Finally, after 10-week internship in IBM GBS, I went back to unemployed status last Friday. It has been a great internship experience in IBM, including the people I had met, the projects I had been involved, the roles I took in projects, and most importantly, the learnings I took away from my experience.
In my last post, I would like to share with you what I have learned in IBM GBS as an MBA intern consultant.
How to structure thinking: we have practiced so many cases in business school, but still, when facing a real problem, I am still struggling to come up with a right approach to solve the issue. I know I am talking cliché, but anyway, I listed below the most steps I learned during the summer.
- Clarify (Always ask questions to ensure understanding, then LISTEN carefully regarding what is the problem!)
- Breakdown problem with framework (each firm may have preferred ones.)
- Test with MECE
How to build presentation deck: We are always talking about strategy. However, as a junior consultant, it is our job to put the thoughts on a PPT deck. And there is so much to learn in order to put forward a satisfying deck. In one of the proposal I worked on, we had created 77 versions of deck.
- All good writing is about rewriting
- Bad formatting may kill good content
- Always check, check and check before presentation to clients
- When you lay out a framework at the beginning of a deck, all the following slides should be tied back to it
- Headline summarizes the key takeaways of a slide, and all headlines of a deck linked together should read like an article and tell the story
How to model (Not on a runway): Business students are talking about modeling all the time, but what on the earth is modeling? In terms financial modeling, I have learned the following.
- Determine the purpose of the model
- Make educated assumptions, and build an assumptions page
- Build input page, make model easy to configure
- Add checks to make sure everything ties
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