“Next stop is 23rd Street. Stand clear of the closing doors!” says the subway announcer. I gather my belongings, knowing that I have to get off at the next stop. When the M train stops at the 23rd Street platform, the doors open and hordes of people get off the train with me. I quickly make my way to exit because, knowing NYC, a line to exit the subway station will always form, and I definitely do not want to get caught up in that in my morning commute. After I exit the station, I catch myself walking quickly to NYC Seminar and Conference Center (NYCSCC) to keep up with the fast-paced pedestrian speed of those around me.
This summer, I am interning at NYCSCC, located in the Flatiron District of New York City. It is a small business that hosts corporate and business clients’ meetings, seminars, and professional development events. Its clients range from people in the non-profits to financial services, both domestic and international. NYCSCC’s mission is to provide seminar and conference space for companies and groups to use while being budget-friendly. NYCSCC offers facilities that are up-to-date, tech support throughout events, and catering and amenities services for its business clients.
As a Finance intern, my responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
1) Collaborating with NYCSCC employees to complete tasks essential to the business’s functions
2) Collaborating with other NYCSCC interns on various projects ranging from inventory management to brand analysis
3) Focusing on Financial Analysis projects to improve small business financial operations
- Forecast recommendations for where the business’s budget should be spent to grow the business
- Analyze financial statements of a company in previous years, traffic on website, and all other data to draw correlations and conclusions on NYCSCC’s profitability
I found out about the internship through attending the NYC CIC career fair, January 2014. I am interested in accounting and financial work, and I immediately applied for this opportunity after speaking to a NYCSCC employee at the fair. After successfully navigating the interview and speaking with my future supervisor about my responsibilities as an intern, she offered and I accepted the internship. Since I wanted to stay in my home city of NYC over the summer while pursuing my interests through an internship, being a Finance intern satisfied my internship search.
My first week at NYCSCC was great. I met the other summer interns at the company and got the chance to know them better over lunches and group projects. All the interns were friendly and were willing to help each other out in any way possible. On the first day of the internship, all the interns were given a tour that was similar to what potential clients would see when they request a NYCSCC tour. NYCSCC rents out a couple of floors in the building. Throughout the tour, we learned about the building’s history and were provided with interesting anecdotes of the rooms. After the tour ended, I had a better understanding of the different rooms that clients could book, depending on if they were looking to host a social or a professional event.
In the following couple of days, all of the interns and I worked on projects that involved looking into different aspects of the company and providing suggestions for improvement. In order to evaluate how NYCSCC is performing, I looked into data that other conference centers have put on their websites and compared them to NYCSCC’s data.
While working on the projects, I learned that small business hospitality companies, such as NYCSCC, recently began to gain business again after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. According to Trends in the Conference Center Industry 2013, the reason that NYCSCC follows the economic trend is that this company falls into the category of a luxury good. When the economy is not performing well, small business hospitality companies take a dip in profits as well. People are less willing to spend money to book a space at a conference center when they can perhaps save some money and hold it at their own company’s space.
For the rest of the summer, I expect to handle and complete more finance and accounting projects for the company. In addition, I expect to observe multiple NYCSCC events and see how event managers take charge from the beginning to the end of the event.