Mayra Zamudio
University of Houston
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Maria Guerrero, Business Analyst, Deloitte Consulting, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Last year, I had the opportunity to meet María Fernanda Guerrero at a career fair at the University of Houston. The chance to interview her allowed me to have a more in-depth look at her career path towards consulting and her background as a first-generation university student in the United States.

I had the pleasure to further learn about María and her position as a business analyst at Deloitte in Houston. María started by describing the role her parents played in shaping who she has become and her admirable work ethic. Throughout the interview, she offered valuable advice focusing on her experience as a college student at the University of Houston where she graduated from with a double major in supply chain management and finance.

Towards the end of her college experience, Maria was unsure of what career path she would take with her degree. When she first heard from Deloitte, she was not sure that she fit the requirements although consulting sounded like an interesting job. When she received the job offer, she realized that the knowledge and skills she gained through internships prepared her for a position that she did not expect to have. She emphasized that internships in college years provide an invaluable experience to explore different types of companies and career paths that match individual interests.

A key takeaway from my conversation with Maria is that although we are products of our environment, the way life plays out can be controlled by the decisions we make as well as the support we receive from our family. More specifically, discovering our interests through college classes, organizations, and internships can really change the course of life after college. In Maria’s case, those experiences enabled her to become a problem solver in an industry that she did not know much about at first.

Overall, Maria offered a great deal of valuable advice that applied to her consulting position. Through internships, she was able to learn the importance of teamwork and curiosity in a field where social skills are very important. The use of curiosity in her job and personal life enabled her to know what she wants to do and what best suits her skills. Although she did place a fair amount of importance on her grades, she never hesitated to attend to her extracurricular responsibilities, which really set her apart when applying to jobs.

Highlights from the interview:

What were your parents’ expectations for you? How did they shape you into choosing your career?

My parents have always supported me. When I wanted to be part of a club, play a sport, or sell candies at school, they always supported me. I remember when I was in junior high in Mexico, there was an opportunity to sell candy at school. My mom drove me to the candy store every day after school; I would pick up my candy supplies and take them to school to sell. That tells you that my parents have always had that entrepreneurship mindset. They wanted me to always have something to look for in the future, to be active, to go out there, explore the world, and see what’s out there for me. That was their main expectation. They never pushed me to do anything I didn’t want to but I knew I wanted with my life; I wanted to go to college and get more educated.

Were you the first in your family with a degree? If so, do you believe it affected your career choices?

My dad went to college in Mexico. He is an agricultural engineer. I am the first to go to college in the United States. My dad’s college experience in Mexico was totally different from my experience here. It took a while for me to adjust to the academic life here, to be able to get to the next level and understand everything that was going on around me. The language barrier was there, and my family was away. I was lost at the beginning, but the feeling of being lost was also a motivation source for me. I didn’t want to be feeling like that for the rest of my career. The idea of making my family proud was a huge motivation for me to keep going and find the answers, even though I had to go out of my comfort zone. I think finding the right people to guide you, mentors and friends who might be going through something similar or who might be more experienced than you, is very important to get through those challenging times.

When did you first envision yourself as a consultant? Or was there something else that you wanted to be?

I didn’t know what consulting was at first. Then I heard about management consulting, and it sounded nice, but I didn’t think I was qualified enough. But I knew what type of job I wanted and what type of skills I had; I had developed those skills through internships. The internships are a big reason I am in consulting today because they allowed me to start acquiring different skills. I strongly recommend interning in different industries while you’re in college; take more than one internship every summer, every semester, as much as you can, because the opportunity of changing companies every three months or so will not be there once you graduate from college, when you take a full time job. I did as many internships as I could and worked in different companies so that I could experience how it feels like to work for a logistics supply chain company or for a technology company. I tried different fields such as sales, accounting, finance, or supply chain. After all those internships and classes, I started defining what I wanted to do in my career. I knew I liked problem solving. I knew I wanted to be a manager eventually; I wanted to be leading teams. I thought about the type of jobs that could give me the satisfaction of doing all these things. I went to the career center at the university to talk about it, and they recommended consulting. Then I started working as an internal consultant for a company before moving to external consulting and management consulting. I didn’t choose consulting, I think consulting chose me. Knowing what you want to do and being able to self-reflect and ask yourself what is it that you want to be doing after college, or five years after college, are the most important things you can do for yourself.

What led you to Deloitte or to your current position? What does this position entail?

In 2018, before I graduated, the market was a little different than what it is now for consulting and recruiting. Big consulting companies like Deloitte weren’t necessarily recruiting from certain schools and my school was one of those. However, the changes were already in track. During my senior year in college, I got an email from the people at the career center about sending my resume to a few companies. You never know where the opportunity will come from. Networking is very important in any aspect; even after graduation, you should continue to network because it’s important for people to know what you’re doing and for you to know what others are doing. You never know where life will take you. I was about to get a full-time offer from another company when I heard from Deloitte. So, I interviewed with them and got offered a job. Deloitte is a great company to work for. They have great internal programs, a lot of flexibility in the work environment, especially now during COVID. They’ve been very responsive and supportive of their employees.

I am currently a business analyst at Deloitte. My role entails learning to interact with the client; learning the technology, strategy, human capital, management; starting to take responsibilities and develop solutions that the clients are looking for. This is a period of trial and error for me. You’re not expected to know everything, but you’re expected to have curiosity for asking the right questions, to learn fast, to be on your feet, to be able to pick up things and put together the puzzle. As you move up in the company and get promoted, your responsibilities start changing, and as a manager or a senior consultant, you’re not allowed to make the mistakes that you were able to make as an analyst. 

My advice to college students is that every step you take in college, ask yourself if that step is putting you closer to your goal or taking you away from your end goal. I tried to be very intentional to ensure that everything I was doing was bringing me one step closer to my end goal. I knew that I wanted to work for an amazing company, and I knew the type of job I wanted to do and the skills I needed to have. I knew that for me to meet all those requirements, I needed to enrich my resume with different experiences. Gaining experience as a college student is very important, and you only get it by putting yourself out there, by going to conferences, by talking to people, and by going to networking events and meeting new people. All those things that I did during college put me closer to where I am today. And when the opportunity came, I was ready.

What are some of the skills you find utilizing the most in your position? How do you feel your college years prepared you for it?

I think teamwork is very important. I don’t think there are any jobs that require you to work alone nowadays. But, it is not enough to say that you worked in a team in the past; you should be able to say what value you added to the team, what your role was. I was usually the team leader in a lot of team projects in college. But when there was someone else who wanted to be a team leader, I would step back and let them do it. I learned those are skills in college and they have helped me in my career at Deloitte.

Another skill is the ability to communicate with people; it goes back to the team effort and teamwork. The ability to sell something is also important because you sell something every day of your life. For example, when you’re interviewing, you’re selling your experience to a company. College is a great time to make mistakes and learn from your mistakes. In college, you can practice running a program for your organization; you can recruit members, talk to companies to get sponsorship, or talk to a professor so he can help you put together this project. It’s fine if you can’t get what you want or if you make a mistake; it is important that you tried. The next time you do it, I guarantee that you’re going to do it differently because you already did it once and this is what happens when you practice.

The other skill that I acquired in college and heavily use in my work is taking good notes when I talk to my manager or to a subject matter expert. This is very important because I am not going to remember what they said in the meeting; I don’t have a photographic memory, and most people don’t. Most people might forget what the conversation was about, what was discussed. Taking notes makes the person that you are talking to feel like “this person actually cared about and listened to what I had to say.” So, notetaking for me is a great skill; I’ve practiced it a lot in college and I still do it here at Deloitte.

What keeps you motivated about your work?

My motivations change constantly, year to year. First of all, I want to do a good job at work. There are days that I wake up and say “I want to be the absolute best at what I’m doing and I’m going to go ahead and find all the resources to learn about it and do my best.” There are other times that my family is my motivation, and I want to make sure that I have a balanced life. There are times that I’m setting myself for success for my promotion. These are all different motivation sources for me.

Can you describe the team dynamics in your organization?

We have a lot of conversations and a lot of teamwork. In management consulting, you never work alone; you work with your client and other people who know more about a specific topic. We have conversations all the time, meetings, discussions, and brainstorming to find the best solution possible for the client. We are co-workers, we’re humans, we need to empathize with the other person who is on the other side of the computer so that we both can deliver something.

Self-studying is also important in team dynamics. If you are part of a team, you can’t say “you gave me something I don’t know well. I don’t know how to do it. Why did you give it to me?” Instead, you should at least try for a fair amount of time to say “these are the solutions I explored, but it is not giving me the right answer. What do you think?”

How has COVID reshaped the work you do? Do you believe it will continue this way once there is no virus threat?

COVID has changed everything. It changed the way we work, the way we study, the way we interact with people. I used to travel almost every week, and now I don’t anymore. On the one hand, it is nice because I get to spend more time at home with my family and I get to cook my own meals instead of ordering. On the other hand, I don’t get to see my team as often. We’re all working from home remotely through the computer. The human interactions with my team were invaluable, and they brought so much knowledge that is hard to share through the computer. Management consulting is an industry where you react to and anticipate what the market is going to need, what your clients are going to need. I just know that if the client needs us, we’ll be there. But if they’re okay with us working from home, then we’ll stay that way. So, it’s going to depend on the market and the needs.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Ecem Uluegeci
Harvard College
Boston (42.3° N, 71.0° W)

featuring Yoonjin Min, Consultant, Boston Consulting Group, New York (40.7° N, 74.0° W)

Consulting is an industry I had barely heard of before starting college in the US. That’s why I was excited to talk to Yoonjin Min to learn about the types of projects she worked on, especially in healthcare consulting.

Yoonjin Min is a consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in New York. She graduated from Rice University with a double major in Cognitive Sciences and Economics. Then, she earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2020. In our conversation, she shared her education and career journey with me.

Yoonjin described consulting as “problem-solving for different companies,”  and herself as someone who is interested in a wide variety of potential issues, which is why she thinks consulting is a perfect fit for her. The interdisciplinary background she gained when she was studying cognitive sciences equipped her with an approach to learning that utilizes different points of view and scientific methods for problem-solving, which were essential for her to build her career.

My key takeaway from our conversation was that consulting offers an environment in which one can discover intersections of many fields; however, there is also a need for expertise in consulting to create differentiated value for companies. Yoonjin talked about this unexpected but crucial aspect of her industry, and how consulting requires a combination of technical and business knowledge. I had this assumption that consultants were specialized experts in business but not necessarily in, for example, R&D for new drugs. Our conversation changed how I see the consulting industry; it provided a new perspective for someone like me who is both interested in life sciences and business.

Her advice to students interested in consulting was fostering a sense of intellectual curiosity and identifying ways to solve problems within that. She added that the practice of problem-solving doesn’t have to be limited to the academic environment and that it is a great skill for every industry, not just consulting.

Highlights from the interview:

Growing up, what was expected of you? And how did those expectations shape you into choosing your current career?

I was born in Korea, and my parents immigrated to the US when I was 1.5 years old. My dad pursued his PhD degree here. Both my parents come from humanities backgrounds but I was inclined towards a more traditional career path like law or medicine. I went into school thinking I was going to be a psychiatrist. My parents didn’t really force me into it; they actually didn’t think I was going to be a doctor. I wasn’t so much influenced by my parents, but by the environment that I was in. I went to a very high performing public high school in Maryland, and I was surrounded by people who were super ambitious. Once I was at Rice, I realized that I don’t have a real interest in medicine. I ended up in the business world because the people I knew were interning in consulting firms and that’s how I got into it. It’s the opposite of the career path of my parents who were very idealistic.

Can you tell us about your studies in Cognitive Sciences at Rice University?

