FIU Student Breaks Into Highly Competitive Financial Services Industry

Isaiah Stewart / Contributing Writer

 

Eric Quinones, a senior finance student, recently completed a cost and procurement analyst internship with Banco Santander this past summer leading to a full-time offer before graduation. 

Current statistics, according to the Financial Times, report that finding a job in the financial services industry after graduation has a success rate of less than 1%.

 Quinones moved to Miami from Mexico City in 2011 and chose FIU because he felt like he was going to get a great education and improve his English language. 

Eric maintained a solid GPA throughout college, while also working full time in other various roles, and his hard work has paid off. 

Deutsche Bank, for example, reported in 2018 that they had 619 graduate jobs for which they had 110,000 people apply for. 

For Quinones, breaking the bleak percentage outlook was going to be tough. He said having a strategy was crucial. He sat down over the summer and wrote down the path he wanted to go and had the great opportunity to intern at Banco Santander in Brickell. 

He accepted the internship offer because Santander has a presence in every financial center in the world. Quinones saw this as a great opportunity, as he wants to move to New York City at some point in his career. 

Banco Santander is a Spanish multinational commercial bank and financial services company based in Madrid. They are ranked as the 16th largest banking institution in the world. Santander Group currently employs a little over 200,000 people, with 38 currently employed from FIU. 

Santander was supposed to move him to a different department, but because he did so well in cost analysis, the bank gave him a job offer.  

“I interned there for 5 months and was supposed to get transferred and not to brag but my performance was pretty good. I completed a lot of projects that helped the bank lower prices, so they offered me a full-time job. It’s nice to have a job before graduating”

Quinones said that a specific professor in the finance department helped him understand his field a little better in the Financial Management class. 

Professor Anastasios Moysidis helped Eric understand finance as Moysidis laid out the groundwork and pathway to comprehending the subject. 

Moysidis taught Financial Management, which focuses on key financial concepts used in the business world. 

Eric also included FIU’s business faculty as a whole as he said they helped with resume building, LinkedIn, Excel, and Bloomberg to name a few. 

Quinones believes the key to success lies in having a balance between responsibilities and fun.

“Do not wait until you’re old to start making the right moves. Don’t get me wrong, you should have fun, but you need to be responsible enough to balance school and your boys.”

He hopes that he can give back to FIU in the future, and he hopes he can give more credibility to FIU in the competitive financial world.