That's a wrap folks..

Hello all,

It is over! 10 weeks flew buy. I am actually sitting in my flat/apartment in Ann Arbor as a write this at Woodbury Gardens. As much as I enjoyed living here during the school year, my wife and I are looking around the unit and realized we already miss living in downtown Chicago!

The final week of work was climatic as it was the week I wrapped up my work and more importantly received the decision whether I would receive an offer or not. However I already did my year end presentation the week before, so that pressure was off.

In regards to work, to be completely honest my week was rather slow. My project was a in a bit of a state of flux as my job manager throughout the project had been assigned to another project so his replacement was busy trying to keep his head above water. The senior principal assigned to the project was on vacation in in South Africa, and another team member was about to take vacation for her wedding. Furthermore I had actually handed in my major deliverables the week before. So I was kept busy with "busy work" to support my peers. Mostly building charts in excel, and providing analysis on 1000's of pages of data received from the client.

In reflection, I really enjoyed my summer. Loved Chicago and Boston, developed new business relationships, realized I didn't know anything about excel and powerpoint, and found out the importance of being able to write/tell a story.

At the beginning of the summer I felt my consulting experience was atypical, and I was at a disadvantage from my peers. When assigned to my project, the work was scattered and the team was over whelmed. As such I did not feel I received the direction I needed to truly understand my tasks. In those 2 weeks I was excel modelling for one day (task cancelled), building case studies in power point for 2 days (task cancelled), worked on a brainstorming initiative to develop next generation ideas for the client (task cancelled). Then to start the 3rd week of the project, the entire project was cancelled.

In addition, as mentioned above my team mates were re assigned, went on vacation and one of the senior most members on my team was brand new to Booz, and not necessarily interested in my personal development.

But what I realized at the end of the 10 weeks was, there is no typical consulting engagement. It is very difficult to answer the question "What is a typical day in consulting?" Each intern had a completely different experience. We all learned at difference paces, in different places, with different faces. Overall it was a challenge on one's ability to adapt to an ambiguous environment and provide value.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have spent more time developing my Excel skillset before arriving to work. In addition I would have tried to have more fun while I was in Chicago/Boston. There was a lot to see and do in both cities, and I may have been to occupied with trying to make a good impression and working late hours. With proper time management it is feasible to work hard and play hard.

So in conclusion last Friday I met with my senior and junior mentors to discuss wether or not I would receive an offer...after a lengthy discussion the verdict was......

Final Presentations, Client Deliverables, Internal/External Networking

Hello all,

Coming up to my last 2 weeks I have 2 major items to complete to round out my internship experience. Each intern is expected to present a year end presentation to their peers, as well as other full time Booz employees from their local office on Friday August 3rd. Forutnately the presentation is a low pressure environment, and is meant to be fun. The most valuable take away I will enjoy from the presentations, is that I will get to see what my 12 other intern peers (from the chicago office) worked on their entire summer. The 2nd major item was highlighted in my year end assessment, which is I needed more analytical experience (I may expand more on this in the next post).

The presentation itself is 5-8 power point slides, highlights the key take aways, learnings, and my contirbutions to the team and project. It also highlights the fun take aways outside of the actual work experience that each person experienced (in my case my 5:50am golf match with a senior partner, and the night I hung out with Shaq in the hotel lobby).

After 8 weeks I feel like I have a strong handle on the company culture in regards to the Chicago and Boston offices. And the reason I specify the office, is that I feel the culture and community of your city will have a profound impact on the people.

Chicago: Is a large office with a small town feel. There are over 200+ employees, but within the office there are several "communities" based upon industry practices. Whether those practices be IT, Financial Services, Engineered Product Services, CPG, etc each group has it's own network. And if you are considering a consulting career, this is a significant differntiator at Booz. Booz does not offer the generalist approach to consulting. Rather it provides a soft alignment model that has it's pros and cons. If you feel already have an idea about your passions (i.e., you love SOAP!!! ..CPG), even if you don't have experience in that field, I highly encourage you to consider Booz & Co. By joining the CPG practice you can ensure that your early experiences will be focused on that practice, and thus devleop your expertise earlier in your career.

