After finishing his first year of business school at the University of Washington, Devin Doyle (Foster, ‘21) spent his summer as a Senior Strategy Consultant at Accenture. During his summer, Doyle got to use his strategy and data analysis skills, while learning the ins and outs of the consulting experience. In this interview, Doyle shared his summer consulting experience, some of the lessons he learned, and his advice for other MBAs students interested in management consulting.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship?
I worked at Accenture Strategy as a Senior Strategy Consultant, aligned to the New York City office despite all internships being remote. My role was on the go-to-market team for a strategic partnership Accenture has with a cybersecurity firm. Our five-person team’s job was to track the performance of the partnership with KPIs as well as provide decision support to executives. In my particular role, I spent a lot of the summer analyzing the past year’s sales pipeline to extract insights that would help us set the next fiscal year’s sales targets. We had just ended the first year of the partnership, so the team was especially interested in any insights I was able to produce across several vectors.
I also spent time helping the team develop sales material to present to enterprise clients, usually CTOs or CISOs. This involved simplifying complex technical information into digestible use cases that would address our client’s pain points. This was a learning experience for me on multiple levels: first, I needed to understand the complex material to the point where I could explain it simply, and second, I had to get comfortable working with ambiguous and incomplete information — both of these are vital skills in consulting.
Lastly, Accenture Strategy’s MBA internship program (ASCDP) does a great job of cultivating community among the interns by providing networking opportunities and introducing different parts of the large firm during orientation. And of course there was lots of virtual fun to be had throughout the summer! We had wine tastings, escape rooms, magic shows, and even a paella cooking class (my cooking skills increased from a baseline of 0).
MBASchooled: What were the most important skills you needed to use this summer?
There were a lot of data analysis skills that came into play. Prior to getting my MBA, I never needed to perform analytics to the extent I did, but thankfully, Foster does a great job of preparing students in the first year to solve problems analytically using many different tools and approaches. I even took a marketing class where I learned some R (a program for statistical computing), which I later used during the internship.
Being productive as soon as possible was also very important, as there are no kid gloves in MBA internships. Our team was moving a mile a minute and I was expected to contribute, so as I was onboarding, I needed to be very deliberate about the things I could research on my own vs. the things that I needed to ask a teammate about. Ramping up on a project quickly is something consultants do a lot, so it’s important to get good at it.
Lastly, there were opportunities to demonstrate leadership skills even as a junior member of the team. In one example, I led the development of a current-state TCO estimate for a client, and it involved leading meetings with technical experts across both sides of the partnership. Being able to steer conversation on an expansive topic like cybersecurity technology was like wrangling sheep and involved some serious soft skills around communication and relationship management. Keeping people on task, especially people who know more than you, is very draining, but very important on a consulting team.
MBASchooled: Before business school, you were an actor. What was it like to work in a corporate environment? What was relevant from your old role/what was an adjustment you had to make?
A lot of people in corporate environments enjoy the fact that I was an actor — they think actors have superpowers that allow us to thrive in any situation. “You can easily present this bad news to a client – you were an actor!” The truth is though a lot of what actors do in rehearsal and on stage is what managers do every day: they both work with incomplete information in small teams to execute a vision that will, in the end, provide a valuable experience. They both motivate people at every level of a project to craft a story that will tap into the hearts (and wallets) of a customer. And, just like in acting, the people who can inspire others often make it to the top.
On a more concrete level, you don’t have to look further than design thinking or business improvisation to see how creative problem-solving and collaborative performance are becoming cornerstones within the strategies of many firms, and I believe that the “nice to haves” of today, like a creative and inspired workforce, will become the table stakes of tomorrow — especially in an increasingly automated world. It’s a real treat to live in the overlap of business and creativity, and I would encourage fellow business students to nourish their inherent creativity as much as possible.
MBASchooled: What was the highlight of your internship?
I really appreciated the level of trust placed in me as an intern. Within three weeks of my internship, I was presenting analysis to a managing director and owning the content and communication of a key use case for a client. This kind of trust emboldened me to meet the high professional standards of Accenture while also relying on my team for continued support as necessary. Feeling like a valued member of the team early on allowed me the time to envision myself in the firm one year from now doing the same kind of work with the same kind of people.
MBASchooled: What was it like to experience consulting and client work virtually?
Between a global consulting firm leading clients of their own through digital transformations and a partner that is a leading software company, we were already on strong footing when it came to working virtually. That being said, each virtual scenario is different, so I took the time to learn Microsoft Teams and the specific ways it was used in our partnership. The temptation is often to avoid dedicating some upfront time poking around a new technology, assuming that it will be intuitive, but you can always learn something that will save seconds off each minute and make your day run a bit smoother.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped?
The leaders of Accenture’s internship program are really committed to crafting a program with ample opportunity to network: we had activity teams, buddies, learning pods, and a case competition team. Beyond that, two interns proactively arranged a voluntary coffee chat series among all the interns so that we could have more one-on-one time with each other. It was a nice reprieve to step away from formal programming and get quality time with peers. I was lucky; in other virtual environments, you’re not always going to have that level of organization supporting your network, so it’s important to structure networking as much as you need to. It’s not ideal to be remote, but building your professional network is worth the price of an extra Zoom invite every now and then.
MBASchooled: What was a challenge that you had to overcome or work through?
I had a team that used SQL to run queries on datasets and SQL was entirely new to me. My manager was generous enough to spend some time showing me some of the basics, but for the most part I had to teach myself the queries necessary to achieve a value-add level of insight. While it wasn’t perfect, I was able to extract some helpful queries using a mixture of Google, pointers from my manager, and common sense.
This is not to scare folks though because in hindsight it was all manageable. The overall lesson for me was that I need to be supple when it comes to learning a skill. In school, it’s the opposite: we need to be as thorough as possible (read the whole chapter, complete the whole assignment, etc.), but in this example, I needed to think about the application of the skill and work backwards. Mastery is nice, but we’re paid to solve problems – not get good at something – so developing a skill set in an agile and iterative way is crucial.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for other MBA students who are interested in internships in management consulting?
Really get a strong sense of what consulting is. In the rat race of starting a consulting career, we sometimes forget to simply understand the basics of consulting, which for many students is a real departure from the industries they’re used to. While we’re all familiar with the high-stakes PowerPoint presentations or the byzantine Excel workbooks, there are many aspects of consulting that may come as a surprise to folks, like pressures to get staffed on a project once inside a firm, building and communicating a professional brand to your colleagues, or embracing different aspects of an industry or functional area you have experience in. I like how Al Dea, of the site you’re on right now, defines consulting as a “human capital business.” Understanding the incentives and business model behind that is crucial.
Also, and this is super important, you need to establish a rapport with the consultants you network with during recruiting rather than treat these conversations as information exchanges. You don’t need to be a slick networker, but you do need to be willing to share yourself openly during the recruiting events.
Many consultants you network with are viewing you as future colleagues, so they would like to get to know you as much as you would like to get to know them. Tell them what you’ve done, what you’re interested in, and most importantly, keep it a conversation and not a Q and A session. This makes recruiting more enjoyable for them, and ultimately more helpful for you.