So long and thanks for the fish tacos.

My last week was more hectic than I wanted it to be, with the final presentation just a couple of days before the end date which led to some serious late night, crunch time work. Less time to polish up my deliverables any further; I had to concentrate on documenting everything and wrap up my last initiatives on the job.

Some food for thought for future interns:

• Use the time to figure out whether the work-life balance is right for you.
• Start networking early.
• Allow yourself time to understand the culture, the people and the project.

My internship is now finally over and I'll be going home in only a day from now. I'll be packing some Dell swag and a couple of small mementos, but mainly fond memories. If only I could pack a few fresh tacos, too! Austin was a great companion and will be missed. Not feeling too reflective at the moment, just looking forward to the trip back home.

So long and thanks for reading!

All I really need to know.

There are so many things that I need to work on, but the greatest assets that I have - and perhaps most of all, my very extensive experience in hi-tech - I did not acquire in business school, but long before that. Some of the really good ones such as playing nicely with the other kids, perhaps as early as in kindergarten.

Looking at how my strengths and weaknesses reflected through my work this summer, I find that my summer internship is basically amplifying everything. My strong research skills and analytical skills are helping me solve problems I encounter, and my background is really helping me have meaningful talks about the industry with different people in the company (which, for example, is awesome for networking). But working on my final presentation, for example, required putting in a pile of overtime to get the job done. This is something that as a marketer I need to invest more time and patience in than I ever have.

I am able to see the great progress I've done this year in transitioning to marketing. Taking the Management Presentations class certainly paid off and presenting in front of an audience in a relaxed manner comes so much easier now that I can really start to work on specifics I need to improve rather than be concerned with the whole. I am able to quickly treat problems I encounter as business cases and ask many of the necessary questions from the get-go.

But you do know what is really important to do as a marketer in a company like Dell, don't you? Smile to whomever you come across. Be open and true to yourself and to others around you. Do things for your peers and not just for yourself. Things you learn in kindergarten.

Sleepless In Seattle,

That at least what my new manager told me. A week ago I met my senior director – who will be my boss's boss in the summer and he already gave me the assignment for the summer: "Hard Work". So let us start from the beginning, I'm a MBA of 2013, going to intern with Microsoft in the Business division. I will work on a product in the name of "Lync" and hopefully will touch all the business aspects for the product (business planning, marketing, product management and engineering). One of the most exciting issues about this summer is the fact that Lync is one of the newest products from Microsoft and has the potential to replace all the internal phone-system servers with a computer based communication system.

That is only half of the summer, since I'm taking my family with me to Seattle and intend to spend as much time as possible with them. I will drive my car the 2,300 miles to Seattle from Ann Arbor while my wife and two kids will fly out to Seattle (6 days instead of 5 hours). On our way back we intend to cross the country on a long roadtrip and visit the Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore.

I really hope that I would be able to combine those two main tasks – family and internship – and to enjoy every minute of the beautiful summer in Washington.



Dell: Final Post

It’s the home stretch. I can’t believe how quickly time flew by. 10 weeks just went “whoosh”, and I am finally ready to present my findings.

Well, almost. Every day involves meeting several people, presenting the findings to them, massaging the deck a little bit more. But it’s about ready. I will be presenting it at a director-level meeting either this Friday or the one after that. It’s all fairly fluid here at Dell.

My project involved a long period in which I essentially collected data that was previously unavailable; and then after I collected it I started to analyze it and construct my recommendations. Unfortunately, the data got to me only a week ago, and at first one of the only time slots they found for an executive presentation was a week from them. You can imagine that some sort of a panic set in; 12 hour workdays became the norm and I scurried to get everything ready in time. Fortunately, another timeslot was located a couple of weeks from then – but the scurrying had paid off , and most of the recommendations and presentation are ready for the original date (which was supposed to be tomorrow).

Who says that procrastination is bad, eh?