Cognitive Sciences at Rice is an interdisciplinary major. It covers psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. The focus is the brain, but you can take it to many different directions. Some people go into artificial intelligence because they’re trying to mimic the brain; some go into neuro because they want to understand the actual biology behind the brain. I focused more on the psychology side. I looked into human factors such as how you interact with the world around you. I also looked at organizations and cultures and tried to understand the interactions among them. I took many hands-on classes. Most of my classes were from different departments; so, it was a really cool way to explore a lot of different topics. I always used to joke in college that I had a major in five different departments. I like having a diversity of information; I don’t like committing to one thing. Then I got into consulting, where I don’t have to commit to any industry to work in an industry. I like being able to try something new and learn something different.

What led you to your current position? And what does this position entail?

Consulting is problem solving for different companies. I used to describe it as being like a doctor for companies; you go in, try to figure out what the problem is, and help the companies solve the problem. I really like the aspect that you take junior people who don’t really know much about the industry. Then they go through a crash course about what the business is and can then say “because I have this outsider perspective, I can help you realize some of the things that you didn’t even realize yourself.” I really like that aspect of being able to explore different companies. I didn’t take any business classes in undergrad, but I did study economics, which is very theoretical. I wanted to interact with actual people; I wanted a job where I can work with clients, meet with people every day, have conversations, and understand what’s going on.

I started BCG with the mindset that I would be working on something related to consumer psychology; i.e., why people make decisions for purchasing things. I thought I would end up working in the consumer industry, but then I realized that people make decisions about where to spend their money in every industry, whether it’s technology or healthcare. So, I ultimately ended up working in the healthcare field.

BCG does all types of consulting across all the industries. I used to do a lot of work for hospitals. If you think about the Affordable Care Act and how healthcare in the US is evolving as a system, one of the big changes was that patients, who are the consumers of hospitals, had a lot more choice than they previously did, they cared more about the cost of treatment, or they wanted to know the best hospital for that treatment. I worked for different hospital systems and helped them think through their consumer strategy. How do they think about their patients? How do they encourage their patients to choose them over other hospitals? One of the things we looked at was their real estate strategy. One of the hospital systems that I worked with has many hospitals. They know that people don’t want to go into the ER every time they have a problem. So, they started thinking about how they can create their own urgent care system or whether they should partner with an urgent care system.

I liked working in the healthcare field and wanted to see its different sides such as medical devices and insurance. BCG has a program where you can work for one of their clients for a year. So, I worked for one of our social impact clients, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, which is an international organization based out of Geneva, Switzerland. I went to Switzerland and worked in their strategy team. What they do is they get money from foundations around the world, pool that money together, and invest in low-income countries. They help the low-income countries get the vaccines and pay for the vaccines, and they actually distribute them so that the vaccine can reach all children, not just the children who live in major cities, but those who live in urban slums or in rural areas. They think about how they can invest in the infrastructure or people to get the vaccines there.

What are the skills you find yourself utilizing the most in your current position and how did your college years prepare you?

I think that taking cognitive science and neuroscience classes at college taught me the scientific method and to come up with a research question and a hypothesis, and that is highly applicable in consulting, where you are often presented with a problem. Right now, I’m working for a biopharmaceutical company, and they’re trying to assess their timelines for how quickly they can finish drug development. Drug development involves clinical trials, and they think that they’re slower than their peers. So, that’s the problem. We have a few hypotheses about what could be causing that. Maybe they’re not investing enough in certain departments, maybe they don’t have enough people, or maybe they’re not prioritizing the programs that they need to be focusing on. We then look up different data or create new data to say “this is how your teams are structured, you have five different roles doing the same thing, and sometimes nobody knows what they’re supposed to be doing.” We then test the hypotheses. That’s also similar to some of the stuff I was trying to understand when I was at Rice; why people had made a certain decision or taken a certain path during the experiment.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about your job?

What I’m realizing now as a misconception that comes from something that was true in the past is that when I went into consulting, I wanted to try everything and work on different projects. But, consulting is becoming a lot more specialized and targeted, even at big firms. BCG has been hiring many people who are PhDs and MDs because they understand the science and can work on projects that involve clinical trial protocols. Consulting is getting to the next level of technical knowledge combined with business knowledge. People are very specialized, and not necessarily because of their background. I don’t really have a technical healthcare background, but because I’m now working in healthcare projects across different areas, I’m building that expertise. I think there is a lot more specialization and expertise in the consulting industry than I realized until I was here.

How does the current state of the world with the Covid-19 pandemic affect your work environment overall?

I was in the Houston Office of BCG prior to moving to Switzerland and prior to going to the business school but I was always traveling even then. Consulting can have a very demanding travel schedule, which is very tiring. Obviously, in the current environment, that’s not happening; almost everybody is working from home. I think productivity in that sense is probably way up. One of the great things about consulting is that it’s a very relationship-driven business; consultants get really close to the clients. In the current environment, they still try to mimic that at BCG, but it’s much harder when you’re not in the same room with your clients. My team has 30-minute windows daily when anyone can call in anytime if they want to and chat about anything not work related. So, we are trying to mimic the more natural conversation we have when we’re traveling together and working together, but it’s not the same.

What changes or challenges you foresee in your industry in the future?

I think consulting companies are a little bit different now. There are more startups, and it is interesting to see how influential startups can be versus long-term Fortune 500 companies. Our company has traditionally worked with much larger companies. BCG invested a lot in digital and advanced data analytics. Having this knowledge is often not enough to solve clients’ problems in the same way as it was in the past. Not only making money and returning money to your shareholders, but also thinking about the impact that you’re having on society is an area that consulting industry needs to push more and grow into. With their connections to the largest companies around the country and around the world, consulting firms are well positioned to bring this perspective to a lot of business leaders. That’s something I hope consulting firms continue to push and drive. I would like to keep working on the healthcare field and at the same time, to help companies raise money to focus more on the social impacts of their business.

What advice would you give the students interested in your field?

The biggest thing is fostering your sense of intellectual curiosity and identifying the ways to solve problems within that. For me, that happened a little bit less in the classroom and more in some of the extracurricular activities, like the student government. I spent most of my time working with the faculty, the administration, and other students to figure out potential solutions and options for problems. If you are passionate about something, develop that curiosity and passion, and then try to create opportunities to flex your problem solving skills. It doesn’t have to be in the classroom. Trying to understand the problem and how to fix it is a good skill set, and it will be applicable in your job, even if it’s in a different area.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Jamie Chen
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Tawfik Jarjour, Senior Manager, Accenture Strategy, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Tawfik Jarjour is a senior manager at Accenture Strategy in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Rice University in 2012 with degrees in ecology & evolutionary biology and cognitive sciences with a minor in biochemistry and cell biology. I had the pleasure of interviewing Tawfik via video conference while I was across the world in Taipei. In the interview, we talked about his career journey at Accenture, various projects he has worked on, as well as important lessons and takeaways from his unique experience.

In college, Tawfik wanted to work at the intersection of healthcare and public policy then become a doctor. He actively participated in student life and extracurriculars, with a focus on community engagement and leadership; he was the president of Habitat for Humanity at Rice, the director of the Rice Centennial Project, and an active member of the student government. His initial contact with consulting was at the Student Center when an alumnus, who was supporting Tawfik’s Habitat for Humanity project, mentioned that he would be a good fit for a consulting role. At first, he thought it would be a temporary position before pursuing his main goals in healthcare and medicine. However, despite the slightly rough start, Tawfik decided to continue at Accenture after he realized he could still make a positive impact as a consultant on the issues he cared about despite not being in the profession he imagined himself to be in.

Although Tawfik’s first project as a consultant was not what he expected, he didn’t give up. He wanted to incorporate his passion into his job. He started working on a healthcare project advising hospitals on how to decrease the length of stays. That project launched his “healthcare career” in consulting. Tawfik got to work with the hospital systems from the other side, which, in retrospect, may have enabled him to make greater changes in the healthcare system to improve the conditions for patients and healthcare workers.

Tawfik continued to make purposeful decisions that shaped his career. He chose a risky project that later led him to diverse work opportunities abroad that profoundly enriched his experiences and challenged his ability to utilize his skillset to make an impact outside of healthcare and of the United States. In his year and a half abroad, Tawfik was in merger and acquisitions working with companies making microchips and semiconductors in Taiwan. Currently, Tawfik is involved with Accenture’s central COVID response content coordination group, working with the c-suite to help define the approach and provide guidance for other companies making decisions in light of the pandemic.

One of the main takeaways from our conversation was the emphasis Tawfik placed on always being open to learning and growing, going where your impact could be the greatest, even if that entails putting yourself in challenging situations, and building up your skillset as you go. Equally important, Tawfik also reminds us that we should learn to take advantage of non-ideal situations as there is never a totally wrong decision in life and there are plenty of opportunities waiting for those who are ready. “The path is never something you can completely plan for” — you never know, with a positive perspective and growth mindset, imperfect decisions may, with some twists and turns, lead you to the perfect place you want to be.

Highlights from the interview:

What were your goals during and right out of college? And how does your path align with your expectations?

I’ve realized that I didn’t have to go to the medical school to make an impact; you can make an impact in nearly any career if you seek it out, and I learned how I could do meaningful work as a consultant

What led you to your current position? What does the job entail?

Given the nature of consulting, you have to be prepared for ambiguity and challenging situations that you can’t exactly predict. You can never plan out the exact path, but you can set up some guideposts for yourself.

At Accenture, I got involved in healthcare, working on a project where we advised doctors and nurses on how to decrease length of stays. That was the start of my healthcare career and I started doing one project after another in the industry. Those first couple years really showed me what it’s like to work in hospital systems. I got a chance to figure out how to change the healthcare system and adjust how hospitals are run, to try to make things better for patients and physicians.

Then I started going in a different direction at Accenture. In your career, you should be able to make the best of situations and be willing to jump into some that are a little risky, from a career perspective, but can yield big dividends. After some time at Accenture, an opportunity arose and I took the riskier path, deciding to move into a role that ended up defining my career. Taking risks is what is needed to build your skillset and put together a stronger toolkit. It’s not the easiest path and even if it means delaying certain achievements to invest in your development, it’s still worth it because in the long term, you will be more successful at what you do.

What kind of work do consultants do?

This is the progression and the kind of work you do at each level as a consultant. You use data, do presentations and interviews, have conversations with people, and pull it all together to give your final recommendations at the end.

When I first started, I was a data analyst. To make any decision, you need to have a good dataset underlying it. In some projects I worked on, I was given different datasets, and I helped organize, structure, and make sense of them to present to an executive audience for decision-making. This is a big part of how you make consulting decisions, because data models and predictive analytics are very important. What we’ve started doing as a company [recently] as opposed to when I first started is to leave this [data] analytics decision-making process to the client. In other words, you don’t want to just tell the [clients] what the answer is; you want to teach them how to continue to go through the data and find the answer on their own. Understanding the data behind the situation and how you make decisions based on the data are really important.

As an analyst, I also had to learn and work on presenting well. My presentations in college were not very good compared to what I had to do here. The first couple years, I really had to improve, especially the graphic design and visual design [aspects]. How do you present your information in the right way? How do you craft a good story? I can’t tell you how many times I pull out pieces of paper and sketch out what I want the [presentation] to look like first, and then eventually I get to the version I want. [It’s important] because you want to share a message with your slides, and the slides at Accenture and other consulting firms are our publications. instead of publishing a report or a paper, we publish a PowerPoint deck.

There are also a lot of program management and project management [responsibilities], especially in the beginning. Can you schedule the meetings the right way? Can you have the right conversations? Are you taking notes in those meetings and capturing the information you need to create the materials or do the research that you need to do?

