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My First Cooperative Education Placement

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During my first cooperative education placement, I worked at Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. (GMO), a global investment management firm that has its global corporate headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. GMO provides a broad range of investment products, including equity and fixed income strategies across global developed and emerging markets, as well as absolute return strategies with a value orientation. Their clients are primarily large institutional investors, and as of December 31, 2014, they had $116 billion in assets under management. During my time there, I was employed in the Fund Reconciliation Team within the Investment Controls Group. My team’s responsibilities mainly consisted of reconciling investment funds on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis with custodian bank values. Though the attire was business casual, the office environment was considered quite conservative, and professionalism is certainly a required trait in the office. Over the course of my internship, I encountered many issues and challenges in the organization that left me discouraged, unmotivated, and unsatisfied. Through an analysis of the lack of emotional intelligence, motivation, as well as weakness in job design, it is evident that there are aspects of the workplace that need to be addressed. My role as an Investment Control Analyst Intern primarily comprised of responsibility for the reconciliation of 13 quantitative equity separately managed funds. Each of the two co-op students was

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