was melting to 2010. And then since 2010, we started I started also in 2000, 6010 when I graduated Wharton, I went and decided to do Wall Street basis full time. It had grown enough to be able to only take somewhat of a of a pay cut versus going back to back to private equity. So I decided to do a full time and that's kind of where I am at over a decade later, still running it, having a blast. And and yeah, it's been growing every year, every year since. So I'd love to just, you know, make these sessions as valuable as possible. Hopefully we get more people once they see once the the group sees how fun this session was. And yeah, we'll just go from there. And I look forward to to seeing you all again next Friday. Sound good? Yeah.
Nabil: [00:40:08] That's good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:09] Okay. All right, everybody talk soon.
Nabil: [00:40:12] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:13] Thank you. Bye. Thank you. And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street, Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis dot com. And till next time
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