As you move up to become a consultant, you become the person who owns and defines [more of the work]. You define the research and the presentations, you start presenting yourself, having more ownership, and potentially managing someone.

When you move up to the next level as a manager, you are managing a team and you are the one in charge of owning the [project].  You give advice related to the projects. Let’s say you have a client who wants to enter a new space; they came up with a new product but don’t exactly know how to push it forward and they want advice on how to do that. You have a team that does the research, prepares the presentation, and goes through the materials, and then you have meetings with the client. As a manager, you have more responsibility. You also start managing the project budget and [monitoring] how much you’re spending and who spent too much on their travel, for example.

Then, you get to the next level, which is the senior manager level, where I am right now. As a senior manager, you end up overseeing multiple projects and opportunities and you have a team. You are in meetings all day long, and you have to get really good at delegating. Because I can’t do the work myself, I have to delegate it to other people.

The last position is the partner or the managing director position, depending on what companies call it. For that position, you do even less delivery; you are mostly there to meet the client, see what they want, and help sell the work to be done. Then you give advice and supervise your teams. You check on your teams in different places, see how they’re doing, and make sure that things are moving forward the right way. As a managing director or a partner, you focus more on the sales side.

What are the most important skills that you use the most to succeed in your position, or as a consultant in general?

The most valuable skills are confidence and the ability to listen and learn. Having a positive attitude, being inquisitive, asking the right questions, and understanding how to go through datasets, interpret what the data mean, and present things in the most effective way are also valuable skills to have.

How do you see your field and your role developing in the future? Where do you see consulting and all the roles shifting?

In consulting, there will be a big shift, and it is already in progress. The company that I’m working at, Accenture, is a little bit further along than some other firms. Many years ago, we saw the writing on the wall: companies don’t want you to come in, make a presentation, and leave. Companies are looking for something more tangible that they can use and something that drives a bigger impact to their business and how they run it. [In response], we’ve invested very heavily in our interactive group, digital group, and teams that can help us create tangible things for clients we work with.

A lot of times we partner [with other groups within Accenture]. I’m on the strategy side, so I come up with the bigger picture and then partner with folks who can implement that bigger picture. We also have teams that can prototype applications. We worked with a lot of companies on their e-commerce tools. For example, if the product recommendation is an online ordering system for sandwiches, [we deliver] a working application that they can use to do that. That means a lot more to them; even if it’s not what they use in the end, it still gives them a prototype to work off of. there’s an important role you play to help the clients; you can take it to the next level. Clients want you to merge the strategy recommendations with actionable items you deliver to them, and then finally have a long-term tool that they can use. We set up certain datasets and dashboards that they can review formally, and we train someone from the client side. That way, after we’re gone, they still have someone who can run these tools, run the reports, and see what’s going on. Clients want us to teach them how to fish versus just bring them fish. We’re not a fish market anymore, we want to be the fishing trainers. I think that’s the future of consulting and it is a more sustainable approach because companies can do things on their own and might not need us for certain things. Then they can get our help with something different. 

Is everyone who works at a consulting company called consultants?

They’re mostly called consultants, but there are also people who have different roles, for example, data scientists. At Accenture, we have more than 6,000 data scientists, who are not called consultants. There are also people in the marketing [department] who are not called consultants.

What advice would you give students getting into consulting?

First and foremost, I would recommend they explore and learn different things as a student. I didn’t really start looking at consulting until my senior year at Rice University. The other things I did during my previous summers were valuable and I learned a lot from them.

Starting from your freshman year, be aware of what the companies are doing, who they are, and when their application process starts. The biggest challenge I’ve actually seen for students who want to get into consulting is that they miss the deadlines because the deadlines are much earlier than you’d expect. To recruit MBAs, we start meeting with the MBA students before they start their MBA program, while they’re still applying for business school. The applications are typically due by the first week of September of your senior year. So, if you’re not paying attention, before you know it, all the applications are closed.

Throughout your time as a student, take the chance to test out some of the leadership opportunities and manage some projects. That helped me a lot to get into consulting. In a lot of really sharp students, who have great grades, great academic background, and great interview skills, one of the challenges we see is that they never really took on any leadership role. Taking part in leadership roles with the student government, a club, or something tangible, is valuable because it teaches you the skills you need to be successful as a consultant more than you can learn in a classroom. having these extracurricular activities that allow you to grow in that way is essential. 

Anything else you want to mention before you have to run off to your meetings?

In life, you have a lot of opportunities coming your way and whether you’re interested in consulting or anything else, there’s never a totally wrong decision. You make a decision and it might not be the perfect decision for you, but then you may end up moving to where you want to be later. Everything you do in life teaches you something–   always take that positive perspective and learn from the things you dealt with. Whenever I dealt with challenging times in consulting, I could have stepped away and missed out on a lot of the things that I ended up doing in the end. For every exciting opportunity that I enjoyed and grew with, there was one that I really did not enjoy. There are situations where you do things that you really like and some that you don’t. Being able to make the best of all the situations is very important, and finally, whenever you can, it’s important to give back and help others

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

by Longitude fellows Alishahal Macknojia, University of Houston, and Elijah Sales, Rice University.

In the professional world, many companies and organizations across a wide array of industries depend on expertise to help them adapt to unexpected changes or to emerging technologies so that they can efficiently explore new approaches for their businesses. They often need assistance from consultants, who provide them research and analysis tools as well as advice or plans that could propel them towards their goals. Consultants bridge the gap between problems and solutions by offering their services to clients using their specialized knowledge. This is beneficial to both the company and the consultant as they can collaborate, when needed, to review and solve problems together. Companies can bring on the expertise they need from outside for specific projects, mitigate risks, or help implement a particular strategy. They pay a premium to have the convenience of solving problems efficiently with outside expertise rather than employ and train additional full-time staff.

Consultants need to have a robust set of skills, in some cases including both technical and analytical skills to pull off a project in a specified timeline. Consequently, it is becoming apparent that students with liberal arts backgrounds, whobring excellent communication and project management related skills among numerous other talents, excel at providingvaluable contributions. Their ability to translate technical aspects of a project into business terminology and, eventually, a solution, brings a comprehensive perspective to the consulting process. Based on the conversations with six interviewees from the consulting field through the Longitude.site program, we have observed that liberal arts backgrounds and expertise allow them to ensure efficient negotiation and implementation of ideas, leading to a more streamlined consulting process from start to finish.

Soft skills are repeatedly mentioned as essential by those in the professional world, and for consulting, it is no different. Emotional intelligence and self-awareness were two characteristics that a consultant who studied political science in college mentioned as valuable during managing projects with challenging clients. A senior consultant who studied cognitive sciences mentioned that learning the decision-making process was most beneficial to him in managing tough challenges.

Effective communication and project management are two skills that are deemed essential during the life cycle of consulting projects. Doing the due diligence of conducting research and working with data along with organizingtakeaways and preparing visual presentations is what makes up a large part of consulting. In the absence of preliminary material, asking as many questions as possible upfront can be instrumental in reducing the downtime later in theseprojects.

Another crucial skill in consulting that many Longitude interviewees mentioned is the ability to connect with others. Since many consultants often travel far and wide to meet their clients and suppliers, they would also have to be adept at interacting with others while keeping cultural traditions and customs in mind. A senior product consultant who majored in sociology explained that consultants would also have to be well-adjusted to whatever setting they are required to be in so as to perform their work to the best of their ability and not feel overwhelmed in a foreign city or country. History, linguistics, and cultural studies majors would most likely succeed in this aspect because they work through curriculums that foster intercultural and interpersonal understanding. Through early exposure to different cultures before working in consulting, many students with a liberal arts background would be able to form strong relationships with whomever they interact with, allowing them to ultimately succeed in getting their ideas and solutions across.

Consulting as a career can seem quite daunting at first to those who have a liberal arts background. However, given that consulting emphasizes creativity, communication, and connection, it is an industry in which liberal arts majors can certainly find their niche. Liberal arts students will always be seen as an asset as they can provide another approach and way of thinking that shouldn’t be discounted especially considering the concerns for reliance on artificial intelligence and automation in the future. Although automating certain aspects of consulting can be efficient, the unique connection between humans is irreplaceable and could prevent a complete shift to automation. Consultants with a liberal arts background, as mentioned earlier, tend to be well skilled at forming that sort of connection, which could give them an advantage no matter what path consulting takes in the future. Consulting may also shift towards specialization, potentially causing an increased dependence on a diverse skillset brought upon by liberal arts majors. As skilled learners, researchers, and presenters, liberal arts students have an immense potential to shine as consultants as long as they put their diverse, unique, and invaluable skills to good use. In that regard, the consulting industry is brimming with opportunities for liberal arts students who have a passion for learning about, connecting with, and implementing potentially life-changing solutions for others.

Further Reading

• https://psychology.okstate.edu/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/134-undergraduate-skills-acquired(discusses crucial skills that are prevalent among psychology students)
• https://hbr.org/2017/07/liberal-arts-in-the-data-age (speaks about the role of liberal arts in data centric work) 

© Copyright 2020 Longitude.site. All Rights Reserved.

Bilge Arslan
Yale-NUS College
Singapore (1.3° N, 103.8° E)

featuring Eric Pan, Business Analyst, McKinsey & Company, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Consulting has always been this very popular yet mysterious sector to me since I started college. I have heard from a lot of friends that they want to become consultants. However, what exactly the job entails has never been very clear. That is why I decided to talk to Eric Pan, who has been working at McKinsey & Company as a business analyst for nearly two years. He not only helped me gain a better understanding of the consulting industry but also provided some valuable insights for any college student trying to figure out her career path like myself. One of my main takeaways from our conversation is that it is important to view the role of consulting as part of a broader, long-term career goal. I also learned that consulting firms can help deliver solutions to various challenges in a wide range of sectors.

Learning about Eric’s experiences as a business analyst made me realize that consulting would allow me to gain exposure to diverse industries and make a positive impact on people’s lives in different ways. Eric talked about some of the projects he has been involved in at McKinsey. For instance, he helped with assisting a telecom client to understand 5G, which included talking to experts to understand how the highly developed 5G infrastructure in South Korea can provide great learning opportunities for 5G implementation in the USA. A more recent project he worked on involved guiding companies to adapt to the new normal in light of COVID-19. As Eric also remarked, consulting firms like McKinsey can create value especially in times of crisis like this by supporting their clients to adapt to the changing circumstances and resume their activities efficiently. Another great part of the interview that really stood out to me was when Eric gave a concrete example as to how consultants actually do this. One of the projects required him and three teammates to come up with a perspective for a problem that the firm has never tackled before. So, they interviewed 30 industry experts over a span of two weeks. This is fascinating to me because this task necessitates trusting each team member’s ability to summarize the most relevant information under a strict time constraint and share it accurately with others. Then, the most crucial and maybe the hardest part is to synthesize what everyone learned in order to brainstorm creative and effective solutions that were most appropriate for the client.

This anecdote illustrates that teamwork occupies a crucial place in the consulting sector. That is, the process of solving specific business challenges is made better by building on a culture of feedback where everyone helps each other to improve. Eric elaborated on the importance of being able to receive immediate feedback from trusted “teammates [who] observe a lot of things that you do” and can thus provide “feedback… to [help you] grow as a person quickly [and] in a healthy way.” He further mentioned that building trust in the team leads to a work environment in which everybody feels motivated to contribute to the work in the best way possible and also comfortable enough to experiment.

