WIBcast

Welcome to a very special episode of WIBcast! In the first episode of season 3, I mentioned that I would be starting a new branch of WIBcast episodes with current college students on the topics that you need to know now, and I am so excited to introduce that to you now with a discussion on Hirevue.

To kick things off, I invited Julia Fairbank to speak with me. Julia is a junior at Middlebury College and an incoming Investment Banking intern.

In this episode, we break down the details of the elusive Hirevue. Hirevue is a video interviewing platform that gets everyone’s nerves racing because unlike a Skype or Zoom interview, there is no one on the other side of the screen. The software feeds you questions, and then the camera turns on and puts interviewees in lime light.

Julia and I have both completed a few ourselves (in a way, it is how we met), and the goal of this episode is to take away some of the confusion and help you become confident when it’s your turn!

We talk about what Hirevue is, who uses it and why more and more firms are choosing to do so. A lot of our conversation comes down to the fact that practice is key! Talking about yourself is hard and seeing a clock ticking down while you try to get big ideas about yourself across to a person you cannot even see does not make it any easier. Julia and I want to help you feel prepared by talking about how we prepared!

We end with tips on troubleshooting and how to make the best of each Hirevue experience. I hope everyone enjoys this episode and if you have any topics you want covered in a future

Ameera Hammouda is an entrepreneur and fashion designer with modesty and sustainability at the center of her designs. Her brand, Ameera, is a luxury brand with a modest dresser in mind. Growing up as an Egyptian American-Muslim, Ameera has always valued modest dress, but the market never seemed to deliver for women of her faith. Where modest options were fashionable, they were not always priced quite right, and where they were reasonable, they were rarely manufactured in an eco-conscious manner. Ameera kills these three birds with one stone and adds finesse, empathy, and innovation to the mix.

Instagram: @ameerahammouda_

Website: https://ameerahammouda.com

Welcome to WIBcast Season 3! This summer, I took the time to think about where I wanted to bring this platform, why I started it, and how to make it better. This season I am introducing a new form of episode focused more narrowly on what it's like to be a college student recruiting for internships and jobs right now. Look out for episodes on Hirevue, networking, how to talk about yourself, technical interviews, and smilier relevant topics. These are things I know myself and so many others look for help with, and I'm excited to bring on other college-age women to make this process fun and relatable. Where does today's episode tie into all of this? The first step to being a star for others is understanding how amazing you are yourself!

Confidence and self-belief are two areas of mental health that can never be overstated. In this episode, I am diving into all the details of realizing your worth with Christine Kim & Caitlin Hearty. Christine and Caitlin are the Co-Presidents of the Boston College Women in Business organization for the 2021-2022 school year; we talk about affirmations, the social structures that influence how we view ourselves, and what this all means for women in specific. Especially for those entering historically male-dominated fields, imposter syndrome is a common challenge for young talent, and we talk about our own experiences with imposter syndrome and strategies to deal with it. 

I genuinely believe that true confidence is realized when you are not aimlessly competing with peers. I get into my thoughts on why women must find the confidence to uplift each other in the business environment instead of viewing each other as competition.

Miranda McLeer is a tax associate at KPMG out of the Boston office. Miranda gives a very realistic look into the entire accounting recruiting process and her first year on-the-job experience . Her sophomore year, she applied to multiple externships, which are held by public accounting firms and can lead to return internship offers after junior summer. She was specially chosen by KPMG to attend one of these programs in Amsterdam. In the KPMG Global Advantage program, she learned about the firm, met other students, and we talk about how one of her biggest takeaways was learning about types of communication across cultures. 

We get into Miranda’s specific role now on the Accounting Methods and Credit Services team and how she helps clients in the biotech space maximize their research and development efforts. She says her role is much more than crunching numbers. She has to take a really holistic and analytical approach to help clients. Her interviewer from sophomore year, who also recommended her for the Global Advantage Program, is the head of her team now. He saw early on, her potential, and Miranda has found friends and mentors of all ages at work even in a work from home environment. We then get into tackling the CPA exam, and her experience abroad in Parma Italy. 

Miranda was also my Teaching Assistant freshman year, and speaking with her again over a year later was the greatest pleasure puts things into perspective of how much we have both learned in a year.  

This week on WIBcast, Cassandra Morales gets technical on her experience in Corporate Banking at PNC. We address that Corporate Banking seems not as commonly known as others division like Investment Banking or Sales and Trading, but Cassandra explains the broad skill set the she has gained since graduating from BC.

She became interested in Corporate Banking when a mentor suggested that it was a great place to start her career because of its broad reach across industries and banking products. Where others have referred to the Corporate Banking (CB) division as the backbone to a bank, Cassandra explains that she has to communicate with and understand every line of business to be susscussful.

