To consult or not to consult? or how did I get so far

(MBA,Booz) Beginning to write is always the hardest, once few words are already written the whole operation becomes natural and easy :-)

So who am I?

My name is Rotem, a student from Israel who relocated to the US to pursue a MBA at Ross.

Besides studying, I spent the past eight months exploring the internship opportunities and learning a lot about the different roles and industries. As time passed by I came to the understanding that I would like to become a consultant or work at High-Tech. How are these two connected? that's a good question! I can't draw a clear line that connects both of these opportunities, though I can say that preparing for recruiting in two different industries was not easy at all. In fact I quite failed to prepare for the High-Tech part of the deal... luckily I received a consulting offer that put me right where I wanted to be :-)

So this summer I'll be interning with Booz & Co. in Dallas, which I find very appealing as the Michigan winter was found to be a bit too cold and snowy for me - I'm still Mediterranean...

I will be assigned to a team dealing with a strategic IT problem that one of Booz's customers have.

It seems very clear to me that this is where I want to be,but I yet lack the practical experience doing it. From my research on consulting companies, I learned a lot on the challenges of the consultant lifestyle,and now I am looking forward to experience it first hand this summer.

I am really excited about the opportunity to experience hands on team work in a new environment, I believe it will be a major challenge.

Before I end this post, I would like to share what I take to be the three most important things I learned through my consulting recruiting experience:

- 1st and most important - have a backup, unfortunately, out of more than hundred students who want to intern as consultants, only few tens receive an offer - which might leave you offer less! don't give up though - it's a two year process and full time offers are much more generously given! but as for the internship - choose another industry you are passionate about and prepare for its interviews.

- 2nd, start as early as possible, prepare your resume , consult your peers and second year OCD consultants and practice cases and fit with them to be as ready as possible for your interviews.

- Having that said - don't burn yourself! taking 5 cases a day will be less effective for most of us than taking only 2 and concentrating on the learning from each one of them.

Best,

Rotem