Moreover, this project example demonstrated another point Eric made regarding certain useful skills in consulting as well as how to acquire them. He pointed out that “clients are really interesting people outside of their work context” and being able to connect with them through common interests is a very rewarding part of the job. Eric thinks that the classes that he took in college outside his major, such as film, history, philosophy, and architecture, have been helping him build these connections. Taking a variety of classes also helped him gain a different perspective from those offered by his engineering classes, which usually simplified real-world solutions so that they fit into a classroom. As a liberal arts student, I resonate with Eric a lot on this topic. I believe that exploring different passions and getting out of my comfort zone to learn about new areas develop me a lot as a person. Similarly, we both agreed that learning languages teaches us unique ways to process information and consider things from different angles. Consequently, flexibility, good communication skills, and critical thinking can be helpful in consulting where clients expect fast and creative problem-solving.

Eric thinks that the consulting lifestyle might not be for everyone since it requires sustained dedication and commitment to work long hours at times. However, the right group dynamics can turn the pressure of working hard into many great opportunities for learning from teammates and personal development. Moving forward, a career in consulting has more to offer as the world faces increasingly complex challenges every day. With the fundamentally transformational changes that are happening in many sectors, consulting services will only become more relevant and impactful in the uncertain future. An example Eric gave is how as data becomes exponentially more abundant and accessible, consultants with a deep understanding of that data will be in increasingly high demand. In other words, we will need experts who can help us decipher and make use of the expansive pool of information that we have today and more so in the future.

In the case of management consulting, Eric believes the profession will continue to transform from having a more generalist approach to employing many more experts in specific fields to understand problems in greater depth. The scope of this industry is dynamic and its definition is likely to change in the following years. Nevertheless, if you are someone who considers the profession as a possible career like me, the first step remains thinking about how “consulting fits into your story.”

Highlights from the interview:

What led you to your current position and what does this position entail?

Throughout college, I tried to participate in a lot of career fairs to understand what’s out there. And consulting very early on drew me in as a way of learning about a variety of industries and of meeting really cool people. On top of that, competing in case competitions starting as a freshman, interning during my sophomore year at a startup founded by ex-consultants, and interning during my junior year at Deloitte proved out my suspicion that consulting is for me. 

So far I’ve been doing what we call a random walk, which is having a more or less agnostic approach when it comes to staffing. That entails a variety of studies across logistics, construction, aerospace, food, telecom, healthcare, and public sector work. 

A profession that would allow me to gain insight into different industries and gain different experiences every day would be very exciting. 

I think that curiosity can really carry you through your professional career. I took many classes outside of my engineering major in college, and they help you in intangible ways whereby, today I could be meeting a client for the first time whom I have never worked with, finding common interests in the first few minutes of introduction go a long way in helping the both of us be more collaborative and trusting down the road.

Can you give a brief example of the kind of projects you work on?

One of my favorite studies I’ve done was to help a telecom client understand 5G, its impact on their business, and what it would mean for their customer’s experience once the technology is rolled out. To do that, we did a number of case studies for how other industries have embraced the technology as a stimulus for really improving customer experience and differentiating against their competitors. We also did case studies of countries that have already rolled out 5G and the ways they’ve taken advantage of the technology to introduce this new generation of experience to their customers. South Korea for example has one of the highest coverage for 5G, at least at the time when we did the study, and it’s just fascinating talking to experts, understanding their perspective on how we would contextualize a case from South Korea to our U.S. geography. That was a very intellectually stimulating exercise.

What keeps you motivated about your work?

I think what keeps me motivated is a strong wish to do right by the people who have done right by me. Meaning that, I feel incredibly grateful for where I am today. I think the best way to repay them is to not let their effort go to waste. And I think it drives me in that I want to do as much as I can and accomplish as much as I can to show them that they haven’t misplaced their faith. And maybe one day I will be in the position to help them, which I look forward to.

Please describe the team dynamics in your organization.

At McKinsey, you might work with a group of people pretty frequently, and then that group kind of becomes your tribe. This results in this tightknit circle, where the people really do become your good friends. And I’ve met some really wonderful, amazing people through that, and I’m very appreciative of the way that they challenged how I think. They are always looking for ways to help you.

Live feedback is a gift that I don’t think you will be able to find in quite the same way elsewhere. You have so much exposure with your teammates that they observe a lot of the things that you do. They could have an immediate reaction to you and you get to create a positive feedback loop.  All those things make a comfortable culture for someone to be vulnerable and to experiment.

Do you have an advice to give to students who are interested in your field, like me?

I would say that the consulting lifestyle is not for everyone. So having a good sense of how will you adapt to that is important. Can you be your best self under those circumstances? That’s going to be a big question to ask early on. And if the answer is “Yes, I can,” then I think the next question is “Can I prove to myself that I have the skills to be a consultant?” The trick here is to prepare early and find someone who has similar passions and aspirations to work hard together.

What you’ll find is that a large portion of each rung of the company is departing. Maybe less than 10% of the people in your starting class will stay at the consulting firm for their entire career. So the question really is “Why do I want to get into consulting? What can the experience teach me if consulting is not everything to my career?” Understand your long-term and short-term goals before diving in is pretty important. 

Is there anything else you want to mention?

I would go back to the last thing that I said about understanding how consulting fits into your story. I think that’s a very fundamental question and one that’s really difficult to answer. As early as possible, talk to people who have done things that you find potentially interesting, understand what their motivations were for getting into those projects, and how they’re enjoying it. It helps you narrow the potential fields to consider and ultimately saves you time.
 

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Jordan Ramirez
Elgin Community College
Chicago (41.8° N, 87.6° W)

featuring Allison Hardy, Manager, Deloitte Digital, Denver (39.7° N, 104.9° W)

Allison Hardy is a manager of advertising, marketing, and commerce at Deloitte Consulting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Southern Methodist University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

When I first heard that I would be interviewing someone from one of the big four consulting firms, I will admit that I was both excited and nervous. As a manager at Deloitte Digital, Allison Hardy has an exciting role. Deloitte Digital is a relatively new branch of Deloitte that offers more digital and consumer-based consulting than its parent company. As a part of Deloitte Digital, Hardy helps to oversee the use of advanced and innovative marketing technology that greatly improves the outreach of clients.

Every year, thousands of college students apply for jobs and internships to be a part of Deloitte and the other big four consulting firms. Every applicant tries to make themselves sound perfect, but as Hardy can attest, nobody’s perfect. Hardy helped me to understand how important it is for every professional to market themselves.

Hardy insisted that perfection is not crucial to success and that there are many different avenues to a successful career. When I asked about her first job, she chuckled. Her first job wasn’t at a big corporation like Google or Amazon. Instead, she started as a Marketing Research Analyst for a plastic bag manufacturer. When Hardy graduated in 2001 the economy was in a downward spiral. She wisely understood that she could not let her ego get in the way of securing a job while millions of other Americans were struggling to do the same.

Given that the current job market is catastrophic with the COVID-19 pandemic, I asked Hardy if she had any advice for the thousands of college graduates of 2020. She humbly pointed out that she does not have all the answers; however, it is important to have perspective and flexibility. Hardy has always been flexible with her career choices. Initially starting as an analyst, she later took on the role of account manager. As an account manager, Hardy coordinated creatives and clients. It was during this time that Hardy described how excited she was to have a role in supervising the entire production of advertising campaigns. Personally, my interests have always hovered on the line between being an analyst or a creative. However, my interactions with Hardy helped me to realize that I do not have to pick just one direction. There are plenty of opportunities to fail, start-over, and succeed.

When Hardy decided that she had topped out with managing the creative development process, she decided to invest in herself by attending Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Hardy described how her career had what seemed like a ceiling before receiving her MBA. This investment into her education allowed her to break through that ceiling. After graduation, Hardy returned to managing accounts for many large firms but came to the grim realization that she did not feel fulfilled by her role as an Account Manager. She described how frightening this was at first, given that she just recently made a large investment into her MBA. Fortunately, Hardy took her own advice and decided to be flexible. Not knowing where to go with her career, she called her friends and family. Before too long, she received some advice from a friend to pursue consulting. I believe that in times of doubt it is always important to have a circle of people that we can trust to help.

Hardy had never fully considered consulting before. Her decision to enter this field paid off as she proved to herself that she was a great match for the job. Hardy’s flexibility paid dividends when she was tasked to manage a 75-person team that migrated 350 websites on to a cloud platform. This was a monstrous task; however, it was an insightful experience for her. She realized that she was not hired because of her superior knowledge of cloud-based technology. Instead, Hardy was the right person for the job because she is flexible enough to tackle any problem. Consultants are not expected to have a complete understanding of what needs to be done, but rather, to have the skills and experience to figure it out.

Not every problem that a consultant faces is one that they know how to handle alone. This is why Hardy was so insistent on the importance of teamwork at Deloitte Digital. Those at Deloitte Digital and other technology consulting firms have to be able to tackle the tough problems they face together.

Unfortunately, this pandemic has been harmful to many marketers because of the need for many companies to cut expenses. Often, the first expense to be cut at smaller companies is to defund marketing. Hardy heartily agreed that it is a tragedy that many companies fail to recognize the importance of marketing. This is probably the final takeaway I got from my conversation with Hardy, as it will always be a burden of those in the marketing sector to convince clients of how important marketing is for their company.

This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Akın Deniz Heper
Yale-NUS College
Singapore (1.3° N, 103.8° E)

featuring Marc Sabbagh, Chief of Staff, Safety and Citizen Services, Accenture Federal Services, Washington D.C. (38.9° N, 77.0° W)

Marc Sabbagh is a chief of staff for the Safety and Citizen Services portfolio at Accenture Federal Services. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Rice University and a master’s degree in international affairs and economics from Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Marc Sabbagh’s experience as both a management consultant and a chief of staff—a role relatively new to the private sector—is a lesson on how to understand and capitalize on the different opportunities available through a career in consulting. Listening to Sabbagh’s journey through research positions and internships to his early and current roles at Accenture is instructive on how to best pursue a career in consulting over other paths, such as NGOs, government employment, or think tanks.

“There’s always been this thread in my life of how new emerging tech could be used in a way to advance government missions and collaborations,” he says.

The impact of technology on government missions makes consulting with federal agencies and departments a highly appealing career choice for students seeking to make a difference and effect real, positive change, according to Sabbagh. “I get to deliver technology and see how that impacts and enables government missions,” he says.

Sabbagh is currently working on the EPIC Disruption Learning Series, a program that aims to familiarize Accenture employees with new technology from private sector companies and further equip people with the technological skills to hone and shape client solutions using the latest innovations, such as artificial intelligence technology and automation. The EPIC Disruption Learning Series highlights the importance of familiarity with the latest technology in all fields of consulting.

His current role as chief of staff centers on managing key Accenture internal operations and includes ensuring key initiatives get off the ground quickly and meet their purpose. Sabbagh’s position also involves connecting the right people to create efficient and successful teams and increase the efficiency of internal processes—modernizing outdated technology or techniques and better allocating available resources to facilitate delivery and implementation of viable strategies to clients.

For consultants, a deep understanding of the subject of focus is important, but a breadth of knowledge is also a key resource. Problem-solving abilities and soft skills that promote cooperation, communication, and teamwork are essential. Sabbagh believes these are what make an especially valuable consultant and are a product of the superior liberal arts education that he received at Rice.

Curiosity and always questioning preconceived notions are vital qualities, since they inevitably lead to up-to-date and innovative engagement with projects and clients. Sabbagh is a successful example of being open to risk-taking and adaptability to change, partly through his interest and evolving work in abstract art.

“Abstract art is about risk. You’re dealing with a blank canvas, when you start, you don’t exactly know where you’re going, and that can be a little bit uncomfortable. Then you start contemplating your work, and you resolve it…being fearless in taking that risk…can be pivotal,” Sabbagh notes. “I’ve been really applying that mindset at work by saying, ‘If I do this, it’s not the end of the world because I pivot.’”

