Summer Internship at Deloitte Consulting LLP – Amrutha A from TA Pai Management Institute
Amrutha (girl at left) A shares her steep learning experience during her internship at Deloitte Consulting LLP. Amrutha is pursuing her MBA from TA Pai Management Institute. Read and discover her experience of internship.
B-school internship: It’s the most sought after aspect of the MBA course as it gives a snapshot of what our actual jobs might be. My internship experience was an eye-opener that made me introspect my strengths and weaknesses unlike any other experience in my life. It was the first time that I was exposed to the field of management consulting and after my internship experience I can now fathom why it’s the most sought after job in the market. Like everything that we do as part of our jobs and life, my internship helped me structure and align my thoughts in a manner that helped us extract the maximum output with minimum effort. I have used a START framework that would help me describe my internship experience in a more streamlined, structured and concise manner
SITUATION:
It was summer of 2014 and the path was laid for an ideal internship experience as both the company and the location played to my advantage. Since I was planning for a long term career in consulting I could not have asked for a better opportunity than interning in Bangalore at Deloitte Consulting LLP–the big giant in the consulting world. According to Bloomberg’s Business Week and Vault, Deloitte has consistently been rated as the company that provides the best internship program for both undergraduate and a post graduate students. It quite lived up to this expectation as all the rules, regulations and the expectations from our internship program were laid out on the very first day of our program. I was teamed up with another candidate from XIMB who had an industry experience in the oil and gas industry. So we were not just evaluated on our ability to deliver the tasks assigned but also on our ability to work as a team. Being in a team really helped us not just share the burden of work but also share stories about our experiences at work and about life in general. We were also assigned two mentors who were subject matter experts in our assigned field of work and to whom we could consult throughout the course of our internship. To make us feel more comfortable we were assigned a buddy to whom we could reach out to for any informal queries regarding the company or for occasional gyan/tidbits to help us adapt as quickly to the work culture. The first day of our internship started with the induction program to brief us about the company’s policies, procedures and other information that would be relevant to our internship program. With this the path was laid for the roller coaster ride to begin.
TASK:
After a rather relaxing day of the induction program, it was time for us to meet our mentors, understand our tasks and deliverable. The information about our background, work experience was already sent to our respective mentors and they had a fair idea about allotting tasks based on the knowledge we possessed about our domain of work. Next it was time for our mentors to send us the project details and our project was based on understanding the competitive dynamics of the global trade industry with the task of developing an offering for Deloitte that would give them an edge over other global trade vendors. The project seemed quite daunting at the first since it was the first time we were exposed to the domain of global trade and we had to not just understand global trade process but also develop relevant models that would help them assess the industry better.
ACTION:
It was then time to get into action by starting our groundwork in understanding the domain of global trade operations. We had to do both primary research in terms of reaching out to the experts on the floor seated across various locations in the US and secondary research about understanding the various offerings by reading research papers and relevant articles on the given subject. One of the most admired aspects of Deloitte was its open culture that helped us reach out to many members on the floor to provide us better guidance throughout the course of our project. Along with the mentors who were tracking the progress of our project, we also had review meetings that was held once in fortnight to give us different perspectives about our project. This was the most revered and the most feared aspect of our internship since it involved giving presentations to the senior managers on the floor. Quite often the question answer sessions in these meetings helped us understand the various flaws in our logic and made us consider the assumptions or arguments otherwise would have been overlooked. These review meetings with inputs from the senior management and the constant guidance from our mentors ensured that our thought process and our project were aligned to add value to the organization.
RESULTS:
With 7 weeks of ground work, research, intense arguments about the flaws in our logic, the mind draining brainstorming sessions, dreadful presentations, gyan sessions with the mentors, buddy, senior managers, other employees on the floor and the late night practice sessions for the presentations, it was time for us to present our project work to the managers, senior managers and other organizational leaders across various locations in the country. With the approval of our mentors we were fairly confident about our project creating value to the organization. With repeated mock runs of our presentations, my teammate and I were leaving no stone unturned to present our project in the best possible manner. On May 30th, our presentation was scheduled at 12.30pm just before the lunch time and we were third in line to present with two teams from Mumbai who had the advantage of presenting ahead of us. But our numerous practice sessions helped us put our best foot forward and convince our managers about the fact that our project was a value add to their organization. Overall within 8 weeks of time, we were successful in building a new module on global trade that could be used for future reference purposes at Deloitte.
TAKEAWAYS:
Through my internship experience I learnt the fact that at workplace it’s imperative to be a good team member and have no inhibitions in reaching out to as many people as possible to get the work done. I also realized that great learnings and insights are derived not just through the formal ones but also out of numerous informal interactions. Looking back I miss also those fun-filled tea/sutta breaks/weekend outings with my teammate and my fellow interns through which we shared numerous stories and experiences that gave me great insights about being open to different perspectives and experiences in life. Overall, my MBA summer internship of 2014 at Deloitte has given me some pleasant memories and learnings to look back in the course of my life.
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