Quang Huynh

What is your background? (Hometown, schools, major, etc.)
I'm from York, Pennsylvania, which is about a half hour from Lancaster, and I'm going into my sophomore year at the University of Pittsburgh, where I'm majoring in finance.

What is your role at Everence and where are you located?
I found Everence through the Handshake job board while I was looking for summer opportunities in Lancaster.

How did you find Everence?
I am the Credit Union Accounting Intern at the office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My role consists of assisting our senior accountants in day-to-day operations and procedures, and working on projects to add clarity to our current written procedures and documentation.

What is your day to day like in your internship?
My day-to-day revolves around taking care of the regular responsibilities of my senior accountants. This includes downloading files, creating reports from those files, and posting transactions. Every morning, I compile files to come up with our daily report, which is reviewed by our leadership team, and throughout the day, I continue to download files and make sure that our records are up to date. On occasion, I will conduct research on our reports or new processes to help assess what information we can pull from them. I also manage our large, overnight cash transfers, which is vital for all lending institutions.

What is something valuable you've learned through your internship?
One critical thing that I've learned is the difference between a professional environment and a classroom setting. The content and conduct present in class is much different from that of an internship. I'm now working with real money and people and not just my grade, when I take on an assignment. What I'm actually doing in my internship is also very different from what I learn in class. While these are both learning environments, the experience of applying my class knowledge in a real, professional setting takes on more meaning in materialized business outcomes.

What is something you like to do on the weekends?
I'm busy on the weekends too with studying for finance, but if I have time, I enjoy spending time with family and my two dogs. I, especially, like helping cook and grill food.

What is your favorite local restaurant?
Every week, we will go out to a local restaurant with leadership from our firm, and my favorite place so far has been Frisco's because their chicken and cilantro sauce was great. I'm a big chicken guy.

What advice do you have for future interns at Everence?
Something that kept popping up when I was reading through internship advice was to learn as much as you can, and this is very true. I remember that things started slow, but they pick up once you get a feel for what you're supposed to do every day, so learn as much as you can from your team, while you're there! Also, think big about how you can help. I was staffed on a project, which I could take any direction that I wanted. Think about how you can over deliver and help your team get the most out of your work, for the summer and after you leave. The work that you do and the workload that you take off your team does make a difference.