Hussen Alzaher

As a Saudi national and a person intimately familiar with both the American and Arab cultures, I believe that I am an asset to any company looking to do work in the Arab Gulf region. I will have an advantage in communication and understanding that only a native could possess. Given the fact that trade between the United States and the Arab Gulf is growing every year, I believe that I would be a valuable liaison between these two regions.

I am a finance major, and I plan to work as a consultant for a bank after graduation. While there have been banking crises across America in Europe in the past five years, Arab banks have been surprisingly stable, mostly because they stayed out of the subprime-lending trends of the 2000's. Given that fact, I think that Middle East banking will provide fertile ground for American investment.

As far as my strengths and weaknesses go, I believe that my main weakness is in my ability to communicate verbally. This is something that I am working to develop everyday. There are vast differences in linguistics between my native language, Arabic, and the English language, and so it can be difficult to adjust and recall vocabulary instantly while in conversation. I understand that this is a major impediment towards my competitiveness, but it is something that I am earnestly striving to improve.

My strengths are in my capacity for intuition and willingness to work hard to improve or reach a goal. I have a never say die attitude and am willing to fight until the end to reach my goals. My goals are an integral part of who I am and I will fight for them until I reach them and exceed them. I also pride myself on my integrity.

My core benefits lie in my intimate understanding of finance and my quantitative skills. I am skilled in mathematics and find that it comes very natural to me. I enjoy my math courses and have received top marks in all of them. This will be a necessary skill to have in finance, as it is a profession that lives and dies by the accuracy of mathematical models. Furthermore, as mentioned above, what also separates me from other candidates is my bilingual and bicultural ability and understanding. You will be hard pressed to find a person with both my skill set and cultural background, and so I believe I am highly valuable to any company looking to operate in the Middle East or Muslim countries in general.