The last week of my internship at Argo, I was tasked with covering four insurance competitors and creating two-page summaries for each. That week turned out to be one of the busiest but best weeks of the summer for me. Throughout the past two months, I had done plenty of research on specific insurance products, market sizes, and competitive landscapes. But the last project made me apply all the techniques previously used to create my final deliverables - concise company snapshots.
The tasks appear simple - look up a company, find a list of numerical data, create graphs, and put them nicely together on one page. But I have since learned that sifting through piles of information for a single number can take hours. From combing through SEC filings to navigating databases (Capital IQ, SNL Financial, Moody’s) to searching the 59th page of Google, I now have a better idea of what research can truly entail.
The second most time-consuming component of the project was formatting the deliverable.* All four main sections - along with their separate headers, pasted charts, key financials - had to be pixel perfect, with every element formatted with official company colors. A page with five pie charts had to have exactly the same margins with the font sizes just clear enough; and all the sizes of these items would be completely different for a page with a pasted Excel sheet and just three pie charts. Anyhow, because of all of this, I now silently admit my newfound love for Powerpoint.
At the end, I felt satisfied from these accomplishments (and yes, I did feel proud of those four pages). That last week made me appreciate what being detail-oriented really meant, and I hope to continue with that mindset when working on future projects. There were certainly grueling moments, but through it all, I highly enjoyed the process.
*Have I mentioned that keyboard shortcuts in Powerpoint (and not just Excel) are amazing?
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