Written by: Cade Polter
Cade is going into his senior year at The Ohio State University majoring in economics. He is currently interning with Colliers | Columbus on the accounting team. Keep reading for insight into Cade's intern experience.
What has been your favorite project to work on throughout your time at Colliers?
I think my favorite project throughout my time at Colliers has been writing the mid-month and end-of-month economic updates. I enjoy the challenge of finding new and unique things to write about even though the economy doesn’t change much over the course of two weeks. By doing this research, I’ve been able to read about some areas of commercial real estate that are still thriving, even though most everyone is down on the outlook of the office sector at the moment. I’ve also enjoyed being a part of the accounting day-to-day tasks, learning the importance of things like accounts payable, accounts receivable and bank reconciliations.
What has been the biggest lesson you will take away from this internship?
The biggest lesson I’ll take away from this internship is to take any opportunity to learn when you’re presented with one. As cliché as it may sound, learning how to learn is one of the most important skills to develop. Classroom learning differs from learning in the world of business, there aren’t exactly practice problems within a job. When I began working at Colliers, I watched a few training videos and then began working through things, figuring them out along the way. I’ve been extremely lucky to work with such great people who were always willing to help, which definitely eased the learning curve. From my experience though, at some point you have to dig in and do it yourself. Colliers allowing me to jump in and get real experience almost right away allowed me to grow and learn in a timely matter. Listening is another key part to learning and I’ve been able to listen to some great presentations while at Colliers. We’ve had accounting presentations done in-house, along with different Lunch and Learn opportunities to listen to business ideas and even retirement planning presentations. Overall, this has been a great experience for me and my biggest takeaway will be to enjoy learning, no matter what it is.
What aspects of commercial real estate has this internship made you more interested in?
This internship has not made me especially interested in any particular aspect but instead has grown my interest as a whole towards the commercial real estate sector. Previously, I worked under a Buffalo Wild Wings franchisee and saw the commercial real estate process from the tenant side. This summer has allowed me to see from the other end of the scope and has opened my eyes to the importance of commercial real estate. The future of commercial real estate really interests me because I think things such as working from home are here to stay, so it will be interesting to see how CRE adapts.