Tifani Ng’s Articles at WOW Fellowship Blog

Completion of my NYCSCC Internship

The last day of my New York City Seminar and Conference Center (NYCSCC) internship is a bittersweet day for me. I am happy that I have learned so much at this internship but sad that I will not be working with my coworkers every day.

This summer, I have finished a Financial Analysis project from the very beginning to the very end. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was compiling data on an Excel spreadsheet. Since all of the data was in Excel, I have honed my Excel skills in the 10 weeks at this internship. I have encountered many roadblocks while doing the Financial Analysis project but the support of fellow interns and coworkers has led me to overcome these challenges. At the end of the internship, I presented the Financial Analysis project in a PowerPoint presentation to NYCSCC employees. Although I was nervous when presenting the project, another feeling overcame that: the feeling of accomplishment.

After this internship experience, I will take the analytical skills I honed and apply them to my Brandeis classes. During my junior and senior years at Brandeis, I will be taking Business and Economics classes and will need to use these skills in the class projects and papers.

Following this internship, I want to complete more internships that allow me to focus on developing my skills. While completing the Financial Analysis project, I realized that I am a process-oriented person and enjoy completing tasks from start to finish.

For those of you looking to intern at NYCSCC, I suggest that you attend the Winter NYC CIC fair because NYCSCC is usually at the fair. Before applying to the internship, you should look into the NYCSCC website to get an overview of what NYCSCC is. NYCSCC has internships in both marketing and finance. Having talked to the Marketing intern throughout my internship, I know there is so much you can learn in either area at this small business hospitality company. If you want to get an idea of what the benefits of interning at a small business are, you can check out my small company blog post.

For students interested in the small business hospitality field, make sure that you are a people person. In this field, employees are always dealing with clients and making sure that they are getting the best services possible. Therefore, you should be ready to do the same at this internship.

Interning at NYCSCC has been an enjoyable and memorable learning experience. I have built close connections with NYCSCC employees, and I will keep in touch with them even after the internship.

The Value of Interning at a Small Company

Small companies are great places for summer internships! My experience so far at NYCSCC will help explain why.

One of my WOW learning goals is to network at my internship. While interning at NYCSCC, I met a fellow Brandeis student, Corey Shapiro. Corey is a rising senior and is an intern at a small web development company, Hudson Horizons. When I asked him what his internship duties were, he excitedly explained them to me. One of the projects that he completed involved testing the mobile application of one of Hudson Horizon’s clients. Corey also did research online and found a few potential clients for Hudson Horizons. He said that although there are challenges, his supervisor and his mentor are always there to help him overcome them. When Corey spoke about this support at his internship site, I related it to the intimacy I feel and the guidance I receive at NYCSCC.

Due to the size of NYCSCC, I get to know all my coworkers and can truly collaborate as a team. Furthermore, I get to speak with one of the owners on a weekly basis and have picked up plenty of advice and knowledge based on his experiences. I expect to keep in touch with him and all my coworkers even after my internship ends.

In a small company, I have many internship responsibilities and projects. I have learned to “wear multiple hats” just because there are not enough people to fulfill all of the business functions. Not only am I exploring the company’s finances, I am also helping out in event operations and writing blog posts for the Flatiron Hot! News, a company partnership. As a result of doing a little bit of everything, I am gaining skills that I never thought I would gain this summer.

I have quickly learned that the challenges that small companies face are different from the ones that big companies face. Small companies do not have the same resources as big companies. As an intern, I can provide my coworkers with a fresh, outsider’s perspective. I offer suggestions on what the company is doing well and what it could do better to maximize its resources. I feel valuable. I know that every suggestion I make and every project I do count. By the time my internship ends, I know that I will have an impact on this company.

Both Corey and my experiences show the benefits of interning at small companies. Even though not all small companies come to Brandeis to recruit students, these companies are always looking for interns throughout the year. There are so many opportunities for students to gain knowledge and develop skills at these companies. Students just have to be proactive and look for them.

– Tifani Ng ’16

Corey Shapiro’s internship site

Midpoint at NYC Seminar and Conference Center

Wow. I am already at the midpoint of my internship at NYC Seminar and Conference Center (NYCSCC). My work at NYCSCC has definitely picked up its speed since my first week. I am exploring the finances of a company in a small business hospitality industry and have learned so much already.

I am proud of the Financial Analysis project that I am working on with a fellow intern. One of the project’s goals is to build a financial model that would tell a person how the company is doing financially based on certain factors. In order to complete this project, I am applying my Financial and Managerial Accounting knowledge to analyze the cash flow statements of the company. This is an exhilarating experience for me because I can actually apply the accounting material I have learned at Brandeis to analyze a company’s finances.

Another subdivision of the project is to evaluate the pricing of NYCSCC rooms based on the conclusions I have drawn from my financial analysis. Although I have not reached this point in the project yet, I am keeping this in mind as I am looking at the data I have compiled. I am happy about the progress that I am making so far in this project!

The majority of the work that I am doing for the projects requires the use of Excel. Becoming more familiar with Excel was one of my learning goals for this internship, and I am happy to say that I am building my Excel skills. Honing this skill will help me in future jobs since Excel is one of the most used business softwares among many companies.

Throughout this internship, I am building my analytical skills. When some of the data that I need for the project is missing, I have to figure out what the best method is to back into it, given the data that we have. Since I am dealing with a lot of financial data, I have to sort through it and decide what is relevant and what is not relevant when building the financial model. After compiling and analyzing this data, I draw conclusions to see if there are any noticeable trends or unusual occurrences. This step-by-step analytical skill is preparing me for future business and economics classes at Brandeis, where I envision myself doing projects that involve analytical thinking.

Teamwork is required for the work that I do. When I hit roadblocks in the project, I am grateful to be able to talk about them with a fellow intern, my mentor, and a company owner. They offer advice about ways to solve these challenges, and it feels great to be able to bounce ideas back and forth with each other. The collaboration involved in my intern work is preparing me for the real world. In any future career path that I embark on, I will always have to work in teams on company projects and be able to communicate ideas with other team members.

I am enjoying my experience at NYCSCC and am excited to continue my progress on the projects!

First Week at NYC Seminar and Conference Center

“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.

Photo Courtesy of www.nycseminarcenter.com

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.