Day one I was completely terrified. I came in, didn't know anyone,
kind of just sat in a seat.
I didn't have a lot of knowledge of the brokerage industry and I was like,
what are options? How do you even trade stocks? I didn't really know anyone,
but now we're all like a big family, and now I'm,
I feel like I'm really close to everyone that I've been in the internship
program with.
When someone tells me that they don't know if this is right for them,
I usually ask them a few questions about what really motivates them and if they
tell me things about helping people, I tell them this is probably place for you.
Once you start at TD Ameritrade. It feels like the opportunities are endless.
I didn't realize until I came here all the different areas that you can go into
within the industry and that super interesting to me and I love it now.
So what really drew me here on the first place and the biggest takeaway for me
was tp see all the different departments and see kind of where I fit in.
That the purpose of this internship is to show you that this organization as a whole
is really complex and interns are meant to be exposed to as many departments and
teams as possible.
So we actually welcome interns across the entire organization.
They are all across our company footprint.
We have a large number of interns in Omaha. They're in Jersey City,
in South Lake and St Louis. In our branches we have them out in like San Diego.
We have a chance to bring in a whole new group of people every semester and
introduce them to our company and really get,
see them develop as a person.
Those interns come in and we develop as a company.
So a typical day we usually come in,
we do a huddle meeting for about 30 minutes and after that we usually have round
tables where we meet with senior management and then from there we'll typically
go to lunch, which is my favorite part of the day.
And they provide us with some really good food coming back from lunch.
It'll lead to shadowing time,
which is some something that we get to learn about the different roles
in the company and get to see exactly what they do day to day.
I think shadowing has been just great to see all of the like diversity and the
jobs here and just in the finance industry in general.
I really didn't know what to expect and I shadowed pretty much like every
department cause we would shadow a different department every week.
The opportunity to see what they do in action is definitely a better experience
from just absorbing the information through a textbook at school. As an intern,
you know you meet managers, you meet senior manager.You meet directors,
you know team managers, everything like that and you,
you kind of get to build your own career path early and see what you want to do.
We shadowed all those different groups for a reason to see,
oh is this something I want to do in the future?
Once I got here I realize, you know,
these guys really believe in you and they're really trying to do something great
for you instead of just using you for extra work.
I had no financial experience like I said, and they, they believed in me.
They didn't say, oh no, no financial experience.
I mean I remember the day before I was sitting in my bed wondering is this for
me?
Like I'm going to show up and embarrass myself in front of people that know what
they're talking about, but instead like they took
me for who I was, they accepted me.
It prepared me really well to step into a financial services role.
I was an animal science major in college so I was go complete outsider to all the
jargon that comes with the financial services industry and TD Ameritrade and the
internship specifically really set me up for success in that way.
That's what the internship shows you is like,
yes, this is the first level position.
This is where you're going to get started and this is where you're going to
learn all those things. But what it shows you is the things I love to do,
The things I'm good at, the things I want to do for the rest of my life.
So when I was ready
to pursue full time employment and then roles beyond that.
I kind of knew the areas I was already interested in and where I wanted to work
in the future.
I feel like I've really grown a lot in thinking about the past five years,
but to look back at my career here and see all the things that I have done and
been a part of, it's really been um, really great and really, um,
eyeopening and I've gotten so much great experience that I would've never
expected on my first day as an intern.
The company really invests in helping you grow your career where you want it to
be.
Every time we get new interns,
what excites me about it is it's a new group that we get a chance to really show
the Ameritrade culture and I tell them all the time that I know they're not all
going to work here and make a career of us. However,
I hope every one of them realizes what a special place this was and is out
telling their friends about it.
The best thing I've learned so far is what I want to look for in a company for
my future career.
Um, you, you won't know if you don't try. Um, so if,
if this is of any desire for you,
I say to go try to do an internship to,
to learn those basic things and to get that knowledge so that you can make an
educated decision once the time does come.
Really you get out of it what you put into it.
If you sit on the sidelines and just cruise by,
you're not going to really absorb any information that's put out there.
You really need to get your feet wet,
get into the internship program and work your hardest.
So I would definitely say if you have any remote interest in the financial
services industry,
go ahead and take that risk and learn about it because I definitely took a risk
learning about this. You know what, it's,
it's totally worth the leap of faith and trying and, and pushing yourself.
It's not only exciting, you know,
to be able to share TD Ameritrade with this fresh talent,
but it's exciting to see what they are bringing to the table,
the different ideas that they have and,
and just really getting to interact with that.
The next generation of associates.
Yeah.
I would say learn a ton and have some fun.