I am 24 years old, come from Sola in Rogaland and am now in my fifth year of studies to be a civil engineer in industrial economics at NTNU.  I specialise in optimisation (Operations Research) and am currently writing a thesis on maritime transport.  I also have an academic background in finance and logistics.

My first impressions of the people at First Securities – when they gave a company presentation in Trondheim – were very good. I also learned from several other sources that this was a company made up of highly professional people working on challenging assignments.  I therefore considered First Securities an attractive potential employer, and I applied to the Summer Internship programme to see what it would be like to work there.

Over the summer at First Securities, I worked on market analyses of certain oil companies.  I was able to apply some of what I had learned in corporate finance, investment analysis and other school subjects, but I also got to learn and discover a lot more along the way.  For example, how long does it usually take to drill an oil well?  And how many barrels of oil are the equivalent of a million cubic feet of gas?

A typical day for me as a summer intern was as follows: after arriving at the office a little past 7 I would check the news, before attending the morning meeting at 7.30. These meetings were usually very educational! They involved either company-specific analyses, sector analyses or macroeconomic analyses, so you could learn a great deal about how to perform analyses and how to present these analyses properly.  After the morning meeting, I would spend most of the day working on the oil companies I had to analyse, and I always received good assistance and guidance when needed.  The other trainees and I also got to attend several short courses over the summer, where the most experienced employees in First Securities taught us how to analyse individual stocks, how to pick good stocks and how to interpret the macroeconomic picture.

A summer spent with First Securities, in my opinion, offers a lot of new knowledge on analysis in general and of the stock market in particular, and provides the opportunity to learn from some of the most skilled analysts in Norway.  In addition, it was a good pathway to permanent hire, both because you get the opportunity to see if you like the company, and the company also gets a better chance to see more of what you can do than they would be able to understand through a round of interviews.  I can therefore highly recommend the Summer Internship programme at First Securities.

Bernt Olav.