Aside from developing the requisite skills on which a consultant depends, Sabbagh recommends that those interested in consulting try to think like a consultant in their current places of work or academic setting. Staying current with world events, changes in the field, and professional innovations can improve the efficiency in service of an organization or a client.

“People interested in consulting should start recognizing ways they can be a consultant or an external advisor—to the company they already work for, or the internship they’re taking,” he says. “By asking themselves questions such as, ‘If I wasn’t at my organization, how would I solve this? What recommendations would I make?’”

Highlights from the interview:

Were there any direct expectations that you either followed or had to fight against to follow your career? What were the general stances of your family and community behind your choices?

Growing up in Houston, I was always interested in government. My family background is Lebanese American, so I’ve always viewed life through an international lens. I wanted to do something that involved government and international perspectives. Accenture is that avenue for me. I work in consulting for Accenture Federal Services, and we work with organizations that have international missions, and assist in implementing technology for government agencies and offices. It’s a cool intersection of private sector and government work.

One of the biggest sparks in my interest in technology and international affairs was the Arab uprisings of 2011 and how social media was used at that time. All through college and grad school, I worked with the State Department as a virtual intern, helping them do online programs using things like Google Hangouts and Adobe Connect to get people—just ordinary citizens from different countries—talking and learning about each other. That was another way I saw technology impacting diplomacy and government.

There’s always been this thread in my life of how new emerging tech could be used in a way to advance government missions and collaborations. With Accenture Federal Services, I get to deliver technology and see how it impacts and enables government missions. I don’t know if my interest in technology came from family expectations or my background, but that has always been my interest. I think my parents and family helped me think about what’s next and to be creative, as did Rice and my grad program.

I know that you’re working on the EPIC Disruption learning series right now. Is that your main focus right now, or what does your position entail otherwise?

Starting out, I was mostly working with our government clients. During my first few weeks at Accenture Federal Services, I met one of our account leads, who became my mentor. This year, he began leading accounts across homeland security, diplomacy, justice, education, commerce—we call it Safety and Citizen Services, or S&CS. He asked me to join as his chief of staff.

The EPIC Disruption learning series is one of many initiatives our group has launched. We’re partnering with several high-level corporate partners so that we can understand their technology and then build something that resonates with clients. We think it can bring a new sense of understanding and help government agencies resolve problems through technology innovation. At the same time, it gives our own people new skills in an emerging tech market that we think are going to be important in the next few years.

With breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, chat bots within contact centers, or robotic process automation, there are so many opportunities. We’re finding with this series that people are coming in with little understanding of new technology. But they understand their clients and the issues they are trying to solve in government. Once they understand what a technology can achieve, they are immediately able to tie that to a client challenge and build something impactful.

What skills do you find very useful day to day, both in your current position and when you are working more externally with clients?

Academically, I took courses that allowed me to present, write, and communicate. There’s a lot of personal engagement in the fields of political science and history, so I was really exposed through my academics on how to create an argument, write a paper, present the argument, and communicate the salient points. I also learned how to understand the audience and communicate with people from a different culture or a different background. It’s extremely useful in my work with Accenture Federal Services and dealing with people from different backgrounds.

I interned at the Baker Institute during my time at Rice. Baker didn’t have a Twitter or Facebook account, and they were struggling to communicate with students on campus. My experience in applying digital tools and providing messaging recommendations to Baker helped them improve their communications. Later, as a communications associate at the Arab American Institute, I developed messages to motivate people and engage different communities at the state level and on Capitol Hill.

These experiences inform my work today with clients. A lot of it is using the soft skills. Accenture Federal Services teaches me hard, technical skills in delivering projects, using agile methodology or human-centered design. My academic studies and previous experiences lent themselves to soft skill development, engaging people, writing and presenting ideas in a meaningful and creative way.

Could you give more examples of the kind of work that you’ve done?

If I were to break down my role into three focus areas, let us describe it this way. One is “people wrangler”—someone who finds ways to make our team successful and convene different people from our marketing, sales, delivery, or intelligence teams to reach a desired solution. Second, I’m an “initiative accelerator,” helping to get projects off the ground and delivered in a timely manner. My third primary role is “friction busting,” taking outdated or slow-moving processes and making them more efficient through innovative thinking and productive collaboration.

How do you think technology will change the way consulting will work?

For technology at Accenture Federal Services, I see increasing collaboration, a broader sharing of knowledge between the private sector and government globally. This opens up opportunities and avenues to new tools and technologies. Accenture is already a remarkably agile organization, and we are continuing to develop new and industry-specific collaborative skills, through expanding telework and other resources. My personal view is that it’s really valuable to have people face-to-face with technology as an essential enhancement to keeping a strong dialogue going.

From the government and technology, it’s a push/pull relationship. Government is assessing these technologies and how they’re going to impact society. So, we think about AI and what automation is going to do for the workforce, how advanced analytics will help us predict new things or make jobs and processes more efficient in government. Our clients are dealing with those questions, thinking about blockchain and cryptocurrency issues, among other things.

Those are emerging technologies that I think government is wrestling with now. In the past government would lead the way in those technologies; I think we’re now seeing a decentralization, and I’m interested to see if we, as consultants, are able to bridge that gap and help navigate those transformations.

What advice do you have for students or people who are generally interested in consulting as a career?

People interested in consulting should start recognizing ways that they can be a consultant or an external advisor—to the company they already work for, or maybe internship they’re involved in. By asking themselves questions such as, “If I wasn’t at my organization, how would I solve this? What recommendations would I make?” I think it involves a level of understanding of what’s happening outside of our organization or your university or wherever you’re solving problems, which means reading a lot and staying up to date with new ideas.

Working to become a well-rounded individual is important in consulting. I think we tend to specialize a lot, but we also need that breadth of knowledge as consultants. Problem-solving skills are always important. Going outside of your comfort zone is important. And soft skills matter, with the ability to communicate and engage with people is really important for consulting.

We need to move to a mindset of continuous learning and embracing an ability to change, by asking a lot of questions and being curious. That’s especially important for consultants because sometimes the first answer isn’t the right one. It’s asking why, and really understanding the client challenges without going in with preconceived notions.

While doing research for this interview, I realized you also work in abstract art. Do you find that it’s a good way to de-stress or a mode of self-expression? What role do you think that plays?

I’ve always been creative—writing, reading, creating new ideas. A few years ago, I tried painting because I felt abstract art was the lowest risk form for me. My first paintings were really terrible, I’m pretty sure, looking back. But I like challenges, so I kept at it. I would say that initially it was an outlet. As I’ve advanced in my career, I’ve channeled my creativity into the presentations, slides, and deliverables that I help create. Where you put things on the slide and measure how the eye moves around a presentation, or a deliverable, is a creative process. 

One of the biggest and most interesting things my teachers talked about that’s impacted my work is around risk-taking. Abstract art is about risk. You’re dealing with a blank canvas, when you start, you don’t exactly know where you’re going, and that can be a little bit uncomfortable. Then you start contemplating your work, and you resolve it. I’ve taken that back to work. When you’re making a consulting decision, sometimes there’s risk involved, but being fearless in taking that risk, as in art, can be pivotal.

I’ve been really applying that mindset at work by saying, “If I do this, it’s not the end of the world because I can pivot.” We don’t know all of the work that was in progress to get to that final product. That happens at work too, I think. You see the video, the EPIC Disruption series, but you don’t see all of the work that went into creating a series like that, and the risks involved, and the decisions that were made.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.

Maddie Turner
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Ellie Weeks, Senior Digital Product Consultant, Deloitte Digital, Chicago (41.8781° N, 87.6298° W)

Ellie Weeks is a senior digital product consultant at Deloitte Digital. In 2014, she graduated from Rice University, where she majored in sociology and health sciences, as well as participated in dance theater and served as executive ambassador for the study abroad office. Upon graduation, she worked as a business analyst and consultant at Infosys Consulting before moving to Deloitte Digital.

As I interviewed Ellie, who lives in Chicago, from my home in Atlanta, we discussed her time at Rice, and how a major change unexpectedly led her to consulting. Originally a sociology major with plans to go to medical school, Ellie realized that the pre-med culture wasn’t for her. She switched to a health sciences major in order to continue pursuing her interest in healthcare, but she wasn’t sure where the path would lead her. As the job search began senior year, she decided to interview at a few different consulting firms. She recalls that even though she had a lack of specific experience in the field coming out of college, “in general, consulting companies are looking for smart people who learn quickly and can be passionate about whatever area they land in.” Her openness to new experiences landed her a job at Infosys in management consulting.

After accepting the position, Ellie moved to Chicago and started working for Infosys right after graduation. She explains that the move was intentional because she “wanted a new place.” Along with living in a new and exciting city, working in consulting gave Ellie the opportunity to travel all over the country, gaining exposure to multiple different industries and clients. After three years at Infosys, however, she decided to move to Deloitte, where she would have more flexibility in choosing an industry outside of retail.

One of the main points of my conversation with Ellie was the value in making and maintaining connections with coworkers. Ellie’s transition to Deloitte was made possible by one of these connections: she was referred to Deloitte by a senior manager who had previously worked at Infosys. The same manager staffed Ellie on her first project, a position in retail. Ellie’s previous experience in retail at Infosys allowed her to excel at Deloitte, earning the trust and respect of the senior manager and her coworkers. Networking continued to play an important role in the advancement of Ellie’s career as she met new people over coffee, discussed similar interests, and eventually transitioned to a new project on product development in financial services based in New York City. This project gave her the opportunity to work with a design team and follow through the development of the product—a mobile banking application—from beginning to end. The experience showed her that she had both a passion and an aptitude for product management, and this guided her career path going forward. “It’s really like making your own destiny,” she says, “just by getting to know people and understanding what they’re interested in.”

Through involvement in a healthcare initiative at Deloitte, along with more networking, Ellie met a manager who offered her a new position working alongside healthcare practitioners to develop a suite of healthcare platforms for insurance companies, hospitals, and physicians. In her current role, Ellie works in a digital products group within Deloitte as a product manager, acting as a liaison between the development team and designers. Her role involves connecting people all over the world—early morning phone calls with Bangalore and Mumbai, meetings with the design team in Chicago, and demos for potential clients. Out of her many responsibilities, Ellie says that her favorite part of her job is the exposure to so many passionate and creative people, both within her design team and in the healthcare industry, as well as having the opportunity to develop products that will make a real difference in patients’ lives. “The product that I’m working on is not only going to be good for business, but it’s also improving healthcare and the health outcomes of the patients that these clients are serving,” she says. “Being able to understand healthcare a little more and see where the opportunity areas are for improving it and for how I can make a difference and making healthcare a little easier for people to consume and easier for them to access, I think, is a highlight.”

Though she started out in retail consulting unsure of where she wanted to take her career, Ellie was able to work her way back to her underlying interest in healthcare by maintaining a strong network and learning on the job. She emphasizes that consulting is a great option for students who aren’t sure what they want to do with their careers, but who are open to experiences in multiple different industries and locations. Consulting also provides countless opportunities for mentorship and professional development. Her advice to students, above all else, is that “people are at the core of everything.” Intentionally making connections with others that have similar interests while still remaining genuine is the best way to advance in any field. 

Highlights from the interview:

Could we start by you telling me a little about yourself, where and how you grew up and what you saw yourself doing in the future when you were in undergrad?

I am from a very small town in South Georgia. I found Rice through the Princeton Review; I had never heard of the school. I visited and loved it. Everyone was super friendly, I loved the culture, and just the opportunity it gave me, and they had great financial aid, obviously.

So, I got to go, and when I went, I was planning on doing pre-med. I think I was pre-med for one semester. I wanted to be a pediatrician, so I was pursuing sociology major with the pre-med requirements, but physics and chemistry were really hard. I’m sure you can relate to that…I tried to do that, but I realized with the grades and the environment around it, I didn’t love the pre-med culture for me.

