Nilay Ajbani (USC, Marshall, ‘21) spent his summer as an MBA Intern at EYP. During this time, he dove head first into consulting and rolled up his sleeves on a client engagement supporting a Private Equity firm navigating three recent transactions. In this interview, Nilay shared in detail his experience this summer, what he gained and learned from the consulting internship experience, and his advice for fellow MBA students interning at management consulting firms.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship, and what was the experience like? For the past 10 weeks, I’ve had a blast as an MBA intern at EY-Parthenon (EYP) in their Transaction Strategy & Execution (TSE) sub-service line. EYP recently (7/1/2020) had a reorg and there are now three sub-service lines: Corporate & Growth Strategy, TSE, and Restructuring & Turnaround Strategy.
I was staffed on a 12-week engagement and I was there for the first 10 weeks. Seeing a project basically from beginning to end was a unique experience. I worked on a team of eight: myself, undergrad intern, two Directors, Senior Director, and 3 Partners. For most of the project, the day-to-day team consisted of just myself, Director, and Senior Director while the others served as support.
The client was a Private Equity firm who was in the midst of investing in three companies in the cloud industry. The goal was to use the first company as the platform company and tuck-in the other two transactions. The deal thesis was really all about the dynamic growth that all three companies have seen in recent years and the incredible growth the cloud industry is projected to witness over the next 5-10 years. They believed they could add fuel to this fire by bringing all three companies together and leverage the synergies that exist in their practice areas, relationships, and front-office capabilities.
We were brought in for three reasons:
- Help mobilize the integration teams by advising on governance structures, integration priorities and milestones, and key tools and templates to drive a successful integration
- Advise on the go-to-market (GTM) strategy (e.g., how to think about branding, how to integrate different sales processes and capabilities, and how to have a focused sales approach when each of the companies has a different geographical and industry focus)
- Build an integration playbook that they can use for future tuck-ins to the platform company. After the initial three companies were combined, the PE firm is evaluating additional tuck-ins in the coming year(s). Therefore, they want a step-by-step guide which they can give to the platform company’s management team to run the integration even if they had no prior experience in doing so.
During the first couple weeks, I was primarily conducting an industry benchmarking analysis; identifying key integration risks and priorities from all of the due diligences that the PE firm was conducting; and building key integration templates that were to be given to the client (e.g., operating models, functional checklists, RAID Log). The first deal then closed. The next few weeks I was focused on
- finalizing and turning the integration templates I built over to the client,
- building various decks for kick off meetings and weekly client meetings
- identifying key issues, actions, and priorities that came out of the client meetings. The final couple weeks of the internship, I was primarily focused on building the main client deliverable: integration playbook.
I wanted to continue making significant contributions to the team, so I asked to take lead in building the playbook. This involved storyboarding the structure, obtaining continuous feedback from the engagement team and clients, and going through dozens of iterations. This playbook is essentially a cookbook. It provides step-by-step tactical instructions on how the platform company can do future integrations on their own.
≈MBASchooled: What were the most important skills you needed to use this summer?
The five most important skills are:
- Be a self starter and adaptive
- Attention to detail
- Constantly asking questions and providing your input
- Delivering high quality work on time,
- Building relationships
Even as an intern, you are fully expected to come in and function as a regular consultant. Firms aren’t paying the big bucks for you to come in to be a “task-doer”. Anyone can take instructions and complete a task. Although at times, it can feel like you spend hours formatting decks and moving little boxes around. The real value you add is in critical thinking, problem solving, and being proactive.
MBASchooled: What was the highlight of your internship?
On the fun side: There were three engagement teams from EYP all working with different portfolio companies owned by the Private Equity client. We decided to compete and do a virtual escape room to see which team can escape the fastest. This virtual activity is probably my favorite virtual event I’ve ever done. I’ve done an in-person escape room before and this was almost just as fun and engaging. My team escaped with 1:28 remaining on the timer and we proudly placed in the top three.
On the professional side: The recently announced reorg of EYP presents increased opportunities for individuals like me who want to experience a wide variety of projects in both corporate strategy and transactions. The firm is in the process of figuring out how to best enable those opportunities including an internal rotation program. I networked quite a bit throughout the internship with practitioners from all three sub-service lines and they all mentioned being able to cross-pollinate by networking and displaying genuine interest.