She also breaks down the fine details of credit products, syndicated loans, and client relationship management. She is the personification of making the most of every opportunity in your career and beyond. She also speaks a lot to the importance of developing her personal self outside of work. She grew up in Bolivia, had an internship in Hong Kong and we talk about the spectrum of cultural differences she experienced in every corner of the globe. We end with a conversation about the impact of her experience in the Big Sister program at BC and she gives final advice to never stop learning.

In this episode Hanna Hunstad speaks on what it means to integrate passion and career. She was a competitive swimmer growing up, the captain of the swim team at Boston College for the 2016-2017 school year, and now a triathlete. She started at TJX in 2017 as as an Allocation Analyst, but could not keep herself away from fitness post grad. She became a certified fitness instructor and taught spin classes and water aerobics early in the morning before going to her full time job simply because she loved to do it! She talks about how career fit is about finding what makes you want to wake up at 5 a.m and go to bed at 2 a.m for, and she soon realized, that a nine-to-five job classic job was not making her as fulfilled as she knew she could be.

At 25, she stepped away from TJX to start GRIT, a skincare business tailored to ingrown pubic hair. After realizing that other female athletes and women in general struggled with a similar discomfort and insecurity as she did, Hanna began to roll out GRIT full time. We talk about the skill set being an athlete brought to her professional life, what it was like to be her own boss, but also the not so sexy side of being an entrepreneur. Hanna  worked with product and business developers to scale her business, but ultimately made the decision to step away. Hanna is honest about the stigma she faced from stepping away from her position at TJX to pursue GRIT, but does not regret any of the experience she gained.

She is now the Brand Strategy and Growth Manager of 80/20 Endurance, which is a training plan program for runners and triathletes founded by acclaimed coaches Matt Fitzgerald and David Warden. Hanna also shares some really interesting insights on what it is like to be in the business side of athletics. 

Christine LaFrance is the head of Client Success at M1Finance and has a track record in finance that you do not want to miss. She started her professional journey with an internships at Barclays after her sophomore and junior years of college. After graduating, she accepted a full time offer with Fidelity. At Fidelity, Christine started in a rotational program, meaning even though she was employed full time, she changed which desks (teams/products) she worked on. But, when working on the fixed income desk, she found a manger who became a mentor figure, and she stayed on that desk until deciding to get her MBA at Northwestern. 

We talk about her decision to go to Chicago and attend the Kellog School of Management despite not having a network in Chicago (spoiler alert: she is working in Chicago now, so it was a risk that payed off)! She was involved in a lot of investment and professional extracurriculars while enrolled as a full time student. After finishing, she accepted a role within the private bank at JP Morgan. We talk about the differences between her early on experience on trading floor and her later career in wealth management, where she sees the future of both industries, and how her experience has all compounded to make her so successful with M1 now. From understanding investments to building long term relationships, Christine now leads a team of over 40. 

M1Finance is the "finance super app"! Targeted at long term investors, M1 currently has over 500,000 open accounts and was awarded "best for sophisticated investors" by Investopedia in 2020.  We talk about the value driven mission of M1 to make financial outcomes more accessible and the rapid growth she is managing. This episode is for anyone with any interest in finance as Christine has done it all.

Brigid Rooney connects environmentalism to a SWOT analysis, Larry Fink, and all sorts of other business related topics in this episode of WIBcast. As a sustainability analyst at CodeGreen, Brigid’s job is to make strategy and implementation plans for commercial real estate clients looking to make their buildings more environmentally friendly. We talk a lot about the upswing in motivation for corporate partners to invest in the environment, and the importance of communication to motivate further action. Something really interesting to me on that topic is how effective the rankings system acts as an incentive.

On top of her full time job at CodeGreen, Brigid is currently enrolled in Columbia University’s Sustainability Masters program. In this program, she breaks down the intense business focused training she is getting to fuel her future impact. Brigid talks about one of her previous classes where she worked with a hyper local produce delivery company and helped them reduce their environmental impact directly. In her eventual capstone project, she will employ her skills and act as a pro bono consultant for a client who other wise would not be able to afford services like those at CodeGreen.

The social justice and humanitarian view of environmentalism is just as important to Brigid as her role at work. Brigid put beautifully into words the purpose of what she does. As a member of the first graduating class in Boston College’s environmental studies program, she explains her love for Earth science itself and how that plays into her personal motivation for her career. We also talk about how capitalism paired with strong governmental innovation can help to create positive change.

In a truly inspiring episode, Brigid opened my eyes to how people who don’t understand the carbon cycle can leverage business school skills to address the climate crisis.

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