I changed courses a little bit and switched to health sciences major in the kinesiology department. I envisioned possibly working in health education or some realm of public health. I really didn’t have any idea, to be honest, of what I was going to do when the pre-med thing didn’t pan out. But then senior year, the first companies that were recruiting on campus were consulting companies. And I thought it would be nice to have a job pretty much out of the gate, so I decided to interview for consulting. I interviewed with all of those [consulting] companies. I didn’t get any of them, so I thought I would try again spring semester. But right at the tail end, this company I hadn’t heard of yet, Infosys, was recruiting and I got hired. They said I could work anywhere, and I wanted a new place, so I moved to Chicago.

The position was advertised more as management consulting, which I didn’t know anything about that either, but I think, in general, consulting companies are looking for smart people who learn quickly and can be passionate about whatever area they land in. I started there and quickly realized it was more technology consulting, but I found I landed in the digital retail practice, like customer experience stuff, like website design and things like that. And that was pretty fun because you just put your customer hat on—what would I want when I’m shopping online versus when I go into a store?

I was there for three years doing this digital consulting in retail. Learned a ton, got to work with some really cool clients, but I still wanted to make my way back to the consulting brands that I knew and the companies that I heard amazing things about. I had a contact at Deloitte, and I ended up changing jobs into Deloitte Digital. Deloitte offers a lot more flexibility in industry, so I knew if I worked there, I’d be able to work my way back to healthcare. And after a while I was able to.

Was there anything that first sparked your interest in consulting?

Yeah, I think it offers a ton of benefits that are especially good for a recent graduate who doesn’t necessarily know what they want to do yet. Every single project I was on at Infosys, even though it was all retail, every single one was different in the technology that we were working with. I was on some projects that weren’t really technology based, they were more strategy; they would lead to technology later on. In consulting, you’re able to sample many types of industries, many types of projects and types of work, as well as other companies. You’re working for different clients, and you’re in different locations all the time.

How did your time at Rice prepare you for the position you have at Deloitte?

I would say with consulting, most of it is on the job learning. But I would say the things I learned at Rice…The first one is…just the diversity of the student population and being able to live and work with such diverse and super smart and cool people…That’s one of the things I really loved at Deloitte. The people reminded me a lot of Rice students, so being able to get back to that super intelligent, super interested in your work, and super passionate about whatever subject you chose to major in or whatever industry you chose to major in, I think being able to value that diversity and being able to work and learn from people a lot smarter than you was something I learned at Rice, for sure, and was able to carry forward.

In terms of more coursework, I would say just being able to read a ton of information. For consulting, it’s not always reading, but you’re basically gathering a lot of information, and you’re trying to identify what the problem is and propose a solution. That’s the gist of it. No matter what your major is at Rice, you’re basically doing that. You’re doing a ton of reading, a ton of research, and not always things that you’re super interested in, but hopefully some of it is. So I think that skill of being able to distill tons of information down into a compact statement about what the problem is, and how to get from A to B. I feel like that was pretty prominent in the coursework as well.

What does your current position look like on a daily basis at Deloitte? 

Right now, I’m working in basically a digital products group within Deloitte. So I’m not actually working for a client right now, but what I’m doing is building a product that Deloitte would sell to healthcare clients. So, it’s in the field of product management.

For me, a day starts pretty early. We have daily calls at 7 a.m. with our development team in India—they’re based in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad—and so we all get on a call for like an hour every morning and go over what was developed the previous day. What issues or questions they’re running into about the stuff they’re developing.

Let me take a step back. My role is managing different features of the product from conception to delivery. So that means understanding from the business, basically, what the problem statement is and what the specific issues or goals there are that this feature could address and accomplish, and take that problem statement, as well as the goals, to our design team…and based on that, they design something. They design the interaction with that feature, as well as what it looks like. And that is delivered to the development team along with all of the requirements about how it works specifically. And that’s my role, to see those features from the very beginning, through design, through development, and finalize them…So I’m the liaison between the development team and the designers, and, if this were for a client, I would also be liaison to the business stakeholders.

The rest of my day after that we might be figuring out what the next feature is; I’d be working with my design team that’s here in Chicago in the Deloitte Digital studio. I’d be working with them on the next feature. I might be doing some testing on whatever the development team has created that day. And I could also be writing detailed requirements for them, for the next set of work that they might do. And then also sometimes running a demo for clients that we’re hoping to sell the products to…A day in the life.

Where did you start out at Deloitte? How did it lead you to where you are now, more in project management?

I don’t know if you’re talking to other consultants, but the theme of it is networking, basically. Like so much of it is who is in your network and what contacts you make, because basically you strategically meet people and work with people on side projects and help them out with proposals, and things like that, and you’re basically looking for the people that you work with and that are doing the kinds of work that you want to do. It can be very strategic in the way that you network your way to what you want to do.

When I first joined Deloitte, I was referred by a woman who had previously worked at Infosys. We had actually never met, but we were introduced through a mutual friend, and she referred me to Deloitte Digital. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I probably wanted to start out in retail because that’s what I knew, and being in a new company, I didn’t know how much would be different, and I wanted to be in a comfortable space that I knew already…Basically the senior manager who referred me to Deloitte was the one who staffed me on her project. So the first project I was on—it was five months or something, and it was not an area that I was necessarily super interested in—but it was retail, so I understood the fundamentals of it, and because it was something that I already knew…she trusted me and respected me. I felt like I was in a safe space to start out in.

The position allowed me to network with the people that I knew worked in an area that I was interested in. So every Friday in the office, I would have a coffee chat with someone…and they would tell me, “Oh, it sounds like you’re really interested in XYZ, you should talk to these two people.” And the next week I would have conversations with the next two people. I emailed all the people I had met with, the ones I was interested in working with and one of them had a position that was coming up. This was the project at the bank…so that’s how I got into that, and from there I learned that I really liked product management; I was really good at it. I liked being able to see features from beginning to end and getting to really own it and see it progress and guide it through each of those stages.

When I knew the project was ending, I started networking again, just talking to person after person and I wound up getting involved in an internal healthcare initiative in my free time. And through that I met the manager, and I got into my current position.

So, it’s really like making your own destiny, just by getting to know people and understanding what they’re interested in. People are so passionate about their work…working with people who work in the healthcare industry at Deloitte…I just found out that their passion was really awesome, and I wanted to do that. So, it’s getting excited about the same things, and finding your people, and eventually you’ll get to where you want to be.

What would you say your favorite part of your job is?

Being able to work with a design team. I am not really a creative person myself, but I had always wanted to work with creatives to get a glimpse into what that process is…So getting to work with the design team is definitely the highlight of my week, every week. I would say, the bigger picture…the fact that I’ve made it into healthcare and the product that I’m working on is not only going to be good for the business, but it’s also improving healthcare and the health outcomes of the patients that these clients are serving. And finally, being able to understand healthcare a little more and see where the opportunity areas are for improving it and for how I can make a difference and making healthcare a little easier for people to consume and easier for them to access, I think, is a highlight, bigger picture.

Do you have any advice for a student interested in consulting or not really sure where they’re going and wondering if that would be a good path for them to take?

I think consulting is a great place to start if you’re wanting to sample different things, and you aren’t really sure what kind of work you want to do, in what industry or in what location even; consulting can be a great opportunity to sample all those things. I also think that consulting offers so much professional development training. I think that consulting does a really good job at those things because their asset is their people, so training their people and supporting their people and offering them networks and the support and learning opportunities.

I would say that people are at the core of everything, so make contacts but also be genuine. If you’re intentional about the place that you want to be, or maybe you don’t know, but you know what your next step, what you want it to be…I think you can be very intentional about the contact that you make, and the contacts that you keep up, and the work that you’re interested in. You can definitely make your own path in that regard.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.

Akın Deniz Heper
Yale-NUS College
Singapore (1.3° N, 103.8° E)

featuring Christian Keller, Solution Architect, Alight Solutions, Miami (25.7° N, 80.1° W)

Chris Keller works in consulting, where professionals solve business problems specific to clients and recommend possible approaches for better working conditions or higher efficiency in the workplace. 

Chris Keller attended Rice University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. During his time at Rice, he experienced the culture of research work, notably as a part of the American Planning Association, as well as the culture of the nonprofit sector. Though he believes research work and nonprofits are truly valuable, the slow pace of such work pushed him to try out the for-profit world, culminating in his employment as a consultant at Alight Solutions, formerly Aon Hewitt.

The consulting field is borne out of temporary needs for expertise from businesses, where full-time employment of specialists is not an efficient solution, and this expertise is outsourced to consulting firms. This is an industry that requires, as Mr. Keller emphasized, soft skills such as critical thinking and self-awareness, as well as fondness of teamwork; data analysis is also a huge part of each project. Since the field involves working with clients to provide solutions to the individual problems of each project, there is a high amount of variation in the daily routine. Though there are frequent periods where the industry requires one to work on the road, the working conditions are also a lot more stable than some other fields requiring similar skills, such as entrepreneurship. Mr. Keller remembered his father, an entrepreneur working in real estate, having to leave the house on a Sunday to fix whatever pressing issue had arisen at the time. Unlike entrepreneurship, the amount of time consultants spend on any specific company or client is measured in months or, sometimes, in weeks.

Mr. Keller has been a part of Alight Solutions, formerly Aon Hewitt, for the past six years, during which time he has held numerous positions. He decided to join the company upon graduation after witnessing its company culture. He emphasizes the informal and human approach of the company, and he said that the focus on actual performance and capacity for teamwork was the deciding factor for him. He remarked that there is “just a more informal approach, it’s more based on your actual capabilities and your down-to-earthiness,” and he pointed out that even on performance evaluations, how well one fits into the working environment is a major point of consideration. This makes Alight Solutions an efficient workplace for consultants and ensures each team can work efficiently.

Mr. Keller focuses on providing software solutions for “back-office” problems, which, in practice, involves mostly finding and configuring suitable software for the individual client. Familiarity with the software market is thus a valuable resource for him, however the requisites of the field in general vary greatly, aside from the soft skills listed above, due to the range of possible fields of specialization. Consulting, by definition, is a very diverse field, where firms can specialize on more or less anything a company could need help with. The largest companies, such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Accenture, can specialize in multiple fields, ranging from private equity to agriculture or public policy.

The diverse nature of the consulting field means making predictions of the future is especially difficult and each specialty has its own challenges to be overcome. Increasing automation in the workplace and data security are two issues shared across most fields, however; the latter is especially relevant for Mr. Keller and his colleagues, as their work often involves sensitive information from employees of their client companies. Overall, consulting firms are likely to continue their growth in prominence, as their client pool ranges from individuals, to companies, to governments, and the expertise they offer is unlikely to become insignificant or replaced by alternatives any time soon.

A Forbes article from a senior consultant regarding the working requirements and conditions of the field:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/11/02/is-consulting-right-for-you

An online consulting service defines what consulting entails:
https://www.consulting.com/what-is-consulting-definition

A post on the UK’s consultancy platform detailing the most common types of consultants:
https://www.consultancy.uk/career/types-of-consultants

Highlights from the interview:

How did your community, or life circumstances as you were growing up, lead to your current career? What was expected of you? How well did you fit into that, or did you end up completely straying away from that?

