Ruchi Singh (Foster, ‘20) spent her summer as a Summer Associate at Deloitte. During her internship, she learned the ins and outs of what it’s like to be a consultant, and was able to apply many of the learnings and lessons from her first year of business school to her work. In our interview, she shared a detailed look into her internship experience, and the important skills she put to use to succeed as a summer associate.
MBASchooled: Where did you intern this summer?
II spent my summer as a Summer Associate in Deloitte’s Seattle office. My client was in the Bay Area, and I was working on a finance transformation strategy project for the CFO’s office. We were helping our client think through the impact of automation on the future of their work, and the implications this could have for their business from a people, location and business value perspective.
MBASchooled: What was the biggest surprise of your internship experience?
I was pleasantly surprised by how much responsibility I received, even as an intern. Pretty quickly into the project, I was interacting with clients, joining meetings and speaking on calls. When I raised my hand to take complete ownership of one of our many deliverables, I was trusted to run with the project, present my ideas to senior leadership and manage that process end-to-end.
MBASchooled: Were there any courses, programs, experiences from your first year that were helpful in your summer internship?
- Case Interview – The case interview process that is a part of consulting recruiting is extremely helpful. Particularly, the ability to bring structure to an ambiguous question/problem, as well as thinking on one’s feet is a skill that I honed through the interview process and found to be helpful during my internship
- Consulting Projects – I did consulting projects with Starbucks and a Seattle-based non-profit during the academic year. Getting this real world experience was again very helpful – I learned how to do efficient research, scope out a project and break up a project into smaller, achievable tasks (being execution focused).
MBASchooled: What skills were important to ensure you had a successful summer internship?
- Being self-driven – In order to make the most of my internship, I had to be agile and learn the ‘Deloitte way’ very quickly – this meant figuring out how to ramp up on an industry, doing internal trainings and listening during meetings/calls to find opportunities to take initiative. I found that when I was prepared and raised my hand to do something, my team was very supportive of giving me the opportunity to contribute.
- Speaking up – Along the lines of my first point, it’s important to not only share your thoughts/ideas that you believe would add value, but also ask for help when you need it. I found myself asking questions about where to look for certain materials and training etc. which one might think are basic, but asking the questions will save you a lot of time (time is a scarce resource!). Don’t be afraid to ask for help – Deloitte has a very collaborative culture and you’ll be spending a lot of time working in close proximity to your team, which means there are a lot of opportunities for peer-to-peer learning.
- Classwork – There are a few classes that I took in my first year that helped me with my internship. The Consulting Society on campus teaches classes on brainstorming and building frameworks, which was extremely valuable in working through my project over the summer. Additionally, there were times when I would be in client meetings and new ideas would come up – being able to break down those into tactical, execution-based ideas is something I had a lot of practice with by doing two consulting projects over first year – one for Starbucks, and one for a local non-profit. Finally, speaking up in class and practicing my presentation skills was extremely helpful – I had to present my deliverables and ideas to clients, partners and internal teams, so I was grateful for all the practice I got over my first year.
MBASchooled: What was it like to work on a team?
I had an awesome team! I’ve worked in extremely team-based and collaborative environments, so working on a team is something I was used to. What was most meaningful for me about working on a team this summer was the level of guidance I received from everyone on the team. Every person on my team encouraged me to be my best. My manager and the senior consultants gave me the flexibility to run my client work stream from start to finish, but also pushed me to meet their high expectations on a daily basis.
On several occasions, my manager and senior consultant asked me, “What’s your goal with this slide? What are you trying to get the client to think about after this interview?”. This made me pause and reflect on what I was trying to accomplish and be more thoughtful about my approach.
MBASchooled: What were some of the challenges you encountered, and how did you work through them?
I was actually very surprised by how much responsibility I was given as a Summer Associate. Prior to my internship, I was under the impression that I would be working behind the scenes and supporting my team. While that was true, I was fortunate to be in front of clients from week 1 – be it leading calls and meetings, sharing my opinion during discussion or taking a first pass at our deliverables. This responsibility meant that I had to be really well-versed in the material I was working on – I don’t have a background in the tech space, so I spent my own time doing research, speaking with internal subject matter experts and reading up a lot to build my vocabulary.
MBASchooled:What was the most important lesson you learned during your internship?
Consulting is extremely self-driven – be it learning about a new industry, taking ownership of a deliverable or expanding your internal network in the firm and finding projects of interest. This was apparent in all my conversations with folks at Deloitte and is something I’m taking to heart as I navigate the firm as a full-time consultant.
MBASchooled: Now that your internship is over, how has it informed your own thinking/mindset for your future career?
My background is in financial services/startups where I’ve focused on primarily growing businesses and teams. Coming into my MBA, I knew that I wanted to pivot my career into consulting to build breadth of experience and expand my knowledge base from financial services. My internship helped me realize how much I didn’t know and how much more I could learn – that has energized me for my consulting career post graduation. Additionally, I was working on a technology client and had no background in the industry – I really enjoyed the process of ramping up, which made me realize that consulting was the right place for me.