Brandon Quinn is an MBA2 specializing in Strategy and Business Analytics. Prior to Stern, Brandon worked in financial regulation where he examined some of the largest US brokerage firms. At Stern, Brandon serves as a Graduate Ambassador, Career Fellow, VP of Admissions for the Management Consulting Association (MCA) and VP of Marketing for the Business Analytics Club (BAC).
Consulting recruiting is a time consuming process that begins as soon as you step on campus to start the MBA program – or in a pandemic, as soon as you log into Zoom for that first class. Students attend various corporate presentations, coffee chats, and case workshops to learn about the different firms and to prepare for the case interviews. We put in all this effort to land a coveted consulting internship, which will hopefully turn into a full-time post-graduation offer.
I spent my summer at EY-Parthenon in their strategy summer consultant program. I was assigned to the New York office, but the internship was almost entirely virtual. There were a few days I decided to go into the office to see where I would be working, to meet some colleagues face-to-face, and to attend some in-person happy hour events.
The first week of the program was comprised of various training sessions to help us get accustomed to the firm, learn about the different types of projects, and build our consulting toolkit. After the first week of training, all the interns (including me) were eager to find out which consulting project we would be working on to start the summer. I was assigned to a working capital engagement at a large cosmetic company. Coming from a finance background, the cosmetics industry was a bit foreign to me, but this is what excites me about consulting. Consultants solve some of the most complex problems at some of the largest corporations and work across various industries that might initially seem foreign to them.
A typical day as an intern on a project consisted of a daily check-in call with the team where we laid out all our objectives for that day. After this call, we split into our workstreams to accomplish the goals for the day; I spent time assessing and prioritizing new markets for expanding one of the client’s programs globally. There was also a daily call with the client where we would present recommendations and make sure everyone was aligned.
In addition to the real-world project assignment, interns were put into case teams where we worked on two mock projects with EYP practitioners as coaches. This was a great experience to get a flavor of the different types of projects offered at EYP—this also aided in building comradery among us interns and helped us feel more engaged and connected in the virtual environment. The work was challenging and EYP offered an abundance of support through functional training, mentorship, coaches, and sector spotlights. Overall, this was an incredible experience and made the time-consuming recruiting process well worth it!