This accelerated development is reflected in culture of the organization. So back off my tangeant, back to Chicago. The people are extremely friendly, and helpful. On Friday's in the office I have never felt intimidated to introduce myself to a Partner, Principal or other senior member to learn more about their practice. The challenge is, they are quite busy, and you may need to schedule time with their admins.

As this business (Consulting) follows an apprenticeship model, that is reflected at all levels throughout the organization. Every consultant was once a junior person who didn't know how to write a slide, present to a client, or manage a Vlookup function. They all learned on the job, particularly through trial and error and the support of their peers/mentors. Without that support, and formal/informal training, this business does not work. Once you get into the firm (and likely any other firm), it is in the best interest of everyone involved to ensure you are succesful. And that has been apparent throughout my entire summer. A great example is my job manager, entered booz with little to no experience using Excel. 5 years later he is one of the Excel rock stars who leads begineer and advanced internal training. He did not take any formal courses, rather learned by trial and error and support of his mentors.

A last point on Chicago, I love the city. For a big city life, the prices are much cheaper than others (New York, London, Paris, Toronto (my home town), and the space is much larger. I've never seen a downtown with such wide streets. As such, people in general are happier. I feel there is less stress to life in Chicago. People afford a higher quality of life with less money and it's reflected in the smiles and attitude.

A few words on the culture in Boston. Awesome city, incredibly small considering it's history and successes (do they ever lose in sports?!?!). The office itself is very small. Less than 15 people at any time (15 is generous), and the office essentially revolves around 1 or 2 clients. I feel it's a great place to work and learn from a project perspective, but because it is so small I don't think I would learn as much from a Booz culture perspective. In addition my networking opportunities are limited versus a larger office.

The counter to that may be with less people, there is less competition to stand out?  But that is a factor you need to consider when choosing your home office

That's all for now

Signing off
Omair

Eat, Sleep, Work, Network

You're social life in consulting, is going to vary significantly on your team, project, and location. For those of you who may get posted in a small town in the midwest that has 1 sheraton hotel your options after work may be limited. Having said that, it is likely you will really get to know your co-workers by the end of the internship.

For those of you who are posted in Boston, NYC, San Fran etc, there will be a lot more options. Having said that, your experience will end up being what you make of it.

In consulting, (and i'm sure many other fields) the social life is part of your networking, which is a significant part of your experience over the summer. In order for to obtain my full time offer, I am being evaluated on several factors which include the basics (written, communication, presentation skills, etc). But more importantly, am I a social "fit" within my team.

As a team we spend a lot of hours together, especially considering that we travel. It is not uncommon after a 10 hour work day, to have a 2 hour dinner meeting/discussion. That's a lot of time to spend with people you just met. And if you don't enjoy each others' company it feels a lot longer than 12 hours!!!

Those are just the days where I am on the customer's site (in Boston). On Friday, I am typically in my home office in Chicago where I need to network with the peers at the local office, mentors, partners, etc. OH and somehow find time with the family as well (wife and son).

It is a daunting task, no doubt but that is what we sign up for in consulting. You will find you come become very efficient with your hours, and flexible. One specific example, there was a partner at my firm who I really wanted to meet to learn more about his work and experience. We both happened to be golf fans, so we played a round of 18 holes on Saturday morning, at 5:50am!!! That was his only availability!

The "easy" part about the networking, is the firm knows how important is too network and have made every effort to make it easier for the interns. A sample of events that they have provided to date:

• Every friday happy hour in the office at 4pm. The firm provides food and drinks, which has a magic affect on attracting people
• Cubs game - Attended by associates, partners, interns, etc
• Taste of Chicago festival: Provided free food tickets
• Various nights out at local bars/restaurants etc

In regards to workload, I'm not going to lie. There is a lot of work to do. However, there is no cookie cutter model to predict your workload. It is dependent on a multitude of factors which include

• The client
• The partner/principle driving the project
• stage of the project (starting, mid, ending)
• proposal work vs deliverable work
• location
• team composition

In my case, our project was at the early stages. Within 3 weeks the project was cancelled, and restarted in a lesser capacity with half the team. There have been days where I worked 12 hours, others where I had light 8 hour days. Read other blogs, talk to other interns, there are those who work 14 hours days.

