“
No dream becomes reality through magic; it takes grit, determination and hard work.” Although Colin Powell’s words here can’t be disagreed with, however, magic is what you feel when a dream actually becomes reality. And this is the magic I felt when I heard, “
Congratulations and welcome to BCG!”.
If I were to summarise my summer internship experience at The Boston Consulting Group, I would choose to describe it as a plethora of ‘firsts’- moving to a new city, meeting a host of new people, working on something I had never done before and ending up with a kind of personality that I never had before! My learning curve had never been as steep as it has been during the past one year - be it the case preparations last year or the two months stay with the organisation, the volume of learning for me was copious!
It all began with landing in the city of Mumbai a day prior to the commencement of my internship- the city in itself had a whole lot of memories and experiences to offer. From going around the city with friends from campus, to being awestruck by the serenity of spending a night at the Marine Drive; from bike rides with random strangers (
read armymen) while trying to beat the city traffic, to absolutely rejuvenating drives down the Mumbai-Pune expressway- the city never failed to take my excitement to the pinnacle. When hundreds of people, with thousands of dreams, are attracted to the ‘
Mayanagari’ every day, the city does its part by doing a great job at playing the host- it does give you your home away from home!
My very first day at BCG gave me a flavor of what was in store for me over the next two months. With absolutely no familiar faces around, I was inspired to step out of my comfort zone and make an attempt to reach out to the fellow interns from other campuses. Being the reserved individual that I am, this was challenge #1 for me. However, it eventually turned out to be the first of the many ‘firsts’ in terms of helping me polish this critical skill called ‘networking’. Fortunately, the faces soon turned familiar as I ended up interacting with almost every other intern in the batch and have now come back to the campus with a myriad of beautiful memories to cherish forever!
What followed over the next two months was a roller-coaster ride, with a lot of structuring and problem solving, presentations, client interactions and elaborate brainstorming sessions; although coupled with an almost equal number of dinner outings and parties too!
BCG doesn’t believe in serving anything to you on a silver platter and hence we were always tasked with problems to solve, but never any readymade solutions, upfront directions or even the slightest of insinuations on how to solve them. The amount of trust the organisation put in its interns was profoundly motivating- you must figure out a way, come up with your answer and before you know, you could be presenting your solution to the key client stakeholder the next day! That gratification of being able to make a difference, of that visible contribution to the client, is just inexplicable.
If you are searching for something where you get to take on a new challenge every day and if an opportunity to interact with a string of new people every day excites you, Consulting is the place to be! And if you happen to fall in this category, make sure you put in all the hard work it takes to prepare, practice as many cases as possible, give that interview your best shot and then experience something that would exceed your expectations by far in every possible way!
(Quick tip: do not forget to have the Zomato application downloaded before you join- trust me, we eat much more than you think we do, and it won’t take long for you to join the club!)