Just before I begin, guys this is ‘Everest Group’, the consulting firm, not the one famous for adding spice and flavour to our food!
'The clock strikes 9 in the night, and people checking the resume portal in frenzy to know which companies are lucky enough to take their interviews'. A room is full of people receiving shortlists, where I sit blankly staring at the screen waiting to get at least one shortlist. Watery eyes, pounding heart, and a mind full of apprehensions, I wonder, "What if I don’t get any shortlists for the day?"
Trying to keep my composure and silently praying to God, to help me get through this & ensure whatever is the best for me. An hour passed like that and suddenly I get 7 shortlists at a go, which helped me restore courage and then I started preparing for my first interview scheduled at 4 in the morning. Brushed up my consulting concepts, had a glance at anticipated HR questions and researched thoroughly about the company, their nature of work, recent NEWS etc. and the clock struck 3 in no time.
Mind full of jitters and nervousness creeping in, trembling hands and lips moving incessantly in silent prayers, I move towards the interview venue, telling my brain to calm down. I reach the venue, veiling my nervousness behind a subtle smile on the face, and took my seat after greeting the gentlemen with a firm handshake. The interview starts with my brief introduction, a walk through my resume and then steers towards a guesstimate related to a past project done during the job. I answered all the questions followed by a few HR related questions and interviewers looked happy & satisfied.
The interview ended and I stepped out of the room, where HR waited to congratulate me. As soon as he shook hands, chills of happiness ran down my spine and I yelled out of excitement, with teary eyes. That moment was mixed of so many inexplicable emotions that words can’t do any justice!
Time then elapsed so fast - studying, doing assignments, writing exams, partying and enjoying on campus; and soon arrived on the first day of internship.
Documents, check!
Formals, check!
Heels, check!
Fluttering heart, of course!
And the welcome begins with a bag full of customized goodies (yes, that was really fancy!) lying at our seats and we checked out all that we’ve got with child-like excitement. Soon after, the induction program started with HR interaction, followed by introductory informative sessions and welcome lunch to facilitate informal interaction. Induction continued for two days, where we were made aware of business verticals & jargons, and comprehensively taught about problem-solving, client handling and abiding by Everest Group’s values. In the same go, we were also made to deal with mundane IT, design and administrative (of great importance, because they talked about free snacks and food!) sessions.
As soon as the laptops were distributed, interns’ eyes gleamed with curiosity to check the first email in their inbox and all were in a jiffy to create their electronic signatures. All were in a frenzy to know what will their projects be, will they be dealing with actual business projects or simply be allotted the dummy ones, and voila! the emails pop up with the mentor & project details and everybody gets excited seeing that they’re going to work on the floor with actual client projects. In a couple of minutes, we were asked to go to the respective meeting rooms. I was kind of nervous with a myriad of thoughts about what needs to be given a cursory read before I meet the team, my knowledge about Everest Group, strategic frameworks, learning from Vault Guide, go to market strategies or Excel & PowerPoint training.
I knocked on the door and saw three people sitting, one practice director and two senior analysts. After the round of introduction, an informal tete-a-tete session about expectations, hobbies and interest was a perfect ice-breaker. Soon after, I met the whole team and very next day started working on my new project of Location Assessment for a European client. Reading the proposal, multiple thoughts jostled in my mind owing to the case complexity, how would I do it, will I be able to, and what not! But, it was just a matter of time, as my project manager was very cooperative and helping as he explained my various facets of the projects and made me work in a modular fashion.
As soon as I got comfortable with the project and started enjoying my work, this project was stalled because of some incomplete documentation. For one more time, there were butterflies in the stomach wondering what my next project is going to be.
The very next day, I was staffed on a new project pertaining to peer benchmarking for India-based GIC of one of our clients in BFSI space. This project was even more challenging for its unique theme. It was critical for our firm as it would help us further design our value proposition & attract potential business prospects, and also develop IP to be leveraged in future. This was equally indispensable for the client as well, since their future innovation roadmap was going to be a direct function of our findings, analysis and recommendations.
This project brought me numerous learning opportunities not only in terms of technical skills but also in the form of problem-solving, brainstorming, managing client expectations and coping with stress. End of this project brought with itself the sense of accomplishment which was appreciated across our firm and by the client.
Apart from the projects and amazing work, an essential part of my internship was my strategic desk location right next to my mentor, which was more like that bee-hive where all the team members would visit and this provided me a golden chance to interact with all people in my team and establish a good rapport. Despite everything, the best part of the two-month tenure was chit-chat with my mentor whose help was just at “do you have 2 minutes” distance. All the chatter, be it grave, formal, informal or silly, always ended in hearty laughter with me learning one thing or the other. His jovial and amiable nature made me feel so comfortable to discuss anything and everything with him unhesitatingly.
This two-month internship was amply enriching as an experience which helped me learn a lot in multiple fronts:
- Problem Solving: The structured way of finding solutions to any business problem and progressing using the ‘so what’ and ‘nested why’. Brainstorming to try and see beyond the written problem and leveraging scenario planning by using open imagination, logic and creativity. The coolness of using whiteboards and colourful markers to think out loud, discuss, corroborate and negate.
- Managing Client Expectations: The ultimate aim was always to deliver the maximum value to the client by offering value adds wherever possible such that the information becomes self-sufficient and insightful for the client. But, this didn’t mean, agreeing even to the unreasonable demands of the client, but more about the artfully handling the situations.
- Developing Client Relationship: It is inevitable to work with agility by staying connected to the client and collecting regular bi-weekly feedback. Presenting to the client, incorporating feedback in the further deliverables and abiding by the committed timelines is sacrosanct.
- Design and Presentation: It is highly imperative to communicate your findings, analyses and recommendations in as crisp manner as possible to provide at a glance understanding to the client because of the inverse relation between available time duration and hierarchical designation of the client. ‘Structured information at a go’ is the rationale behind designing modular summaries for client’s convenience.
There are many different things one learns while having hands-on industry experience, yet the behavioural aspects of it play the most pertinent role. It is cent per cent true that technical skills, domain knowledge, commitment, determination and accountability matter but one of the most underestimated things in this world of self-commercialization is to bring visibility to your work. Be the one who takes complete responsibility of whatever good or bad one does. In the words of my project mentor, “
Make as many mistakes as you want, but ensure that you make a different one every other time.” Never repeat a mistake and make them a manifestation of your learning.
Before getting into Everest Group, I hadn’t heard a lot about the firm and hence, I’d apprehensions about joining but two months in that office and I realize that it’s the perfect fit for me, owing to cultural fits, its awesome people, amazing work-life balance (which is difficult to find post MBA) and high-quality research and advisory projects.
In summation, all my apprehensions and doubts parried off and the end of the internship arrived just within the blink of the eye.