The message here...be prepared for variability. Do not expect a 9-5 lifestyle. But expect variety, interesting work, really smart people, and to be challenged on a daily basis.

Until next time..

Omair

3am wake up calls, 6am flights, avoiding the consulting 15lbs!

Hi all,

I am behind on my blogging! I am behind on a lot of things!!! The life of a consulting intern :)

My experience I would say has been atypical of that of other consulting interns both within my firm and at other firms.

I was fortunate to be staffed onto a project that was just starting up. It was follow up work with an existing client. However as it was starting up, the goals and directions were vague and fluid. In the first 6-8 days on the job, my tasks changed 3 times which included changing the manager(s) that I reported too twice.

In regards to reporting and just working with the people, it has been excellent. When consulting firms tell you its all about the people, the really do mean it is all about the people. My team is fun, engaging, and overall a brilliant group. What I find really exciting is the motivation of each member in the team to ensure I enjoy my experience and to provide mentorship. They are investing a lot of their time and resources into me as the intern, as they want to ensure that I do join the firm next year (at least thats how I perceive it!).

While in contrast, I am evaluating the firm, work, people, etc to ensure that I want to join the firm full time next fall. It's an interesting dynamic

So the reporting structure is very fluid. I have junior and senior mentors that I touch base with on a weekly basis, project managers, and then practice champions (those who over see the IT practice). Not to mention the myriad of firm Partners who are available to meet. It really is an open door policy for me to discuss my goals, challenges, needs with several people within the firm. Not nearly as hiearchial as I was expecting.

Now what makes my experience more atypical than most are two events:

i) In the lobby of our hotel last Tuesday night, as I was heading towards the bar to relax after a long day I walked into Shaquille O'neal. Now I'm not a small guy, I'm 6'2, but when I stood next to Shaq and shook his hand, I felt like a child. He was enormous. And one of the friendliest, if not the friendliest, athlete I ever met. He sat with us, chatted, took photos, and did the same for anyone else who approached him. He was in town filming a movie with Adam Sandler

ii) My project has been delayed. So I am currently "on the beach" so to speak, as the firm finds me an additional project. I really am getting the full consulting experience. Let's see how this plays out


In terms of getting my work done. I really do have a lot of freedom. Tasks are assigned to me, and I 'm expected to go get it done. My tasks have ranged from researching reference examples, modifying excel models, and building customer facing power point slides. In each case anything everything I have produced and shared with my manager has come back with "this needs work!". But that's ok! That's the way we learn in consulting. It's trial and error, iteration, receive and act upon feedback. It has been a great learning experience, in a positive environment.

Anyhow, enough of my rant for now

Until next time

Omair

Internship done!

The summer is finally over, and what a great experience it has been. I got a chance to explore the world of consulting, work with some very smart people and learn a fantastic amount of information within a very short period of time. Since the project was ending the same week as my internship was, the last two weeks were critical. This was when we made the final push for our client deliverables. The model that I initially developed was used extensively by the team to nail down the quantitative aspects of our recommendations. Also, the principal on my project thought that this model would be a great tool for the client as they went ahead with the implementation in the coming months. So I had to spend some time cleaning up the model, making last minute changes and including the relevant background information so that the model was easily usable by the client. It’s one thing when you develop a model for your analysis. It’s something completely different when you are developing a model that someone else will use – this was a key learning for me. Always develop the model as if someone else were going to use it. I also had to do my final presentation at the Chicago office last week. My manager was extremely understanding about the criticality of that, and gave me some time off so that I could work on my deck. The team pitched in to review my deck and gave some great feedback on how to make the presentation stronger.

I just want to finish with another observation from my experience. There is one key skill that I have noticed is common among the senior folks. With any problem, they have a laser-like focus on the fundamental question we are trying to answer, and are always asking “how does this piece of work answer that question?”. This enables them to break down even the most complex problems into simple relevant blocks. And this is a skill I definitely want to develop over the next few years.

Well, to summarize I had a fantastic summer experience. I couldn’t have asked for more. Now, three weeks of down time before the next year at school. Thanks for reading, and take care!

