Melina Arakelyan

During my summer internship at Citigroup I was involved in various projects. First of all, I have successfully completed an individual project called "HR Business Partner Role and Brand Awareness Survey". I developed a questionnaire to capture current perception of the role of HR Business Partner within O&T and business expectations over HR partnership. I launched the survey by distributing the questionnaire to three major groups of respondents: O&T Managers, employees and HR team members. I also captured and documented information on current HRBP communication practices through individual interviews with O&T HR Team. Finally, I summarised and analysed the available feedback to identify strong and development areas. My second project was a group project for the EMEA Learning Team. The project entailed coordinating information from 55 countries by working closely with the HR and Learning teams to identify course requirements and offerings, vendors, as well as local regulations, funding, languages, etc. The end result of the project provided analysis and recommendations on a standard core curriculum to be offered across EMEA, as well as a summary by country of the local offerings, requirements and regulations beyond the core curriculum. I have further developed my project management skills as I was coordinating data gathering and analysis across region to achieve project goals. I have improved my collaboration and influencing skills through partnering with HR and Learning professionals across EMEA to encourage participation in the discovery data gathering exercise, and working with project teammates for deliverables.

My main responsibilities as a Pre Analyst Campus Ambassador at Deutsche Bank included building market intelligence and producing two written reports. The reports included analysis and recommendations made for the campus recruitment process. I also helped market events and supported ongoing Deutsche Bank promotional activity at UCL. Deutsche Bank holds various events for undergraduate students. One of the examples was the Athlete Academy Event. My task as a Pre Analyst Campus Ambassador was to attract as many students as possible. First of all, I sent e-mails to each sport society at UCL. Then, individual meetings with the presidents of the societies were organised. This strategy proved to be very effective because the Athlete Academy Event attracted a large number of students. Being a Pre Analyst Campus Ambassador has helped to broaden my finance and banking knowledge.

During my summer internship at London Business School I was assisting a PHD student in conducting his research project which included searching through a series of archival sources and gathering information about publications in management journals.My main task was to read various articles and summarise the findings into Microsoft Excel tables. The assignment was challenging as I had to read and analyse over 1000 articles under extreme time pressure.To make the process faster I tried to "invent" a new technique of how to skim the articles instead of reading them. It helped me to save time and complete the work of high standards. This experience has been invaluable to me. It helped to learn how to manage my work under time pressure.

I was a Student Ambassador at Bellerbys College, which meant that I would show and promote the college to potential students and their agents and this, I think, proves that I can be trusted in maintaining a brand image.I had attended a large number of Q&A sessions,the questions were mainly about the courses and extracurricular activities that Bellerbys College offers to students. It helped to enhance my leadership, organisational and communication skills.

I completed a 3 months placement assessing how to improve relationships with foreign customers in Elite Stroy, a construction company in Moscow. One of my responsibilities as a summer intern included acting as an interpreter for the clients of the company. My typical day was starting with early morning reconciliation, and dealing with e-mails. I also had a summer-long project, which was examining client behaviour. I had to be motivated and eager to learn. I also had to know how to handle numerous tasks at once, as well as being an effective communicator. To identify and analyse problems I had to gather information that reveals their causes, which calls for excellent problem-solving skills and close attention to detail. It helped to improve my presentation skills, and gave me the opportunity to put my language and business skills into practice.

I received an award for excellence, for being a great Student Ambassador.