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.