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......

The final word from Sears…

This has been the most exciting, eventful and somewhat dramatic two weeks of the internship. I am almost done with my time at Sears and it is time to wrap up and say goodbye, atleast for now.

I had my final internship presentation scheduled for the middle of last week, almost a week and a half before the end of the internship. I wasn’t certain that I would be able to work right up to the end, since my baby’s due date and my internship end date almost coincided at the end of this week, and therefore planned ahead. This foresight was invaluable! My presentation was at 3 pm on the 7th of July and three hours later, right after I got home, I went into labor!!! That was the end of completing the internship on the planned schedule. I am home recovering and going back to work for a few short days to wrap things up and complete a final performance review. It has been very rewarding to take on two very differently challenging projects at the same time and complete them both successfully.

Regarding the presentation itself, I started working on the power point at almost the six-week mark, making notes and draft power points of what I wanted to communicate. My bosses were very accommodating of the need to make a well-crafted deck and supported me in many ways such as creating a rough outline, providing detailed reviews and feedback on my analysis, setting up schedules with my audience of CFO’s and VP’s and providing overall feedback on the slide deck. I was very happy with and confident of my slide deck for the presentation and took a couple of hours going over every detail in the slides and preparing for possible questions, while rehearsing the script for my presentation.

The presentation was attended by business unit CFO’s and VP’s and also included other Finance interns for the summer. Both my managers were present. I presented my findings and left time for questions. The presentation was well-received by the audience. My manager told me I had done a good job of the presentation and of handling follow-up questions.

Working at Sears has been a great learning experience in terms of Corporate Finance, the Retail industry, good management practices and self-discovery. I am hoping that I will get an offer before the summer is up.