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Highlights from Consulting Internships Panel
Moderator: Peggy Curchack
1/27/05
PANELISTS
Rachel Dein, College Undergraduate, Psychology major. Former intern with Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
Daniel Schmierer, College Undergraduate, Economics major. Former intern with Cornerstone Research.
Ann Tracy, College Undergraduate, Urban Studies major. Former intern with Diamond and Associates.
Jennifer Ingerman, College Undergraduate, Psychology major. Former intern with Julie Blackman and Associates.
Christine Sohn, College Undergraduate, Economics major. Former intern with First Manhattan Consulting Group.
Q&A
DISCUSSION
What did your organizations do, and what duties did your internships involve?
Dein
• My internship covered the whole process from the initial client meeting to researching to the final client presentation.
• I found the internship as well as my full-time job after graduation through OCR.
• I had an interview through OCR, then a second round at the office. This particular interview was just me, but other times it was a group interview. The second round lasted a full day.
• My advice is to network a LOT. Find someone in a company and go out to lunch with him or her. He or she will remember you and recommend you if they like you. Also, read the Wall Street Journal to keep up to speed on current events.
• For the interview, have a prepared story about leadership. Be friendly, happy, and smile a lot. Theyre looking for people that they want to work with.
• For actuaries, make sure you pass your actuarial exams so you can get a full-time position.
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Schmierer
• Cornerstone Research is a small office of about 50 people. They do litigation consulting, which involves doing research for expert witnesses testimony.
• I also found the internship through OCR. I didnt do any networking beforehand.
• The first interview was a case interview like in most consulting interviews. They wanted to know that you know how to talk your way through a basic case. They presented me with a complaint against a company and I had to figure out how to investigate whether or not this complaint was substantial.
• The second round was a day of interviews in New York. There were five interviews, all cases.
• As for the job itself, I worked on one case the whole time. The case had a three-month deadline so I did it from start to finish. I worked in a group with one other analyst and a manager.
• I did general research into market factors. I used what I learned in economics, econometrics and finance courses.
• My advice to students looking for internships is to show them in the interviews that youre thinking in the right way. You dont necessarily have to find the right answer.
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Tracy
• Diamond Associates is a very small real estate consulting firm that specializes in low-income housing and community development.
• I found out about it through the Urban Studies department. Diamond has had several interns come from Penn in the past.
• The interview was informal—I interviewed with all five employees. A lot of the employees started off as interns.
• For the job, I worked on trying to get state funding for new developments. It involved pulling a group of people together, such as architects and planners. I started out going to a lot of meetings. After a few weeks of photocopying and running errands, I took on more responsibility. I worked on getting a source of funding that comes up twice a year, and so I worked on several projects to put together giant application binders.
• My advice is to not rule out the small firms. Working in a small firm gave me a lot to talk about during the interviews because I had a lot of responsibilities. I also got an offer from them to work full-time after graduation.
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Ingerman
• Julie Blackman and Associates are a group of four in-house trial strategy consultants. We do
pre-trial research for attorneys. That is, we figure out what the best way is to present the attorneys case.
• We take four steps in doing pre-trial research:
1. Telephone surveys to test defense scripts on a pool of ‘jurors.
2. We write a report with recommendations and give it to the attorney.
3. Focus group to test the case again. The demographics of that group are modeled after the jury pool.
4. Mock trial with a ‘jury of 48 people. Two attorneys from our clients side do the case and get feedback on it. We then break them up into juries of 12 people each, and we watch how they arrive at their verdict.
• Julie Blackman has a PhD in social psychology, and I knew I wanted to do psychology. It was a great opportunity to broaden my experience.
• I got the job through my fathers law firm because they were the in-house consultants for him.
• It was a small place so I took on a lot of responsibilities. I went to law firms, crunched data from questionnaires, wrote memos and did research in some fields.
• The interview was very informal. Julie Blackman and I talked about my interests in the field and what I thought Id gain from it. Then I had informal discussions with the three other employees.
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Sohn
• First Manhattan Consulting Group is a strategy consulting firm with about 70 people in its New York office. We mostly work in the financial services sector.
• I got the job through PennLink, not through on-campus recruiting.
• The first round interview was over the phone. The second round was in New York, with 3-4 interviews of 45 minutes each. The questions dealt with past experiences and business cases. The first round felt like it was harder than the second round.
• In terms of the work, I did a lot of cases. I was staffed on five different projects and I didnt always see them through to the end.
• An example of the work I did was for a regional retail bank in New England. They were looking to expand by merging with another bank, and they had five different targets in mind and First Manhattan was asked to evaluate the options. It was a lot of confidential work. I actually took a trip to DC to interview the potential mergers partners
• I worked on financial statements, used Excel and interviewed clients.
• My advice for case interviews is to stick to your point and go after it. However, be sure to listen well and if they try to nudge you in another direction, follow them. Do not panic even if it seems like youre not doing well.
• When they ask you about past experiences, walk them through your achievements step by step. They also will focus on the results you achieved, so make sure to give them that.
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Q&A
Q: Were your cases questions in interviews mostly numbers and math or strategy-based?
Sohn
It depends on the case, but theres always a qualitative and quantitative component to every one.
Q: Do you have any examples?
Dein
Theres a list of case questions on the Career Services website (http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/intguide_sampquestions.html). Mine were all behavioral questions, though.
Sohn
I had a market-sizing and strategy combination question for First Manhattan. They asked me to go back to 1980 and estimate the market for those phones you see on airplanes. Then, they asked me to make a recommendation on whether or not a client should invest in them based on the estimates I made. But Career Services has a lot of books that you can use to practice.
Schmierer
Mine were a little different from normal case questions because they dealt with litigation issues. For example, lets say that a public school was complaining that their milk suppliers were colluding on prices. How would you go about figuring out if thats true?
Q: How long should you take to answer case questions?
Sohn
Don't respond right away. Repeat the question back to them and take a moment to think. After that, structure your case so that its easier to understand. Listen to the interviewer and make sure you follow them if theyre trying to direct you in a certain way.
Q: How were the hours?
Dein
It depends. Sometimes it was 9 to 5, other times it was 12 hours a day. Actuarial consultants work fewer hours than management consultants. Mostly it was 9 to 6 for me, but I definitely worked 12 hours a few times.
Sohn
9 - 7 or 8pm is on the earlier side, and it could go to 10 or 11pm. The latest I stayed was 1am. Every other weekend or so, I came in to do some work.
Schmierer
9 - 7 for me. If there is a deadline coming up, people stay in late. I never went in on the weekends.
Ingerman
10 – 5 usually, except before or after big research activities. I stayed from around 8 – 9 then.
Tracy
9 – 5. I was taking classes while doing the internship, and they were flexible about my schedule.
Q: What will you all be doing next year?
Schmierer
I plan to go to graduate school, so I had to decline an offer from Cornerstone Research.
Sohn
Ill be at Mercer Management Consulting.
Tracy
Ill be working for Accenture, which is IT consulting.
Ingerman
Hopefully Ill be in grad school for Clinical Psychology.
