Alishah Ishfaq
speaker
25 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Alishah Ishfaq’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm doing very well. Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me here. And actually, just to add on, it took you two months to get back to me. So I was just like cold emailing, trying to, you know, get a tour of the New York Stock Exchange because we're one of the largest clubs at Baruch. It's called the Finance and Economic Society. And so all of us, like, it's a dream to be here.
So just consistently, I think just reaching out. And yeah, one day after two months, we replied. And that's kind of how we hit it off.
Awesome. Yeah. Just to give you some background, I immigrated here with my family when I was about 80 years old and ever since I've been living here in Brooklyn. So I kind of grew up here, went to middle school, high school, and then college. And like Peter said, it's pretty hard and stressful trying to navigate college, trying to land an internship.
I think it takes a lot of perseverance, commitment, dedication, and certainly I hope Just following those values, I've landed a full-time job at Citi. I landed an internship during my junior year at TD Securities. I was in the investment banking division. And then currently I'm interning at Commerce Bank as a corporate banking intern, along with Trademoss here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Yes, I am also interning here with Benny Tuckman. And yeah, so that's kind of what I've been up to recently. But yeah, it's really been a lot navigating and trying to land your junior summer internship and then also landing, you know, something full time that I would love to pursue as my career and, you know, ultimate job.
And yeah, so in college, I was going around to the course of different colleges across New York City. And Baruch was one of my best options.
amazing school. I can't say enough great things about it. But yeah, so I ended up at Baruch and freshman year, I was attending a lot of like, we had career fairs. So we would have like recruiters from different companies come in and speak to students. So I was attending a lot of those trying to like get an idea of, Hey, like what is banking? What is investment banking?
Because when you walk in, when you come in as a freshman investment bank, I feel like it's very glamorized. And so everybody's like, yeah, I wanted to do investment banking, but little do people know what it actually takes. Um, uh, And so I think just realizing that, trying to speak to people and ask them important questions like, what does your day to day look like? What skills do I need to have?
Right. So try to match that with what your values are, what you essentially want to do. So I think a lot of networking was the key in like landing these internships, especially my junior internship. I actually didn't even do an application for that. It was straight through networking. So I was part of Fez and we have a lot of connections, alumni.
a finance and economic society. So it's like the largest finance club, I believe. And that's who came to tour here. That's cool.
We'll also be back on Wednesday for our second tour.
It's a semester thing. Yeah. So, you know, I was just networking a lot and I reached out to somebody that was recruiting, doing a resume drop at TV Securities. And yeah, he was like, we love your resume. I'd love to like have, you know, a first round of interview. I was like, yeah, let's do it. So it was like the very next day they called me. I did a phone call interview.
And before I actually even got to send a thank you letter, they're like, hey, we'd love to do a super day. So like I didn't even have time to send a thank you letter or like, you know, prep a The next morning, I had super days with the two MDs from TD. And, you know, it was a great casual conversation. Really enjoyed it.
And yeah, before I even got to send them thank you letters, they're like, hey, we'd love to extend the offer. So it all happened very quickly. And yeah, that's kind of how I landed my junior summer internship.
I think it's something that I developed over time, certainly. In high school, I remember I would just pick up a lot of self-help books, such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the classic, Thinking Grow Rich, a lot of psychology books.
of this kind, and just like watching a lot of YouTube videos on, you know, like what it takes, you know, the mindset that you should have, like Jocko Willink is a great author, I kind of follow him as well. So yeah, just like having that mindset to put your emotions aside, get up and do what you have to do, just get after it. It was my motto. And reaching out, too, in terms of being persistent.
I know a lot of students tend to get discouraged after they don't hear back. Like I mentioned, you replied back to me after two months. And that was just me being consistently reaching out on LinkedIn. I certainly did have that thought that he's probably bombarded with so many messages from other students like me. I didn't really expect him to get back, but there's always a chance.
I don't give up. I think with everything else, I've always been persistent regardless of what the circumstances are, how I feel. I put all that aside. I know what the goal is. I just go after it. I think to have this mindset, you definitely have to have a lot of self-discipline.
like I mentioned, I think in high school, reading a lot of these self-help books really helped me like build and grow that mindset over time.
Exactly. Yeah, no, it's very, very essential to have a circle that's supportive and they're ambitious and have goals of their own. But yeah, I think it's also important to emphasize that it's a lot easier said than done. Like I just mentioned, I networked and I got these internships.
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