Getting the Dream Internship
My summer working at the digital division of one of Canada’s top 5 banks.
This summer was an absolute blast- I learned a ton, grew, and expanded my world view as an intern at CIBC digital.
Wait, what?
Did I just hear a 17-year-old say she had an amazing experience working at a bank (no offence to teenage banking enthusiasts)?? *Rubs eyes* Does that say dream internship in the title????
Yes and yes. This summer was quite unforgettable- in the best way possible. I was a junior analyst at CIBC Digital- the digital division of one of Canada’s top 5 banks. And as you can probably tell by the word “Digital”, Toto, I’ve got a feeling we aren’t in a regular banking centre anymore.
And it was 100% true when I said dream internship. Dating as early as back to Pre TKS Mishaal B.C, I thought the CIBC digital internship looked super cool. When applying for internships, being interviewed for the position was beyond my wildest dreams. Then during the interview, I ended up having a fun conversation about the Feynman method of learning and escape rooms, and the rest was history.
In a nutshell, this summer I ended up working on a design sprint about financial literacy for youth, learning a ton from having over 100 meetings with super unique and smart people, getting mind blown by chatting with the CEO of this 40 000 + people company, and learning how to figure stuff out a little better.
How I used to think banks worked 🤦🏽♀️
Before this summer, I had very little understanding of how a bank works or the scope of banking. I don’t blame myself entirely, considering I, like the average sixteen-year-old, wasn’t even old enough to have my own credit card. I could probably count the amount I’ve been inside a banking centre on two hands.
This is what I thought banks basically did earlier this year:
The curtain lifted from Digital Banking
Jokes aside, seeing the intricacies of banking and digital was mindblowing. There were so many parts to a seemingly simple thing like the website, which had countless roles from UX designers to analytics. Even things like notifications and alerts required a whole group of people working on it. And this is just the execution of things. Strategy, planning, and reviewing was a whole other story.
I don’t mean to be Captain Obvious, but there were just a lot of people. And this was just in the tiny fraction of the entire 40 000 people company. Actually being a part of a huge corporation also made me think about the efficiency and decision-making processes. Let’s just say, with this size of a company, changing and adapting on a larger scale wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.
A taste of the Real World
But what was even more of a “how did I seriously not know this before but boy am I glad I realized this now” moment was just seeing how jobs work. What I mean by that, is how so many things are exactly the opposite of what we see in school.
It’s pretty intuitive if you think about it — but school, especially high school, can structurally be opposites to the real world. At work, there’s no teachers monitoring and grading your every move- the responsibilities you’ve been given have to be done, and with high standards too.
There’s not assessment grading you, which means you need to be internally motivated and understand the importance of doing work efficiently and effectively. And especially as an intern, most people weren’t checking over and over to see what I had completed (nor was that anyone’s obligation) so it was super important for me to be communicative and checking in to share my progress.
Time is the only thing money can’t buy ⏰
The time — all 8 hours (or more for some people) of it, needed to be spent as effectively as possible. Time management was a HUGE thing that school is spoonfeeding students. In the world of high school, a bell rings, you do a lesson, do the classwork, next bell rings, next class and rinse + repeat.
But at this type of a job, there’s just an 8-hour block, and some meetings in between. That’s why chunking up the day, understanding what times work best for each type of work, amount etc. and being on the ball with managing tasks/timeframes was so important.
As I talked with more and more people, especially those with more responsibilities, I started to notice things they did differently. A lot of busy bees seemed to have days booked and scheduled weeks in advance (efficient for them, unfortunate for me trying to snag a meeting 🙃).
Quite a few with a heavier workload tended to come in in the early hours of the morning, get work done in quiet time and then fill in meetings throughout the day. I found that scheduling my day to the brim and making sure I had a visual outline of tasks of the day on me was how I worked best.
Figuring stuff out 🧠
Not all of this self-understanding came naturally though. Actually, I lied. None of it came naturally. It was a lot of figuring stuff out. As was most of the work I did. What was more surprising though, was that most of the people around me were also in the same boat.
Yep. No matter how under control and how much it looked like they understood all the acronyms being thrown around, most people were just really good at figuring stuff out. It was a pretty jaw-dropping moment when I realized 3/4 of the people around me in digital never even thought they would be working in a bank.
I asked around and turns out a whole chunk of what people used in school was pretty darn unrelated to the things they did on a day to day basis. Weird eh? But then I thought, if they weren’t exactly taught it, then how did all these people do so many different things? It was a mix of asking the right questions, mimicking high standards and just adapting and getting feedback.
Did an hour ever go by where I didn’t ask some sort of a question? No. Am I exaggerating? Maybe… ok yes — but to be fair, on my first couple of days I got a lot of advice to just ask questions, so I took it to heart. I tried my best to figure stuff out, and when that didn’t work I asked away.
People People People 🔑
Luckily, the people I worked with were pretty tolerant of me asking questions. Everyone on my team and in general was awesome. Shout out to the peeps at digital!!
And that was probably another huge learning moment for me. I always thought the people who worked around you and the environment you work in would be an afterthought. Then I realized I was around these people more than my family, friends and bed combined, so finding a place that was accepting, dynamic and collaborative is probably higher up on the list than I thought.
It was also interesting to see the shift in the importance of diversity and unique perspectives in the people and culture. I wouldn’t be lying if I thought initially that a lot of this buzz is just about being more politically correct. But as I asked more and more people questions about what they looked for in people they hired, I hear a lot more emphasis on bringing unique viewpoints to the table.
Whether that comes from having different backgrounds, upbringings, career experience or just having different mental models, it just makes sense to have a variety of thoughts considering the actual people who bank with CIBC aren’t cookie-cutter people in suits and ties. Being able to reflect valid but different perspectives in ideating and making decisions is so so important and it was awesome to see a shift like this happening.
The Meeting Grind
Ok, so by now you’ve probably noticed me bringing up meetings and asking questions a lot. But as a 16-year-old intern, exactly how many urgent responsibilities did I have that required me to be asking for advice and having so many random chats?
Well, my thought process going into this was I could either a) go and learn as much as I could, or b) learn on my own AND crowdsource the knowledge of as many people as possible by meeting all the unique and smart people around me. So obviously I chose b. And my first couple of days looked a little like this.
Did I maximize the heck out of the org charts, our internal workplace employee charts and the scheduling assistant on outlook? Absolutely. Persistence was big here.
Now if I even tried to start to share my knowledge from these 100+ meetings, this article could go on for eons.
But here are a few of my biggest key takeaways/learnings:
1. Coming prepared and organized
Time is precious, and if I’m asking for someone’s time I best be using every single second well. I figured out pretty soon into my journey that I can cut the fluff of getting to know a person and their background if I just do my research on LinkedIn, understand their background and experiences, and choose questions I would want to ask based on their experiences.
It was key to optimize the meetings as well, so even though it was a coffee chat type intention, I came with a basic agenda and timeframes I wanted to spend.
2. Asking the right questions and maximizing the value of a conversation I decided early on I didn’t want to have generic questions. Luckily, through TKS I had learned the importance of asking good questions. This was a chance to train that skill.
Having open-ended questions that can be followed up to go down rabbit holes of unique knowledge was a game-changer. The difference in having a good conversation and a great one was really listening, and processing/asking follow-ups, and just having genuine curiosity.
3. Smart people =/= Roles
There were many smart people in high roles that I was super lucky to talk to. But there were equally meaningful conversations I had with everyone else because of the unique insights and perspectives they had from their experiences.
Not being transactional and just realizing that there’s something that every person around can teach me was a great attitude to bring to the table.
Addressing the elephant 🐘 in the room — You chatted with the CEO?!!
Now I’m going to be a little contradictory to my last point and share an unexpected opportunity that I was able to learn from a very smart person, who was in a high role, which I was super grateful for.
They set up an exclusive, hour-long chat for us 5 TKS kids with Victor Dodig (the CEO of this 40 000 + people company), without us even having to hustle it. It’s not the average 17th birthday when you get knowledge bombs dropped on from a high-performance leader first thing in the morning.
I hate to repeat myself, but this section too could probably be an article of its own. But why read 2 articles when you could read one?
Four of my takeaways in that “Icantbelievethatactuallyhappened” 60 minutes
1. People. That’s it.
Just joking, let me expand. Victor talked about how a lot of keys to his success running the company and maintaining high levels of efficiency and productivity around him were the people in his support system. This collaboration and upkeep of high standards and filtered opinions were essential.
2. The purpose of banks is to keep money safe.
So above all else, including the glamour and shine of good culture and agile workflows and all, the bank’s job is to keep the money safe. Whatever makes sense to do (at least in the short term) is the approach banks are taking.
3. Being the CEO of your own life.
This one’s a little bit of me extrapolating his keys to high performance to my life, even though I don’t have my own company (yet).
Victor plans almost his every minute way in advance. Sometimes, his schedule is booked 6 months ahead — he blocks out parts of his day, is intentional about his time investments, and fits in many hobbies like pilates early morning or reading during his commute.
4. Find something you love doing and are good at.
This is a work in progress for me because I’m finding problems and areas I’m passionate about and spending the time investing in getting good at it.
But what about banking itself? You’ve literally talked about everything else.
For those of you who’ve made it this far, you may be wondering, all this talk and you’ve barely talked about banking. Well, you banking and non-banking enthusiasts are in for a treat. I think I gave it away when I mentioned snacks, but CIBC digital wasn’t the average bank. That being said, my understanding of the industry, its problems and where it's going in the future still grew exponentially.
From a lot of competitive analysis (basically when you look at what other people are doing and attempt to plan on doing it better) I was able to see that the industry was very reactive instead of proactive. It’s kind of a tough situation because as mentioned above, banks have to be risk-averse to keep the money and the institution safe.
That also means that things like Fintechs can plop themselves into this opportunity area and enjoy because they can achieve ambitious goals without nearly as much worry about risks, old technology that has existed since the bank was built (tech anywhere from 60–100 years ago) and huge company size.
With size also comes the territory of workplace politics, which fortunately I wasn’t able to encounter — but still heard from an endless amount of people is plaguing decision making and action everywhere. Ah, humans.
The bulk of my understanding was that a lot, and I mean a lot, of the way banking works just doesn’t make sense. It’s not efficient but also can’t be changed just like that.
That’s why I’ve been recently taking a deep dive into problems that are economically incentivized to change in the banking industry, so looking towards the future I have a better area of understanding areas of opportunity.
Wow, that was a lot. Here’s a recap!
- Banks go beyond banking centre. Like way beyond. There’s a whole other area of opportunity, innovation and change happening in banks like digital
- Working requires high standards, self-regulation, and exceeding expectations
- Learning how to figure stuff out is key. Being adaptive and asking good questions helps to adjust to things that weren’t a part of your degree
- the people you surround yourself with and the environment you work in are important decisions. Having diversity and uniqueness is so valuable
- Meeting people and learning from their experiences is invaluable. It’s so important to iterate and learn from each conversation to maximize quality and efficiency
- The banking industry has a lot of inefficiencies, but also so many areas of opportunity to improve on
Thanks for reading!
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