In news on the social front – it’s sad to see everyone I’ve become friendly with leave. The first wave of Dell interns is leaving at the end of this week and I’m sorry to see them go. Yesterday a whole bunch of us went on a boat again. Same boat as 4th of July. Same fun people. Same fun activities.

In two weeks, I will be back in Ann Arbor. To be honest, I had a blast in Austin – but I will be happy to leave and get back to my own apartment; back into life in Ann Arbor with my MBA friends and a lifestyle I had grown accustomed to and fond of. Farewell Austin, you’re an awesome city. I hope to be back soon!

4th Post: Dell's Culture!

In this post I’d like to quickly talk about corporate cultures; in particular: Dell’s culture.

Dell’s culture is – I believe – quite unique. People here keep stressing ambiguity – and I think it’s important to understand just how much this culture is about being in a state of constant flux. For instance, as I mentioned in a previous post – the instructions I got when I got to Dell were: “This is the name of the product you are focusing on. This is a list of names. Talk to them. Figure it out.”; when I had mentioned this to other employees in the company they mostly chuckled and said “Welcome to Dell.”

The culture here is essentially one of taking initiative and knowing which resources can help you get the job done. Essentially, it’s an entrepreneurial culture in which you don’t have your hands held by your bosses. They don’t teach you to swim, they kick you screaming into the deep end, fully expecting you to either learn to swim or sink down to the bottom. I love it.

People who like to take initiative and set their own agenda can really blaze their own trail here. They can create new business lines from scratch, they can take the ball and run with it and people will not get in their way too often. This is something that I think truly distinguishes the corporate culture here from others. All too often in large corporations there is a certain entrenched thinking that is seldom challenged. I find Dell’s culture to be very accepting to critique and fresh thinking.

The deeper into the internship I get, the more productive I become, which is fortunate, because the work keeps piling on and on. Workdays quickly now become 10 hour-11 hour workdays, and I’m sure that as the date of my final presentation looms I will be racking up the over time like it’s nobody’s business.

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.

Sun burnt

As an Israeli who has some roots in Iraq, I rarely – if ever, get sunburnt. Texas, however, has proven to be the Moriarty to my Sherlock Holmes of a skin. Or, if you will, the Darth Vader to my Obi-Wan Kenobi. I could go on. But I won’t.
For the past 4 weekends I have either been tubing, hiking, boating, or swimming. I’m as red as a lobster. I say this not to discuss my dermatological state – but rather to emphasize the social lifestyle that us interns have been living here. Every weekend is full of activity! This weekend for instance, I will probably go to the Texas Roller Derby; last weekend was a 4th of July excursion to Lake Travis, etc. etc.

I must also note that I am at the exact mid point of my internship.
So far what I’ve done is essentially talk to people, get the lay of the land, and scope out the project. We finally have a firm grip on the timeline, what we want to deliver, and how we want to deliver it. A lot of the past week has been spent on taking toll of what I’ve done so far and discussing the project with various parties and stakeholders.

I don’t think I can emphasize enough how long the process takes: Scoping out a project in a culture you are not familiar with and in a business line you never knew takes time. A lot of time is spent just understanding the acronyms. Dell has an overabundance of those. The rest of the time is about managing expectations, and getting the assistance, resources, and support you need to conclude the project successfully. I think the success of an internship project hinges more on the preparation than it does on the execution. We will see if I’m right soon enough.

A lot more of my time now is going towards analyzing data and work rather than learning the ropes. I feel that I have become significantly more productive in what is essentially an environment and culture I have never encountered until a few weeks ago. While the learning curve has been steep, I feel I have finally reached a plateau of productivity. I hope this keeps up.

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.

Dell - defining a project - and Austin - Blues central.

I'm 3 weeks into my internship. I was essentially given a list of names and was told : "go and talk to these people. Tell me what you think about the business."