My dad was an entrepreneur who started his own business well before I was born and then continued to run that up until right around the time I was born with my mom, and then sold it and moved into commercial real estate in Florida, which is obviously not a bad business to be in in Florida. Then he continued to run his own business in Florida when I was growing up, so I saw how entrepreneurship worked…entrepreneurs, you tend not to get a day off. Days off are very few and far between when you get them, because you run the whole business yourself, so that probably colored a lot of me not wanting to be an entrepreneur… Obviously it can be very lucrative, can be very good financially for your family, but from a lifestyle perspective, it can be a little stressful…My mom worked in college admissions for the University of Delaware, that was her career trajectory before she helped my father with his business, so she knew what possibilities undergraduate studies could offer people, and she really helped encourage me to look beyond whatever I was thinking and, in particular, encouraged me to go into liberal arts—just to be able to explore a bunch of different topics.

So, I took her advice. She told me to also get out of Florida while I could, ’cause she said you need to experience something other than Florida. I was accepted to the University of Florida, but I got into Rice instead, and was fortunate enough to get some scholarships, and went there, and never looked back. I had a great experience.

At what point through this journey did you start to think of yourself as following consulting? Were you planning to go into this field?

I actually never even considered it up until—probably until my senior year of college when I started looking for jobs. In college I wanted to major in politics. A big draw for Rice for me was they had the James Baker Institute of Public Policy [James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy], so…I went to Rice wanting to do that. I studied that, got a major in political science, graduated with that…but the more I learned about that world, I guess, the less it was appealing to me. It was a little too slow for me, I guess, the pace of it…When you think about, the research projects, there’s just so much that goes into it. It’s usually multiple years, it’s usually having to do your due diligence, and just do a ton of research and then write, and then do a ton more research, and then write, and then get a bunch of feedback, and rewrite, and those kinds of things. So, I got that experience, and it just—I couldn’t see myself doing that as a career.

I also worked for some nonprofits when I was at Rice. I did a lot of volunteer work through the university, as well as some of the other community-based organizations in Houston, so I got to see, similarly, the nonprofit culture…while I think it’s very important, I think for me…it wasn’t as fast paced as I had hoped it was going to be. I got into my senior year and decided I should try something really different, just try the for-profit world, give it a try…here I am, six years later, still doing it.

What does your current position entail? What are you doing on the job?

I’ve been at the same company for six years now— Alight Solutions. It used to be Aon, which is a large insurance company, and prior to that, it was Hewitt Associates, which was a large benefits software and services company before that. In the six years I’ve been with them, it’s felt like three different companies, and as I was looking back on it, I’ve actually had probably five different jobs in the six years I’ve been there. So, it’s felt a little different…a typical consulting arrangement, it’s usually—in management consulting, in particular—you go out and you get staffed on a project. You do whatever is required to solve that client’s particular business problem. It’s usually gathering data, gathering due diligence from them, running some kind of data analysis, and then gaining some insight from that, providing analysis back to the client, maybe some recommendations of what they should do for their business.

The company that I’ve worked for the past six years is more specifically focused on software. In particular, software for big companies. Software focused on their finance, accounting, payroll, HR—what in the corporate world they would call “back-office” stuff. It’s the stuff that has to get done to make your company run, but it’s not necessarily core to your business.

I started out doing software implementations, so a customer would come and say, “Okay, we want to put in a new HR system, or payroll system, or benefits system, and we want you guys at Aon Hewitt—or now Alight Solutions—to do that for us. We like your software. We want you guys to put it in.” A lot of my role was asking them, “What does your company need us to do for you?” and then we go back and configure the software to do that, set it up, and then get it live for our clients. I started out actually implementing the software, that was my first two years, and then another two years I worked in ongoing operations. This is another part of my company’s business: a lot of companies don’t want to run their own payroll or run their own benefits. So I was managing ongoing, day-to-day operations for a couple clients of ours. That really taught me a lot about the day-to-day operations of our customers.

And then, to finally answer your question what do I do now…in the past two years I’ve moved into more of a product-focused role about developing new products and specifically working in sales. So, when prospective clients in the marketplace go out and say, “Hey, we want something. Some new HR system that can do these hundred things for us. Alight, could you guys do that?” Then I’ll take it to our operations team, and I’ll take it to our product team—the technology team—and say, “Hey, could we configure our software to do this for them?” And then I spend most of my time writing proposals, talking to clients, doing demos of our services and our software, and really just listening to what our clients—usually prospective clients—say, and then figuring out what we can do for them.

How impactful do you think college was in training you for this job? Where do you think you received the training that prepared you for the job that you’re doing right now?

It’s probably more, for me, on the soft skills side of things. That’s where I think I benefitted quite a bit from a liberal arts focus and approach to my whole undergrad experience—not just academically but also some of the extracurricular stuff that I did, a lot of volunteering work that I mentioned before. My university had a health associates’ program that was focused on overall student wellbeing—physically, emotionally, mentally—so I got trained in different techniques and methodologies and stuff to coach people. In addition, there was a component of my academic research that was studying politics—and that’s a lot of understanding power dynamics, and who has influence over whom, and how money influences people, so I’ve used a lot of those techniques throughout my career and in particular in the sales world. When you think about how to get someone to buy something from you, that’s obviously a lot of influence and figuring out, okay, who’s the person that’s actually going to make the decision to buy something? So understanding politics…within an organization, as well as the kind of dynamics of who’s actually going to pay for something, who likes who, who should I talk to, who should I not talk to, those kinds of things.

A lot of what I do, and spend my time doing, is writing proposals…using that creative, critical thinking and writing skills. That’s a lot of what I did in college—writing papers, doing presentations. Again, not specific to a subject matter; it was more about being comfortable getting up in a room full of people you don’t know, presenting on a topic with authority, and that’s something I definitely learned to do in college, as well as getting creative and using critical thinking skills. For example, I would put myself in a client’s shoes, understand the business problem they’re trying to solve with buying the software they’re trying to buy, and then figure out a way to write a proposal that’s really going to resonate with them. It’s probably all those different soft skills, lot of critical thinking, lot of empathy, lot of understanding politics and power dynamics. And a little bit of the academics, too; it’s good to be well versed in economics.

Could you give me an example—how would the process be for you?

I’ve definitely learned the most from the most challenging clients, and that’s something that is probably not specific to the consulting career, but is something that, I’d say, gets recognized often in the consulting career.

That’s the big thing…always raising my hand when someone says, “Hey, we have this hard opportunity,” and not being afraid of those challenges. Not to say I always hit them out of the ballpark—I’ve certainly had plenty of failures—but that would be the big thing, for me. Running straight into the fire. And just not being afraid of trying out new things and using some of the skills I gained in college, especially critical thinking, and then having the wherewithal or emotional intelligence to know when I’m beyond my depth, or if I need someone more experienced within my company, my organization, to say…I could really use some help. Again, it’s a lot of those soft skills; it’s a lot of self-awareness.

When working on a client, do you usually work alone, or do you have a team of people that are supporting you or coordinating with you? How’s the work structure?

I’d say, broadly, consulting is going to be team based, so people in undergrad that are maybe evaluating this career—if you think back to middle school and high school and you did group projects and you really hated them, you might not want to go into consulting, because almost everything you do is going to be a group project of some kind. And that has been true for me, both of projects that I have done, and ongoing operations work that I’ve done, and in sales as well.

So, for example, in the projects world, I think it’s easy to understand—you’re going to have people that specialize in certain things, and you’re going to have someone that’s a project manager that manages a big Excel spreadsheet full of all the things that need to get done between now and when the software has to go live.

In the sales world, we have a similar kind of specialization, where…we’ll have someone out in the field that’s a sales person that’s going out and finding us the clients. We have someone like me, who’s more in the middle, working with our operations team and our project team to come up and write proposals and price things out and staff things. And then there’s a whole dedicated part of my organization that does the actual financing, figures out how we’re going to pay for our staffing and all that. And then we’ll have a separate part of my organization that specializes in negotiations and contracting. They work a lot with lawyers, and negotiate legal terms and those kinds of things, so, again, it’s very, very specialized. So, again, if you don’t like working in teams—might want to give consulting a second look before you dive into it.

What about Alight keeps you working there? What things about Alight do you appreciate the most?

A lot of goes back to my decision to choose them in the first place. When I decided I wanted to go for-profit in my last year of undergrad I evaluated a lot of different companies, a lot of different software companies like Alight. I evaluated some of the big four companies and actually made it into some of the final stage of interviews with them. And then, when I got to those finalist interviews—and that’s typically when [they] let you do a site visit with them and see the other people that are working there. See their offices, see what people are like. They usually let you talk to some of their senior leaders…

So, when I did that with Alight—and, at the time, it was Aon Hewitt—it was just a very different approach to any of the other companies. Most—I think all the other companies I interviewed with—they flew me out somewhere…and it was all super nice and fancy, and the offices were super nice, and everybody I met was very professional, courteous, but also very business focused. But when I went and interviewed with Alight, I met two of their senior leaders, both executive vice presidents, and it was just in the hallway, so there were people walking back and forth. And then these very senior people, they’re both wearing jeans, both very relaxed and casual…saying hi to everybody. And they started asking me a ton of questions like, “What do you like so far about Aon Hewitt? What has your interview experience been like?” and it was much less about, “Hey, you college kid, prove to me you’re worth being here.” It was a lot more of them explaining, or almost demonstrating, what the culture was like there. A lot more relaxed, a lot more down-to-earth, I would say, and that was a lot of what drew me into Aon Hewitt. I think it’s a lot of the reason I’m still there six years later.

My company rewards people based on their actual capabilities…every year, from a performance perspective, we get rated not just on what we accomplished but also on how we do our work, so it’s not just meeting our sales targets or whatever the goal is, but it’s also—do people actually like working with you? It’s just not a very cutthroat environment; it’s much more collaborative.

What do you think the future holds for this industry, like new technology, new business models, or new ways to approach a client? What do you think are the possible points of advancement that you can see in your field?

There’s quite a bit going on at the moment. Historically, companies did everything in-house and on paper. And then they started contracting to companies like mine, and then my company did it on paper for them. And then we started doing these hosted applications, so—I am going to date myself—think of an instant messenger application or downloading Microsoft Word on your computer and having it there. That’s what we would do: host the software, the client would get the benefits of it, but we did all the back-end IT stuff—like Microsoft does for Microsoft Word.

The phase we’re in right now is more of a Google Docs phase. If you think about the stuff we do today, everything is online. It’s all hosted in the “cloud.” My company accesses software online, and we host software online, and the clients access it through the internet as well, and that’s where we are now. The fundamentals of the software haven’t changed as much so far, but what I’m seeing probably the most of—I mean, obviously there’s been some changes to things like user experience. People want it to look and feel more like what they see on the internet today. They want it to look and feel more like their iPhone…they just want it to look and feel more modern.

But the main thing, right now, we’re looking at is robotics…A lot of that back-end processing that needs to be done—there needs to be human beings that are either entering data into a system, or running data through a system, and looking at issues that the system pops out, and then figuring out what to do with those issues. My company just developed a new robot—which feels weird to say—but it is just a kind of software, essentially, that we layer on top of our current software, that’ll run all the checks we would normally run for our client to make sure that their employees’ paychecks are accurately processed, but it does twice as much of the data checking that normally a human would do, and it does it in about a third of the amount of time that would require by a human being. That’s what most companies are shifting to now, and it’s not just my company or industry.

What do you think are the biggest issues facing your industry right now?

I’d say automation’s definitely a risk. If I think about—it’s obviously a concern, macroeconomically, for a lot of people about their jobs. If you think about people working in the auto industry, there’s a concern of a robot’s going to be taking over those car manufacturing jobs that were typically well-paying jobs for people. The same thing is happening in my industry…people are concerned that good-paying, white-collar jobs that people had in finance, accounting, HR, in benefits—those might go away.