Getting there

I can't believe that I am now in the closing stages of my summer internship. Two more weeks to go, and that's it! Since the end of my internship is coinciding with the end of the client engagement, things are really heating up now (as if they weren't busy enough already!). But I have had some great learning experiences over the past two weeks as I have been gradually pushed out of my comfort zone.

The first learning is the value of qualitative information. While my engineering background has made me comfortable with quantitative data, I am slowly learning that qualitative information also can make or break a recommendation despite what the numbers tell you. And since qualitative data is just that - qualitative, it is difficult to exactly structure what specific piece of information you need for an analysis. The second important learning for me was managing client interviews. This was something, again, that was completely new to me. As I conducted more interviews, I found myself increasingly asking direct and pointed questions to get to the point. I think this is an extremely important skill for leaders to have. with the amount of technology out there today, the data available is infinitely huge. Managers who having the ability to ask the right questions at the right time to the right people will have a huge advantage over those who don't. And I think consulting is a great way to develop and hone that skill.

Now, I am nearing the end stages of my analysis and my work is really helping the team build out their recommendations for a key part of the project. Yes, there are projected to be some $$$ savings (Good, now I can quantify another bullet point on my resume!). I also got a chance to present my analysis to the Principal on my project. He had some great suggestions to make, and I am currently working on incorporating them into my analysis. If all goes well, my workstream will be presented to the COO of the client organization!

The next week is a big week for me. I have to make two additional presentations - one to the partner on my project and the other, to the entire Chicago office. So in between all of this, I am working on putting those decks together too! Yes, good times.

Till next (and last) time, happy readings!

Goodbye Dallas!

(MBA,Booz) Nine weeks had passed in the speed of light; it feels like only yesterday we went through training in New Jersy and now I’m already in the airport on my way back home to Ann Arbor.

The past few days were very exciting, my analytical model was put into use and its results will be utilized to let the customer take a very important decision. In parallel to that, I presented a deck to the Dallas office, summarizing my past nine weeks.

If I try to summarize these nine fast going weeks, I think that first of all it was a very good learning, I learned about the consultant way of life, the Booz culture and about myself. And most important of all I learned that I would really like to do this work as a full time. It is an ever changing work; new challenges arise every day and with every customer. This job takes you out of your comfort zone on a daily basis, some people might not like this idea but for me it’s a thrill! I believe this type of challenges keep you sharp and assure that boredom will not be part of the daily routine.

One of the fundamentals of being a consultant is working in a team, the experiences I had with my team were amazing, it was a group of talented people who played a major part in my final decision to pursue this career path. I found out that Booz consulting teams are very supportive and are also fun to go out with after the working hours.

My internship had taken me through all kind of experiences with my teammates and taught me some values!

I learned the value of friendship when I got stuck with one of my teammates on a shaky plane for two hours because the pilot didn’t succeed landing due to crazy weather, another teammate taught me courage when he managed to convince the whole team to eat at the 105 degrees, a vegan raw food restaurant; Artistic ability was presented by my managing partner as he prepared his famous smoked ribs in a BBQ; I learned common sense when one of my teammates convinced me to eliminate all the macros from my over engineered Excel model though another key learning was pride of ownership which made me keep some of them at the end of the day ;-)

So this is the end of my blog, it was a pleasure sharing my experiences with you and I hope that some of my writing gave you some insights about the consulting world.

Half-way point!

I am now officially more than half way through my internship – and it feels like I just started yesterday. A lot has happened in the past two weeks – a couple of big client meetings, excellent team dinners, a new workstream and my mid-summer “pulse check”.

Let’s start with the work first. I completed the first project that was assigned to me (read previous post for details), and have now been assigned another workstream for the rest of the summer. The summer pulse check turned out to be balanced – with areas of strength and areas of improvement. I hope I end up improving on those “areas of improvement” by the end of the summer!