The list had 25 names of people. These people had - possibly - 50 opinions. I wrote them all down. I brainstormed. I oohed. I ahhed. I wrote more stuff down. The 25 people suggested 25 more people I should talk to. Pretty soon I was living in other people's cubes.

I ran an IV line from Starbucks into my bloodstream.

At the end of the process - I think I have something that vaguely resembles a project proposal. I hope to finalize it in the beginning of next week and start working. I hope that my project's useful. A lot is riding on the recommendations. It seems like the project they assigned to me is actually going to be utilized as soon as possible - it gave me a sense of urgency I did not expect.

I do want to discuss two other things: One is Blues - Austin is known for it's very well developed blues music scene. I have decided to take advantage of that and use some of my spare time to relearn the guitar and harmonica. If you like music - seek employment with Dell.

The other is the experience of working in a large company that has so many MBA interns: It's pretty cool - a lot of likeminded people who are here in Austin as well - in a strange town. We end up socializing a lot and doing a lot of activities. For instance, today I went hiking in a park, and tomorrow I will go tubing. This despite the insane triple digit weather in the summers here.

If you have two opportunities for an internship - all other things being equal - pick the one where they have more interns. You'd have far more fun. So far we've gone out to concerts, boat trips, dinners, and more. An internship is more than the chance of getting a full time job; it's even more than the opportunity to learn new things you have not been exposed to before. And yet even more than a time to expand your professional network. It's a great time to make new friends.

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!

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 few days at Dell!

Hi there readers!

Well, this has been a fun and adventurous ordeal. After a month of working for a local Ann Arbor startup as a first internship, I packed my bags and moved to Austin, Texas for my second internship with Dell. I also packed a cat. My cat was not happy about being packed, but it had no choice.

My first impression of Austin, Texas? It is hot. My second impression? Most fun city on the planet. It is chock full of bars, dance venues, and live music. It also features what must be the best people watching environment in Northern America.

So - having settled into my new apartment with my new roommate - I went to the first day of Dell: Orientation.

For those of you who have not been to a corporate orientation - here is what it looks like: About 50 new interns sitting in a room - watching inspirational videos about ethics and hearing talks about the corporate rulebook.

Corporations have big rule books.

After that we were given our badge, and were sent off to talk to our managers. I was given a laptop - a list of people to talk to, a pat on the shoulder, and a hearty "good luck". I am going to love it here.

The next day we had the first talk from the "executive" series : Dell's CMO gave us a presentation about the challenges the company faces, strategy, and more. It was really quite interesting, and despite the early morning hour I managed to stay up (Note to future students: School is easier than work. Trust me on this.); it was also a very humbling experience. It is the first time I have seen an executive of a billion dollar company discuss so frankly and candidly how the company was doing, what the management believes are its shortcomings and how they intend to fix them.

So - armed with a laptop in hand, a borrowed cubicle as my fortress, I set out to conquer my project. It seems like the first few weeks will mostly involve me setting appointments with a multitude of people and getting the lay of the land. Wish me luck.

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!

First post from me!

Hi there, readers - which are - I am certain - legion. My name is Nir - a first year MBA at Ross. I am originally from Jerusalem, Israel - and for more than a decade have been a software engineer and IT manager at an Israeli startup, a large educational institute, and the Israeli Defense Forces. This summer I will be interning at Dell, in Austin, Texas. I also hope to be interning with a local startup here in Ann Arbor.

It's going to be a long - and - especially considering the location of the Dell internship - stifling hot summer. Kind of like being shoved into an oven while being sprayed with water. Try that once. It ain't fun.

My role at Dell will a Project Management internship - it's still unclear what my projects will be - but they will likely involve a cross-account look into their services practice.

What do I hope to gain from my internship? Certainly, a way to defray my tuition costs would be nice - but mostly I am looking to apply what I've learned during the first year of the MBA in an actual business setting. I'm excited about the prospect of discovering how an American corporation makes decision, and I hope to learn as much as I can from my experiences this summer!

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