Tag: Internship

Wes Going is a rising MBA2 and interning at L.E.K. Consulting this summer. He is specializing in Finance and Strategy and is a member of the Management Consulting Association, Military Veterans Club, and the Stern Management & Strategy Club.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds light into Sternies’ internship experiences. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

In the past, I usually spent my summers on-board a destroyer overseas. This summer, I am working as a Summer Consultant in L.E.K. Consulting’s New York office. As I reflect on the past year, having left the Navy, completed my first year of business school and now working at my internship, it’s exciting to look back on the opportunities I’ve had while at Stern.

As someone applying to business school after spending my entire post-undergrad life in the military, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write for my admissions essay ‘life plan,’ much less what the different potential post-MBA career opportunities were. To research, I leveraged current and alumni networks, in particular the Vets Clubs, and was intrigued by strategy consulting. The opportunity to have high-level impact on businesses within ambiguous, dynamic, team-based environments sounded similar to the situations I faced in the Navy. I also didn’t, and still don’t, know ‘what I want to do when I grow up,’ so being able to postpone that decision while continuing to develop a broader business understanding across industries beyond business school was also appealing.

After starting school I needed to figure out what consulting really was, if I still wanted to pursue it, and ultimately how to land an internship. Having limited experience with consulting and the case interview, I leveraged four resources at Stern to get up to speed. The first was the coursework, which gave me a foundational understanding of business. In particular, this spring I experienced consulting hands-on through the Stern Consulting Corps, an experiential learning course, through which I worked on a five year growth strategy for a global luxury scotch brand. Secondly, I heavily participated in the activities of the Management Consulting Association (MCA). With the weekly Casing Bootcamps, weekly meetings with my MBA2 MCA mentor, and casing workshops taught by experienced consulting professionals, I gained confidence in my casing skills. Third, with the support of the Stern community, both current students and alumni, I practiced and tailored my casing skills over the first semester of school. Finally, the formal events set up by the Office of Career Development (OCD), from programs like IGNITE to the corporate events with consulting firms, I gained an understanding of the different types of consulting firms out there and which ones fit me best.

Leveraging these resources, I was offered an internship this summer with L.E.K. Consulting. As a Summer Consultant, I’ve enjoyed analyzing market features and growth strategies for a company in an industry in which I have limited experience. Daily, I find myself learning from, and challenged by, my team and the leaders at the firm to continue expanding my business understanding. My initial research of consulting has also proven to be true, both in terms of the opportunities to create real impact and in the length of some work days. Yet, I’ve also found work-life balance to be strongly emphasized, from spending a week in Cape Cod for internship orientation to having in-office massages on Fridays. Specifically at L.E.K., I’ve also enjoyed the opportunity to lead an associate on my own dedicated work stream, and my wife and I appreciate L.E.K.’s minimal travel structure, both of which are not common in consulting.

As I look back on the past year, it’s crazy to think what getting an MBA has made possible. Leaving the military without an MBA, I wouldn’t have had the same opportunities in consulting, and probably wouldn’t have known such opportunities existed. Looking forward, I’m excited for what I’ll learn the rest of the summer and in my second year at Stern.

Mansi S. Allison is a rising MBA2 and interning at American Express this summer. She is specializing in Finance and Strategy and is a member of Stern Women in Business.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds light into Sternies’ internship experiences. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship. 

The past year has brought about many firsts for me – starting business school and now beginning a 10-week summer internship with American Express. As a prospective student, I was always curious to learn about the summer between year one and year two. How do students secure internships? How do they know what they are interested in? What skills are required of MBA interns? I hope this post helps you to start thinking through some of these questions.

Prior to business school, I worked in strategy and operations consulting at Deloitte and later at an enterprise technology startup, where I led their Customer Success department. I knew that I wanted an MBA to round out my foundational business skills and pivot into corporate strategy or internal consulting. I was open to pursuing these roles in a variety of industries because the most important thing to me was the function. Accordingly, I cast a wide net in my initial search.

I found that the best way to explore different companies and careers was to meet with people, so I took a two-pronged approach. First, I made a list of people in my personal network who were currently employed by companies I was interested in. Second, I made sure to attend each on-campus event held by that company, whether it was a corporate presentation, coffee chat, or other event. By interacting with employees and asking thoughtful questions, I was able to learn a lot about each company’s priorities, initiatives, and plans for the future. Of course, I complemented all these meetings (“coffee chats,” as we call them in MBA lingo) with extensive solo research as well.

Preparing for MBA interviews was an intense and time-consuming—but ultimately rewarding—process. Stern’s winter break spans six weeks (from mid-December through the end of January), so I was lucky to have a big stretch of uninterrupted time to prepare for interviews without worrying about schoolwork. The biggest difference for me between interviewing for an MBA internship versus my previous jobs was the level of technical and company-specific knowledge you were expected to have in order to stand out. For example, how does the company make money? How is the industry currently being disrupted and how is the company responding to that? What key developments came out of the company’s latest earnings release?

After interviewing with a number of companies for strategy roles, I was thrilled to receive an offer from American Express to join their internal consulting team for a summer internship. As I write this, I’ve only been there a little over a week, but I am excited to apply the technical and theoretical skills I have learned in the classroom to problems in the real world. While it’s too soon to tell what challenges I will tackle this summer, I am confident that my first year at Stern has prepared me to have a fun and successful summer.

It has almost been a month since the semester begun and I am definitely overdue for a post.  This semester has been quite busy. Once again, I somehow ended up doing much more than I intended  – I am working as a Graduate Fellow for the Office of Career Development (OCD), planning the spring break trip for Stern in Africa, and taking an education practicum at Columbia Law that’s worth 12 credits – I feel like all of these deserve their own posts (more to come)!! Of course I love being busy and being active but as I sit in front of this computer, 10pm on a Sunday night, after a weekend trying to catch up so that I can start the week fresh – I know that I definitely need to learn the definition of work/life balance.

Today though, I want to talk about my summer internship! I spent my summer in San Francisco working for a tech company.  I was on the sales team, and had an account management role. Funny enough, it took me a couple of visits to our client’s office in San Jose for me to realize that I was in the famous Silicon Valley! You should have seen the smile on my face!!

 I spent a lot of time recruiting last year, as I was trying to figure out what I would enjoy doing the most. I am a very curious person, and can see myself doing very different things.  Before accepting this offer though, I was hesitating between this and a startup. The startup was in New York, and I would have had an operations role.  This was a great opportunity to do work where I would have immediately seen the impact that I was having. However, I chose to accept the San Francisco offer for two reasons:

1. The exposure: I was part of a program that was recruiting for African countries – which is where I want to end up eventually. This was a great opportunity for me to be able to learn more about what the company was doing, and to network with people on the ground.
2. The role: I had never done sales as a role on its own, and wanted to see how it would feel, since that is what most multinational firms recruit for in Africa.  I had a great team, and enjoyed my projects.  Even though I would be successful in sales, I now know that I really do enjoy operations, and that I prefer working with clients on their strategy, operational improvements, implementations models, and such…

Finally, I had never been to California. Since I am not planning on spending my life in the US (so far), I took the opportunity and played tourist. My sister visited me from Toronto, and we went to Napa. I also visited the Big Sur, Monterey, and went to LA. I loved that I had the time to go to the gym, cook, and explore the city with friends. Overall I loved my summer experience: I learned a lot, had impact on my team, and discovered a new region. I left feeling refreshed and I cannot wait to see what this year has in store 🙂