My next piece of work will influence a couple of key recommendations that we will make to the client. I am extremely excited, and a little apprehensive at being given this new responsibility. For one, the situation is a lot more ambiguous than my first project. And two, this project involves qualitative decision-making, definitely not my area of strength, in addition to the quantitative analysis. But the support from the rest of the team and other Booz folks has been tremendous. They have made themselves available to speak with me, exchange ideas, brainstorm and offer advice in a heartbeat. And being a Michigan guy helps too – there are tons of people here from Michigan, and the community feeling is stronger than ever. If I have one piece of advice to give it is this: reach out to people, and make the effort to ask if you are genuinely stuck at something. The absolute worst that could happen is that you remain where you started. Surprisingly, this did not come to me as naturally as I thought it would.

Now, for the fun part. The Chicago office is doing a fantastic job of keeping its summer interns entertained. They took us to the Taste of Chicago, organized a barbecue and are taking us on a cruise. Although my work keeps me really busy, I am trying to attend as many of these events as possible to get to know the people here. As I roll into the second half of the internship, the pressure will no doubt start to increase. But all in all, this experience has been immensely satisfying so far. Good times!

P.S: The Germany-Argentina game was an absolute shame. And we could not have asked for a more boring final. A disappointing world cup over all.

Networking in a consulting world

(MBA,Booz) Socializing and networking is an important issue for every intern, though I guess it’s a bigger issue for a consulting intern. The way consulting teams are built for a specific project are network derived and one’s ability to connect to the right people might determine whether he\she will be stuffed to a wanted project.

There are few circles in which a consultant networks, it starts with the home office in which a consultant spends Fridays and his\her time “on the beach” – a term that is used to describe time with no project assignment. Then comes the practice – in Booz we are all aligned to a certain practice and are stuffed accordingly, so knowing a principal from one’s practice that is in charge of a wanted project might turn out very helpful even if that principal is from another office. And there’s always the regular firm wide networking with everyone else.

It’s a big challenge to understand the way the system works and who are the right people to address once you want to be stuffed on an assignment – but on the other hand, judging by whom I met so far, this company has great people and culture and networking in Booz is a pleasure rather than a “task to accomplish”. At the end of the day, unlike most other jobs, consultants are stuck together for better or worse along every Monday to Thursday, and if they don’t find their peers fun to be with after work - when having dinner or when stuck in an airport – it’s not good for the whole team.

And now for a little update from the field! All the hard work I did in the past few weeks will come to realization this week when the piece of work I am responsible for will be used to help the customer to make a very important decision, A very exciting time for me!

That will be all for today, next post will be my last one and will close this blog as my internship ends in two weeks.

Consulting - three weeks in

I'm three weeks into my internship and Booz and honestly, so far I'm loving it. The work is challenging, and the people I work with are absolutely fantastic - extremely smart, yet down to earth. I can best describe the experience so far as an extension of the Ross MBA experience.

Let's put things into context - what exactly did I do the last couple of weeks? As I mentioned in my last post, I am working for a client in NJ and we are helping to design their organization structure (strategic objective, reporting structure, incentives, metrics, etc.) for the COO. So yes, this is one of those high touch engagements, and as a result, the attire is business formal. The first week was all about ramping up and setting the expectations for the rest of the summer. Booz & Co. gives its interns the undiluted consulting experience - this means that we are expected to contribute just like we were full-time Associates. So as you can imagine, the learning curve is extremely steep. I had a lot of reading up to do to develop an understanding of the industry. After I spent a day doing that, it was time to understand the client firm (one day). After that I had to get going, and any other background learning would have to come from the job itself. Given that 9 weeks is an extremely short period of time, I wanted to become productive as soon as I could and made a conscious effort those first few days to ramp up my knowledge. Once my manager noticed that I was relatively comfortable with the knowledge (at least I knew where to look for what!), I took over the workstream of developing the model of the current view of the organization. The team had already collected data from various client units. I had to collate the data, clean it up and integrate it into the model in a meaningful way.

We had a big client presentation scheduled the following week, and my manager said that my model would be driving a few slides on the deck. So I had to put in a lot of effort (yes, I even worked a couple of hours over the weekend) to build the pages. My biggest takeaway here is that great excel modeling skills is not just about being able to model close to real life scenarios while making good assumptions. It also involves being able to automate a lot of the repetitive tasks so that you can spend more time thinking about how best you can do the former. As my manager had mentioned, my pages did end up going into the deck. It was a pretty good feeling to see that my analysis was directly impacting the client. The presentation went well, and now my task is to extend this model so that we can use this to design the new organization.

