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Hello! My name’s Vishwaraj, and I am a senior undergrad in the Chemical Engineering department. I’d skip my profile (you can check it here), speculations of what got me shortlisted or selected, and lastly the preparation part (there are enough resources made available by various councils/clubs). This piece would be more of a tale of my experience at Strategy& as a Summer Associate Consultant (a fancy way of writing summer intern :P).
What does a consulting internship entail?
Lucky us! We had an on-ground internship experience unlike previous batches of virtual internships. The internship starts with pampering you with a stay at one of the top hotels in the city (which makes no sense other than to flex - you’d be bored in less than five days). The first week was spent in induction - we had sessions where we learned about the company working, principles, and values. Once the induction is completed, you are allotted either a project or a proposal (Business Development/ Client Development and many other fancy terms that firms use for it).
Although the naming speaks for itself, I’d clear it out. A Project would be a live client case that the firm has won and is working on, while a Proposal is a business proposal that the firm is pitching to a client and trying to win. Both of these have learnings of their own, and quite honestly, you shouldn’t even be concerned about it as you wouldn’t be asked to choose.
My experience
During my stint, I was put on a single live project. The consulting space is quite fast-paced (but so are the banking, start-up spaces, etc.). There are truly no pre-requisites, and you are expected to learn almost everything during the course and asked to deliver it almost the next day (or moment sometimes). I had a day or two to get acquainted with the terms and progress that has been made on the project till now. Once done, I was asked to travel to the client site (the client location where it is running its operations), which was initially the client HQ. The funda about a case based from client site is - Work from a client site for weekdays and get a flyback to home on weekends. Our client was understanding and booked flybacks for any of the major cities (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Bangalore) other than home.
The Workspace: I worked from the client HQ for the initial weeks, where they gave a whole boardroom dedicated to us. I sat in the boardroom along with the Partner, Director, Manager, and Senior Associate for all days and also had meaningful interactions with each of them! I learnt from the discussions of the Partner and Director or the Director and Manager/Senior Associate. It allowed me to gain a sense of understanding and significance of each element I was working upon. After a few weeks, we (Me and Senior Associate) were now asked to work at other places where the client operated.
The Work: Despite being an intern present on the project for just 8 weeks, you are treated as a full-time employee only in terms of exposure and significance of the work. I was assigned to a Senior Associate (IIMB Alumnus) who was extremely helpful and spent enough time and effort to ensure my learning and growth along with the results. Coming with a work experience from an analytics company, he was highly proficient with MS excel. Despite the fact, he would empathize with poor me being exposed to excel horror for the first time by giving me enough time, appropriate complexity of work, and any help I needed. Talking in layman’s terms, the project's goal was to increase the revenue for the client. The specific work that I was given included
Making Excel ‘Tools’ and ‘Dashboards’
Making Power BI Dashboards
Conducting Primary research - Market Visits and Expert Calls
Conducting Secondary research - Searching on Google and some databases like EMIS
Insight gathering and hypothesis testing
PPT Making
Relationship management with Client stakeholders
Ultimately I was delighted with my experience at Strategy& as it gave me a wholesome consulting lifestyle - Travel (6 cities), Firm Interaction (Talks with the Partner, Directors, and the Manager), Client Interaction & Management (dealing directly with Regional Heads and many other people at various levels), Diverse Work (Excel, Power BI, Research and PPT).
An experience like this would be a memorable one (for good or bad) and will contribute to your growth.
For Juniors
From my understanding of consulting, your experience depends on the project scope and client engagement. You can be asked to travel to a faraway city where the client site is, or you might be asked to work from the base location/ home. You might be asked to work even on Sundays, or you might be chilling at the airport on Friday evening. You might be working till 2 at night or logging off at 8 in the evening. To such an extent, it is just a game of randomness (or luck, if you’d like to call it).
I would highly discourage you from expecting any particular thing from a consulting internship and instead just go with an open mind!