Success Story: Jenna Florendo ’19 secures Goldman Sachs internship
Success Stories | Aug 03, 2017 | admin
There’s a typical timeline business students tend to follow when it comes to internships.
“Typical” is not in the vocabulary of one Gabelli School student.
This summer, Jenna Florendo, BS ’19, is starting out early as an asset management intern at Goldman Sachs.
While students often land internships during their junior year, Florendo had set her sights on studying in London this fall. She knew her time abroad in the U.K. might interfere with Goldman Sachs’ fall-of-junior-year recruiting cycle, so she set her sights on somehow making an entrée into the firm during her sophomore year.
This represented no small challenge: At the firm’s spring internship symposium, it was reinforced that recruiters specifically were looking for juniors.
That didn’t stop Florendo from trying.
She spoke with fellow students in Fordham’s chapter of Smart Woman Securities, participated in a mock interview, and took notes on what to expect. She even went straight to the source, visiting the Goldman offices to speak with current employees.
“I was really active in talking with upperclassmen and alumni,” she says. “Being able to talk to people in advance made me less nervous.”
In addition to being fully prepared for the interview, Florendo also impressed the Goldman team with her previous school-year internship experience at UBS, which showed she was able to juggle coursework and an internship at the same time.
Being an intern among mostly older students may be intimidating to some, but Florendo appreciates the advantage this coming summer will give her.
“I’ll be doing the same work as the juniors,” she says. “It’s exciting to be getting such a high level of responsibility so early on.”
To underclassmen looking to follow in Florendo’s footsteps, she “would encourage anyone to get a head start and jump right in.”
Even if your path is nontraditional, “don’t be afraid to make these goals for yourself, because you can make it work if you put in the time and effort,” she says. Most importantly, “don’t limit yourself.”
After her internship, Florendo will spend the week and a half before her semester in London flying between Rome and Paris, proving that even the sky is no limit.