The biggest surprise for me has been the people. There's no question that they are all extremely smart folks. But the best part is, despite how busy they were (there was quite a bit of pressure within the team before that first deliverable) they always took the time out to help me with my questions, and made sure I was comfortable. To summarize, the first two weeks on the project have been fantastic, and I am really enjoying myself so far. Stay tuned!

Life from a consultant point of view

(MBA,Booz) Five weeks had passed by very fast and I am slowly getting used to the consultant tempo, it starts Monday morning with an early flight to the project location, then a taxi to the hotel, check in and straight to the team room where I literally spend most of my day. Each team has its own rules; in my case we have a daily team meeting 6:30 PM before we call it a day, though there is always something else to do, so most of the time we don’t leave before 7:30 PM. When we do call it a day, we go to the hotel, drop the computer bag and go out to grab dinner so it’s not until around 9-9:30 PM that I arrive to my room to take a shower , once a week we have a team dinner so we arrive to our room even later. The morning usually starts around 9 AM – but it depends on the customer – in our case this is an early one and so is our wakeup call – 7:30 we are already on site working. On Thursday the team returns home – or to be more precise – each team member flies to his home which might be anywhere in the US, so it’s a shorter day that might end as early as 4:30 though I usually fly out around 7:30, it gives more time to accomplish tasks and airport security lines are much shorter at that time.

Friday is a home office day – it is an easier day 9-5 basically and there’s always something fun happening in the office - for the past two weeks we had World Cup games screening accompanied with breakfast!

I must admit I enjoy this routine and feel very good with the consultant way of life, even after I had to spend 1.5 hours in a shaking plane that tried to land 5 times before succeeding because of bad weather, I guess it might change after few years but so far so good!

Consulting - Week 1. Check!

Phew - week 1 of my consulting internship at Booz & Co. is almost over, and I can already feel the heat of the fast paced consulting career! My first week was very similar to what the other Ross-er at Booz has experienced - drinking from a fire hose. Think first week of RLI - on steroids.

The first day involved the "logistics" - laptop, paperwork, welcome presentation and address, etc. The second day onwards, "the game" was on! By "the game", I mean a training simulation where we are all assigned to teams and have to work together on a client engagement. Our engagement working sessions were peppered with training sessions for Excel, Powerpoint, Company culture and policy, etc. "The game" ended with the teams presenting and the team coaches giving each of us feedback. My, how much we all had to learn! The final day involved Booz's version of the follies. Given the high quality of the skits that were put up with less than 45 mins of preparation time, I strongly believe that most people in my class would do wonderfully in the entertainment industry! And oh, did I mention that we all ended every night with copious amounts of alcohol in our systems? Good times.

Today is my first day at my home office - Chicago. I have received my project assignment and couldn't have asked for anything better! I strongly believe that I will get a chance to apply concepts learnt from multiple classes at Ross. My client is based in New Jersey, which is also awesome, because my wife is in New York, and this makes things a whole lot easier! So right now, I have received a couple of project documents and am busy poring over them to make sure that I show up on the client side with an informed view of the current situation. I expect to be challenged significantly - both in terms of analytical skills and organizational skills. Do not underestimate the latter. The number of things that have to be managed, in addition to your regular work, is fairly daunting - timesheets, learning sessions, conference calls, mentor meetings, office luncheons - the list is seemingly endless! But this is exactly what I signed up for, and I am eagerly looking forward to the next 8 weeks of the internship.

And oh yes, before I forget: Viva Argentina!

