Before business school I spent about six years in the hi-tech industry in the United States, working first for a small software start-up, and then for a big IT Networking company. I decided to go to business school to enable me to join a management consultancy, and in2002, I graduated from INSEAD. I had a classmate I was close to who had already worked for Booz Allen and was being sponsored for business school by them. He was able to tell me a lot about how the company really worked and helped me fast-track the recruitment process. I’ve now been with the firm for four years. The first two and half years were in a general strategy mode, and now I’ve specialized and joined the IT strategy practice.
It’s a strategy management consultancy but it also has a mature set of technology and functional practices. I was pleased to get broad consulting exposure but also to be able to go back to my area of focus – information technology. Another reason was that I was interested in consulting in the public sector, where Booz Allen has many clients.
As a Senior Associate, I manage a diverse team from three to five people on each assignment. I start the day by holding an internal team meeting to review what has happened and discuss what’s coming up in the day. The team continues to create research and analysis – the content – during the day, while, as a Senior Associate, much of my time is spent with the client, discussing our analysis and assessing their different departments. We are located at the client’s site for typically three to four days a week. On Fridays, I am normally back at the Booz Allen office where I spend time briefing senior staff about progress, as well as mentoring other employees. The company also focuses on ‘extra-curriculars’ – recruitment, and creating “intellectual capital” (whitepaper, articles), for example – and, on average, I spend half a day during the week involved in these.
The biggest change was the policy of ‘up or out’. This means you’re expected to move up to the next level every two years – for example, from consultant to senior consultant. For someone who was used to industry, I found this pace of moving upwards and having to prove myself again entirely new. However, it is also a great opportunity, as you are always challenged and rarely get a chance to get bored.
It has a reputation as more collegiate than other management consultants. Typically, management consultants have a reputation for being alpha-male and hyper-competitive – this firm succeeds by concentrating more on results and less on competition between employees. This is important to some candidates who might be otherwise dissuaded from joining a management consultancy.
The next step for me is to build my platform, which is an area of focus that I will specialize in within IT strategy – for example, IT-enabled Transformation. