All Things Must Come to an End

As you can probably tell by the title, today is the last day of my Equity Trust Internship. It is very bittersweet and I cannot believe that the summer has gone by so fast. I remember my first day here, completely overwhelmed when my mentor gave me three large projects to work on. I didn’t think I could do it. But if there’s one thing that this experience has taught me, it is that I can do anything I put my mind to. Whether its learning about Windows Movie Maker, presenting in front of our CEO, or completing all three of those projects on time, I know that I can accomplish anything by working hard and pushing myself to succeed.

For this last blog, all I want to say is that this is a great internship for anyone looking to gain real-life experience at a company that will treat you like a person and friend, and not just an intern. All of the interns were given tasks and projects specific to our education, allowing each of us to gain a foundation for our future career. If you are a person that wants to challenge yourself and learn a lot about a company, the world of business, and your field of study, Equity Trust is the place for you.

Hopefully you have gotten to see the types of projects we have all been working on and use this as a guide for the potential work you may be doing as a future intern here. The best of luck to everyone, and make sure to follow Equity Trust Careers on Facebook and Twitter ;)

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

For that past 12 weeks I have had the greatest experience of my life. I have always wanted to get into an internship where I can prove myself with the knowledge that I have gained in school. Here at Equity Trust Company I was able to do just that. As mentioned in my past blogs and interns blogs we all have had certain projects that pertain to our "expertise". I have done three projects that I feel that have made an impact with Equity Trust. My first project was a Channel Analysis through Database Consolidation, where I took two databases and consolidated them into one relational databases. The purpose of this project was to gain a historical prospective on how to maintain customers. My second project was to create a incoming call profile over a four month span. The purpose of this project was to use this data as a staffing model and a tool to plan meeting times. My last and final project was to complete a fee analysis to better understand the types of programs that our customers are a part of.

Other than working on projects being an intern has improved some other skills such as project management, time management, teamwork, and communication.

If your looking to be apart of a family and enjoy a small business like atmosphere then working for Equity Trust Company is the right place for you!

Office Leadership with a "Get it Done" Attitude

Do you know what the five most important global leadership traits are? If you don’t, here they are: 1) Performance 2) Character 3) Persistence 4) Adaptability 5) Flexibility. If you attended Equity Trust Company’s summer intern training presentation, you would had been able to name off all of those traits, because all of the interns just delivered training to the entire company for the past two days. It was a really exciting opportunity for us. I mean, how many college students can say that they delivered training to an entire professional organization? Probably not many. It was just another great experience for all of the interns and something we’re all really going to realize the value of later on in our education and in our future work experiences.

To tell you a little bit about it…our project was called “Setting the PACE.” PACE stands for People Achieving Common Excellence. To achieve common excellence in the workplace, there must be knowledge, accountability, communication, leadership, and teamwork. Each of us touched upon a different subject; my subject was leadership. I trained the employees on the most important leadership traits in today’s global economy, how to go about developing those traits, ways to demonstrate leadership in the workplace, and what Equity Trust managers/supervisors think about leadership at ETC.

Although we were really tired of hearing ourselves talk after delivering this presentation over seven times, it was actually kind of fun. We’ve heard good feedback from the employees about the presentation, and that always makes you feel good. So to give you a little taste of our presentation, here’s a link to one of the videos we showed during the presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRkiouh5NEI

Enjoy!

Week 8

Hello, my name is Emily Steffensen. I am the accounting intern here at Equity Trust Company. I am a junior at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Yes, South Dakota. Now you may be wondering, "How did she end up in Ohio at Equity Trust Company?" Well, Equity Trust Company was granted a trust charter from the State of South Dakota in 2003, which enabled them to expand their business. Because of this, Equity Trust Company has relations within South Dakota, and that is how I ended up here.

My mentor while here at Equity Trust Company is the CFO of the company. I also work very closely with the accounting controller. My internship responsibilities are very hands-on activities. I pay accounts payable invoices every week, key journal entries into the accounting software, and help prepare the month end financial statements. I generally do what an entry level accountant does. It is not very often in an internship where you have those opportunities! I am having so much fun working with the accounting department, the other interns, and all employees at Equity Trust Company!

Yesterday, the interns and leadership trainees had happy hour with the Leadership Team at Champps. Although all of the interns are not 21, the event was a lot of fun. When Equity Trust Company has employee events, they go all out! The HR Director made sure everybody had enough to eat! She ordered one of every appetizer on their menu. Afterwords, some of us even had extremely large desserts!

I am having such a good time in Ohio and at Equity Trust Company. The internship experience is truly unique. It is definitely going to be hard for me to go back to South Dakota!

“Time flies by when you’re having fun”

I guess time does fly by when you’re having fun. I can’t believe that we are already going into our 8th week here at Equity Trust. It just seems like yesterday that I was coming into my first day here.

Why is it so fun?

Everyday is a learning experience for me; I don’t know what challenge I am going to be faced with each day. I am currently working on two projects. My first project is consolidating some of our current database into one relational database so that upper management can analyze the information efficiently. I am building the database in Microsoft Access (which has given me some headaches but I have gotten over them). For my second project I am updating one of our internal websites (intranet), which I have to write some HTML here and there, nothing to strenuous.

Well it's been fun posting, now back to work I go! Have a good day everyone!

In the Life of the Sales Intern - Week 6

This week I really got going with this real estate training project. I was approached by one of the sales reps to conduct some research and find agencies for our up-and-coming continuing education program for real estate agents. I received an excel sheet with about 400 potential agencies. I had to do research on them. Some were not even qualified (investor firms, agricultural, etc). Out of the 160 that I have researched, I found about 60 confirmed leads. Next, I had to call those confirmed leads and get the email addresses of the people who are in charge of the continuing education. I sent a list of confirmed email addresses to marketing, and they will be taking it from there. I am going to be finishing that list in the next couple of weeks. I am excited that I got asked to do that. It really shows the respect and confidence interns get here at ETC.

Aside, from the project, Wednesday we went out to lunch with Rich and Jeff Desich at the Elyria Country Club. They are phenomenal individuals. The way they spoke just motivated me and inspired me to succeed in life after college. It is remarkable that someone of their age can be so determined and successful. I really enjoyed lunch and would love to go back to Elyria Country Club and shoot 9 holes with them!

Tonight is the Indians game. I am very excited and since it is warm outside today, employees were allowed to wear shorts and flip-flops with their Indians gear. I cannot wait for the all-you-can-eat buffet!