Jumping into the water

(MBA,Booz) Two weeks had passed since the last time I wrote, in this time I started working on my assignment and found out more about the crazy consulting learning curve.
When I recruited for consulting, one of the things mentioned the most by current consultants was the learning curve, they all spoke of the fast and intense learning and the amazing pace in which things move on during a project. My first two weeks gave me the opportunity to see and feel it first hand! The amount of data I was exposed to and the complexity of the project are amazing, I found myself working on a task that seemed to be simple at the beginning but got more and more complex as it moved on, a simple excel model I designed to resolve it turned into a complex model that is getting even more complex as we move on.
In parallel to that there is a lot to learn about the way Booz works, specific tools and methods, decks’ preparation as well as technical things like submitting expenses and reporting working hours.
The team work experience is also a challenge, my team consists of two principles, few senior associates, few associates and me, above all of that there’s a partner from the Dallas office. The organization is flat by nature so I have a direct connection to anyone I want to talk to and I can present my ideas to anyone in the team, the team itself is very supportive and it’s a great experience working as part of it.
There is a lot of fun involved in this job as well, we have team dinners every week and these are always a fun experience, there are also all kinds of office activities on Fridays and weekends like a happy hour we had on the last Friday or a wine tasting event we will have next week!
To summarize it all in one sentence – so far I’m having a great experience and hope it’ll keep on going on like that!

First week - training

(MBA,Booz) So my first week in Booz & Co was spent in a nice hotel in New Brunswick - NJ, it was a very busy week in which we gained tools to help us succeed in our assignments.

Topics included Excel and Power Point training, team work assignment that imitated the real world in which few work streams have to coordinate between themselves to achieve a common goal, additional topics included legal and technical issues and IT systems used by Booz & Co , it was the first time for me to meet the tools used by a consulting firm to run its operations and I must admit I was impressed, specifically by an office plug in that make presentation making much easier and effective and saves a lot of precious time - a critical tool when it comes to working on super tight schedules.

In parallel it was a great opportunity to have a lot of fun with our fellows from the class of summer 2010, each night after dinner a bar tab was open till late night and at the last night together we all went to have dinner in a fancy NY restaurant! to make the whole experience even better we had the opportunity to demonstrate our artistic abilities by performing self written skits about our future life as consultants.

Last but not least – we got our assignments, mine is in Oklahoma, I don’t know yet which parts are confidential so I won’t specify much, but I can say that I couldn’t have asked for a better assignment, it seems that it will be a great learning opportunity in a field I’m eager to study!

Friday was suppose to be our first day at the office, though we were lucky to have the opportunity to take part in Booz day and celebrate Booz’s 2^nd anniversary after the separation from Booz Allen Hamilton, it was a great opportunity for me to meet almost all of the Dallas office in one place and to learn more about the office’s and Booz’s culture and aspirations for the coming year. And then came the reason I’m here for – becoming a consultant, I met some of my team mates and participated on my first team conference call, later on I scheduled my flights and hotels for the next two weeks and took a deep dive into reading relevant articles for my assignment.

Next week will be my first week on site, I am sure that it will be very challenging and demanding and I can’t wait to start it, wish me luck!

Preparations

(MBA,Booz) I believe that one of the questions that bother many of us is how to better prepare for the summer. As most of us, including me, are opting at a full time offer from the company we intern with, we all want to be as ready as possible to get the job done in the most impressive way.

Having that in mind, I spent some time throughout the past two months consulting with MBA2's and friends who work in consulting and tried to gain a better understanding of the challenges I will encounter as a consultant and more important - the things I can learn now that will improve my ability to well perform as a consultant.

As in many cases in life I have some good news and some bad news, the good news is that there is one important tool that all consultants must master which is Excel! The bad news are that there is not much you can do except for making sure you are good enough in Excel.

For those who wanted to spend some time learning SQL - all of the people I spoke to told me not to waste my time, and that in case it is needed there are specialists that do that. If you thought it's time to improve your calculator skills and learn to use these 30 buttons you never used by today - rethink it, Excel got you covered! In fact, any route I took to better prepare lead to Excel.

So although I do not want to sound like a Microsoft ad, the most important thing for you to do before you start your internship in consulting is to learn Excel, if you already speak it fluently – lucky you! Otherwise – BIT512 will be very helpful in learning the basics and experiencing some of the powerful tools Excel can offer you, if you feel brave you can jump into the deeper water of BIT513, it is a more focused class that takes a deep-dive into risk analysis and decision making, I found that class less helpful than BIT512 yet it still was an interesting class.

Well, that will be all for today, the next post will be written after the first week of my internship!

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