MBASchooled: What was it like to experience consulting and client work virtually?
It’s hard to really identify just how much of an impact the virtual aspect has, especially in consulting where there is extensive travel involved. As most things, there were pros and cons to the virtual aspect. The positives were that I had more of a “work-life balance” to spend incremental bits of time throughout the day with my girlfriend and I didn’t have to worry about the stresses of travelling, so I could just focus on doing great work. The cons were that I didn’t get to fully experience what it’s like to be a consultant; physically working alone and not having “water cooler” conversations that build closer relationships with your coworkers; and networking within the firm was difficult when you can’t meet someone face to face.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped?
I think it was a little more difficult than if I were in-person. However, this just means you have to try twice as hard. It goes back to being a self starter. Under normal circumstances, I would have opportunities to meet with LA office leaders through weekly intern events and happy hours. In absence of this (although there were several virtual group intern events), I had to be even more prepared and intentional in how I approached networking. There were a group of individuals who I had a good connection with and I wanted to continue the conversations and pick their brains.
Instead of having just one conversation, checking a box, and moving on to the next person, I decided to ask them if we could touch base 2 or 3 additional times during the course of my internship. All of them were more than happy to. By doing this, I was able to get past just the surface level conversations and build a relationship for the future. Should I return to the firm full time, I’ve now got a group of people who can support me and be my advocate.
MBASchooled: What was a challenge that you had to overcome or work through?
One challenge I faced early on was how to best communicate with the Director (at EYP this Manager-level). Specifically, we chatted throughout the day primarily via Teams chat. He would discuss what he wanted me to work on and give feedback on it via chat, and this presented a challenge because there were a couple instances in the beginning where we weren’t on the same page about what exactly needed to be done. Under normal circumstances, we likely would have been working in the same room/vicinity and this issue may not have surfaced.
I learned that I had to ask a lot more questions and be very diligent in identifying what specifically he was looking for me to do. I also started calling him on Teams instead of chatting so that I could share my screen and get my specific questions answered so that we were on the same page. His flexibility and adapting to ensure we were the most efficient was much appreciated. All of this goes back to one of the most important skills you need to have – constantly ask questions and adapt when the situation calls for it.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for other MBA Interns?
- A growth mindset is very important – In my experience, people are more direct (not in a bad way) and have higher expectations than the previous jobs I had in industry. You can take this as a bad thing, or you could see it as an absolute positive in that you can professionally grow faster and build your skillset quicker. As they say, 1 year in consulting is equivalent to 2 years in industry. This is your opportunity to pour fuel on the fire that is your career trajectory post-business school.
- Be a sponge – As an intern, you’re there to learn and assess if this is the right career move for you. Go deep in your understanding about the engagement, client, and work products. Additionally, talk to as many people as you can in the firm so you can learn about their experiences, views about the firm, and anything else that you want to know. This was perhaps one of the most valuable and important things for me coming into the internship.
- Provide solid contributions to your engagement teams – Yes, you are there to learn but this is also the real world, with real clients who need real advice. You’re expected to function at a high level, which gives you the opportunity to do real work. Don’t sit back and wait for things to happen or for work to get assigned to you. Be proactive and find opportunities for you to take ownership or lead even if it’s something small (e.g., take good notes during client/internal meetings and then send your manager the list of key items and include your own thoughts/ideas on how to tackle any issues or opportunities that came up). Doing good work and being a self starter will take you a long way!
- Have a gameplan heading into the internship about what’s most important for you to obtain from it – Is it the practical work experience, obtaining a better understanding of firm culture, getting a feel for the org structure and opportunities to work across areas? Whatever it is, be diligent in ensuring that you obtain it. It’s easy to lose sight of these things because you may be completely wrapped up in client work all day long. Make the time – whether you put time on your calendar, or have a mental reminder – to do a weekly debrief and set goals for how you want to tackle the next week to achieve your goals.
Most importantly, have fun with it! – This is likely a completely different job, function, and type of work than you’ve done before. You should have that raw excitement of doing something new. Let that show and let that guide you to going above and beyond, putting in late nights, and doing exceptional work.