I’d say probably the biggest issue facing my industry right now would be data security and data protection. It impacts my industry, in particular, because when you think about things like HR and benefits and payroll, there’s data in there like people’s Social Security numbers and their banking information or stuff about their children, and their health and their spouses’ health—all that stuff that’s very risky, that if it gets leaked, which we’ve seen some pretty high-profile leaks recently, there’s just a lot of risk associated with that and a lot of liability for a company associated with that. So a lot of what software companies, including my own, are looking at is how do we better protect that—both how do you protect the servers, the actual hardware, from getting hacked, how do you protect people from tunneling through the firewalls that we have to protect those servers, and then, obviously, how do we protect against basic data breaches.

And you’re seeing movements in places like Europe—and now California and New York are following—as it relates to what companies have to do with people’s data. There was the whole GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] thing, and that’s what’s being copied in the US now. So there’s a lot of things that companies are now having to do from a software perspective to demonstrate to a potential employee like—here’s all the data we have on you. Certain things that you have to be able to opt in to…to be able to opt out…If you don’t have a particular business reason to hold onto someone’s data, then you have to show a certificate to say you’ve actually expunged that data from your system.

And aside from the significance of teamwork in your field, what are things you think a student trying to or thinking about joining consulting as a career should consider? What advice do you have for them?

I’d say from a work perspective, if you think about the work experience you’re going to get, it is extremely valuable, for whatever you want to do, to have some kind of consulting experience. It helps build on a lot of the soft skills that you maybe learned, or maybe you didn’t learn, in college—presentation skills, analytical thinking, knowing how to manipulate data in Excel or other tools like that, visualization, building charts and graphs, et cetera.

The one thing I guess I would caution people on—and it’s something that I was fortunate enough that I could see some examples and I had some mentors in college that told me to look out for this—is if you think about management consulting in particular, like your big four basic business consulting, the lifestyle can be very appealing when you’re 21, 22 years old and just out of college. You can rack up a lot of really cool hotel points, go to a lot of cool places. Same thing with airline miles. But the lifestyle of being on the road from Monday—or sometimes Sunday night—until Thursday night or Friday morning…if you think about it, you really only have 48 hours at home… that’s something I would probably ask people to visualize ahead of time for themselves—what do they want their lifestyle to be. That was a big consideration for me when I chose the company I did. I asked, “Hey, what is the percentage of time you anticipate me being on the road as an employee of yours?” My company said 25 percent or less. And, for me, that was great. That means maybe one week out of the month that you’re on the road. And the rest of the time you get to be home, building your business, building your personal life, and those kinds of things.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.

featuring JD Leonard, Founder & Chief Solutions Architect, Modern Biz Consulting, New York City (40.7° N, 74.0° W)

I had a great time interviewing JD Leonard. He is an entrepreneur, web development consultant, and a project manager who currently leads a project called Copperly, a new concept that provides merchant services to businesses. From the moment I took a glance at JD’s LinkedIn profile, the aspect of his career that interested me the most was that he worked in a diverse range of positions. His career path is a very interesting one, as he has mainly worked in e-commerce, web development, and consulting. Thanks to his openness, our interview followed a natural path going through topics we each found interesting, including his personal development, what decisions shaped his career, and the philosophy of his work.

We started our interview with JD’s background. He mentioned that growing up in London and living there until his college years gave him a unique perspective of life in Europe as an American. As a child, he quickly figured out what he didn’t want to be when he grew up—an investment banker like his father, since investment bankers work long hours away from their family. JD started designing websites as a hobby when he was in fourth grade. He didn’t have a concrete idea what he wanted to be then, but it was clear that he enjoyed “computing,” in his own words. He says he picks opportunities as they come to him and that he doesn’t “get too attached to future me.”

This unique mindset shows itself in the choices that ultimately shaped his career. Starting with web development, he was introduced to the world of e-commerce and marketing through networking that naturally came with his computer skills. One interesting turning point in JD’s career was when he received an unexpected response from Microsoft to his application for a software engineer position: they wanted to interview him as a program manager instead. JD believes that his social skills, along with the soft skills in communication and management developed further at Microsoft and helped him to transition to full-time consulting. He underlines the importance of soft skills by saying the factor that differentiates him from others in consulting is that his clients are comfortable speaking with him, and he is good at “communicating complex concepts to people in a way that they can understand.”

When JD left Microsoft after two years to pursue his entrepreneurial drive, his first big step was building a website called Textbook Madness, where students could reach many alternative ways of acquiring textbooks in order to save money. JD reflects back to this as a valuable experience despite considering it a failure. He says, “you can learn a lot from failure,” and from this experience, he learned he was “not a great salesperson” but he also learned much about the bureaucracy and logistics of setting up a company, which helped him in his later projects. JD believes that it is very important for web development students to dedicate the time to teach themselves and learn on their own by finding client projects where they can make mistakes and learn.

I was struck by JD’s laid-back attitude about his career and his thoughts on work-life balance. For him, his family and his well-being come first. He is open to take breaks for family phone calls, and he allows minor distractions in his home office, such as his cat, Oliver. This was something I didn’t have in mind when I thought about an entrepreneur, but it all comes down to being relaxed and happy rather than being stressed and sad. In the end, efficiency isn’t everything. Another aspect of JD’s career that captured my attention is that it has not been shaped by predetermined long term goals; instead, he has embraced new things as they have come. From starting in program management to his expertise in Drupal (a content management system), he went with what felt natural and did his best on every project he worked on, even though sometimes it meant stumbling or discovering shortcomings. Last, but not least, I think that his decision to leave Microsoft required a certain amount of courage and elevated his career to what it is today. His transition into a “solo-preneur” (an entrepreneur of “size one”) was a product of self-awareness of his skills and a willingness to change.

I think the biggest lesson for me from JD is being good at something is certainly a prerequisite for professional success, but if you are willing to take risks, people may come to you and can open up new doors for invaluable experiences. Embrace your skills, and if you don’t know what they are, take action anyway; by doing, you will eventually learn more about yourself and what you should be doing.

Highlights from the Interview

You started off in web development early, got your first job at Microsoft, then went into freelance consulting. Is there a story to that?

I started making websites just for fun, teaching myself how to make websites in fourth or fifth grade. A long time ago. That was one of my extracurricular activities. Learning to code and hang around that stuff. I have always found that fun, and I never parted ways with that too much since fifth grade. The program management work I did at Microsoft was something that just kind of came in a sequence of events. When I was at Rice University studying computer science, trying to look for a job, a lot of students applied to big tech companies. They recruited on campus. I applied at Microsoft as a software development engineer, and they came back to me, and they said Nope! We don’t want you as a software development engineer, but we are interested in interviewing you as a program manager. I didn’t know what a program manager was. They told me what that was, and I said that sounds kind of interesting. So that certainly diversified my field of experience and knowledge beyond just software development. Certainly, it caused me to be more well-rounded and led me to do some of the freelance consulting that I’ve been doing mostly full time now since 2013.

Could you give a brief overview of the working environment at Microsoft in your first professional job?

As a program manager coming out of a bachelor’s degree at a university, it’s kind of an entry-level position at the company, in an engineering field. At Microsoft there are kind of three key engineering roles and they all work closely together. In addition to program managers, there are also software developers and testers. And so these three roles all work together on the same project, on the same applications. The job of the program manager is to shepherd the project along, deal with a lot of miscellanea, a lot of overhead, a lot of communication, also planning. I think what Microsoft saw in me, perhaps, was not the strongest developer but someone who could work very well with developers, know the language, and somebody who had more of the soft skills than a stereotypical developer.

Could you give a brief example of what you did after Microsoft as a consultant?

I was a one-man shop doing web development consulting, so I focused on complex web application development—and the soft skills are super important in that kind of role. I did a lot of interaction with clients because there isn’t anyone else in the company to do that. You wear all the hats. I think there are a lot of developers out there who find it much more difficult to go into a freelance consulting role because perhaps they don’t have some of the soft skills, and those are a little harder to acquire through self-teaching, whereas learning to program is something that most people could attain through self-teaching. So certainly I lucked out there. The soft skills are something that happened; it’s not really something I planned for. And it definitely paid dividends. Being able to talk with clients and have them be comfortable speaking with you and interacting with you is super important. A lot of clients have had bad experiences with communication with freelancers or consultants, especially in the tech world. So being able to differentiate yourself that way is super helpful.

What does your current work entail? What sort of skills do you use, other than your soft skills and personal skills?

I specialize in Drupal. Drupal is a content management system (CMS) or content management framework. You’ve probably heard of WordPress. WordPress is the most popular CMS out there, and Drupal is the third most popular by market share. Drupal is enterprise-grade software for developing websites or web applications. It can be used for very simple or very complex websites. There are a ton of really popular websites out there that run Drupal, things like Whitehouse.gov (previously), NBCUniversal uses Drupal for virtually all of their websites, Sony BMG—including various music artist websites—and Economist.com. My niche is focusing on complex web application development. I just kind of made up that phrase, but the idea is that I don’t work with small businesses that just want to tell you about their business. I take on development of complex web applications. It’s super important to differentiate yourself because somebody who is coming to you for your type of services can’t just go to any other developer to have the same work done.

Are there challenges to remaining productive in your work?

Yes, it certainly can be tough as an entrepreneur and somebody who is self-employed and self-directed. There’s always some distraction or something that can keep you away from your work. I’ve been working from home since 2013. Working from home is a challenge, but it’s also a tremendous benefit. A lot of people have trouble with that. A lot of people find that working in a library or cafe works well for them. For me, I find that to be worse and kind of more distracting.

Is working from home making you more productive?

I absolutely make a lot of decisions that shy away from productivity for other things. Whether it’s flexibility, spending time with family, relaxing, whatever it is, I’ve come to a point of realization in life where there’s only so much money that one needs to be happy in life, and once you have those needs met, I’m not so motivated to, you know, try to hit it big. It kind of contradicts the stereotypical image of an entrepreneur.

I gave a talk for my university recently where I talked about being a “solo-preneur.” An entrepreneur of size one. And I talk a lot about the work-life balance and the ability, if you can, to get in the right mindset of really being much more relaxed and happy—and being able to provide that for your family and friends as well by being flexible. If my wife wants to call me whenever and talk about something, I’m always available. Unless I’ve got a client call or something like that. There are these little things that nobody ever thinks about, nobody plans for, but having had that now for so long, I know I would never go back to a real job. Full-time employment. There’s just too much to benefit from.

Do you have any recommendations for a student starting off studying at university right now?

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the book The 4-Hour Workweek. So this book is very idealistic, the title is meant to sell copies. I read this book, you know, probably in 2011 or 2012. And it kind of changed my perspective on a lot of things in life. Work, life, retirement, money, all these things. I do recommend it to people, particularly if they’re interested in kind of planning for the long term. It talks a lot about setting long-term goals and how to plan to meet those goals. Especially in the context of maybe trying to reduce the amount of work you’re doing—from a traditional kind of forty-hour workweek down to something perhaps more desirable. That definitely affected me. As far as my planning, talk about long-term planning, I don’t do a ton of that. I let things come to me. I’m very flexible and adaptable.

Thinking about the future, how are science and technology reshaping the web development space?

There’s a lot of innovation. In many ways the web has been around in its current form for a long time, and all its innovations are kind of incremental. But I think you do see a trend towards more people using native apps on their phones or on their devices, and that bypasses the web browser and the kind of technical experience you get with a website. But at the same time, that is causing web developers to innovate and make the websites closer to mobile apps than they have been in the past. There are a lot of new technologies in modern web browsers that allow web applications—websites—to do things that previously you could only do in a native app on a phone. For example, in Google Chrome, the website might ask for your location on a map—that’s the kind of thing you could only do with a mobile app. There are other things having to do with push notifications, which is something that you’re kind of familiar with now using phones, but that’s becoming more common with websites now. So I think there’s going to be a kind of continued merging of capabilities, or sets of capabilities, between mobile apps and websites.

(Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.)