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On Sept. 24, they published a piece supposedly penned by a Singaporean who had been interning at a United States investment bank on Wall Street.

Genevieve, not her real name, shared exactly what she found to be the most annoying aspect of the internship.

Brown-nosing

Genevieve found the practice of talking to Managing Directors, especially as an intern, quite jarring.

But the internship was far from plain sailing and one task particularly annoyed me and made me think poorly of my fellow interns. At the start of the internship the bank gave us a goal to basically speak to as many MDs as possible -- not just in our teams, but across the bank.

The reasoning for that prompt was because conversing with MDs showed initiative.

The idea was that talking to MDs showed you had the potential to be proactive and pushy with clients -- you were someone who wasn’t afraid of being ‘out there’ and showing initiative.

Bootlicking

That initiative, according to Genevieve, ultimately lent itself to an abuse of the system.

Many of the other interns completely overreacted to the objective, to the point where their behaviour just didn’t look natural. They would approach MDs they had no connection with and blatantly bootlick them by making random small talk. Buying takeaway coffee and lunches for MDs, even when not asked, was another common ploy for striking up a silly chat.

And, this bootlicking was deemed by Genevieve to be quite un-Singaporean in terms of work culture.

I’ve got quite a bubbly personality and I don’t conform to the crass American stereotype of the ‘introverted Asian woman’. But in my country – no matter how outgoing you are – it’s simply rude and disrespectful to walk up to someone senior for no real reason.

Primarily because it was something she wasn't used to at her Singaporean internships.

It was never on the agenda at previous Singapore-based internships I’d done. Who was I to start asking a middle-aged banker how their kids were doing or what they had planned for the weekend?

Which, according to her, placed her at a disadvantage amongst her American colleagues.

Unlike my American counterparts, I struggled to have these kind of contrived conversations.

Despite the uncertainty, Genevieve learnt to compromise.

A very helpful middle-manager in my team gave me a plan. She said I should approach MDs only after completing work that they would be affected by or at least interested in.

Which placed her in a slight disadvantage, but still in a much better position than before.

I eventually spoke to enough MDs, but the process was much slower for me than for my colleagues, because I had to actually finish pieces of work first. There were still no random conversations with senior bankers by the water cooler.

And there's a happy ending to this whole thing, she managed to get the job as a first-year analyst at a US bank.

You can read the full story here.

Image from Pixabay Predrag Kezic