Evan Vitale Consulting: UCSC student group lends consulting and investing experience

Sunday, November 9, 2014

UCSC student group lends consulting and investing experience – Santa Cruz Sentinel

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By Kara Guzman

kguzman@santacruzsentinel.com @karambutan on Twitter

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UC Santa Cruz student Amit Kidron works at his desk at Open Spectrum Inc., where he is employed part time as a marketing associate.

SANTA CRUZ &GT;&GT; Thanks to his work with a business student group, UC Santa Cruz senior Amit Kidron has something his peers envy: a job offer after graduation.

Before his midterm on Thursday, Kidron, 22, met with a CEO at Scotts Valley’s Open Spectrum Inc., where he is a marketing manager. Kidron said the broker gave him his part-time job and full-time offer due to his work with Gesher Group, a student-run investment and consulting program.

“Starting Gesher catapulted me into all this crazy exciting stuff I’m doing right now,” said Kidron, who co-founded the group last fall. “I’m interacting with all sorts of other companies.”

The first of its kind at UCSC, Gesher Group offers services such as market research and stock evaluation, all done by students looking for client experience. Customers include New Leaf Community Markets, the Ritz Carlton and tech startups in Tel Aviv, who sign an eight-week contract for 100 hours of student work. If satisfied, customers can make a tax-deductible $250 donation after the project is complete.

Barak Hachamov, founder and CEO of Samba, a video messaging app, hired Gesher last year to research markets and promote the app. He said he was pleased with the work and even hired one student as an intern.

U.S. college students are an obvious target market for Samba, part of the reason for choosing Gesher, said Hachamov, who is based in Tel Aviv.

“Beyond just marketing and promoting, it’s really to better understand how they perceive us and what is the complete landscape in their eyes when they use Samba,” Hachamov said.

Gesher has 35 students, who volunteer 10 hours per week and attend talks by local hedge fund managers, CFOs and entrepreneurs.

UCSC junior Daniel Kipnes, a business management economics major, researched for New Leaf Markets last winter. He discovered one store was in a largely Asian neighborhood, yet offered few Asian goods. After surveying customers, he suggested to the CEO to expand the Asian department, a move the company adopted, said Kipnes, now Gesher co-president.

Omer Levy, a 2014 alum and group co-founder with Kidron, said UCSC grads need to be proactive to find consulting jobs. Levy is now a management consulting associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“A lot of the top consulting, finance and banking companies recruit at Bay Area schools like Stanford and UC Berkeley, but don’t come and recruit at UCSC,” said Levy, who said he was hired because he found an alum on LinkedIn who worked at the company and gave him an internal referral.

Bob Shepherd, a UCSC economics lecturer, said two of the four largest international audit firms no longer recruit at UCSC, but still hire students. He advises students to get an accounting certificate to boost their chances.

“A lot start by going to work for national and local accounting firms and ultimately move into things like investing,” he said. “Really it’s a good place to be.”

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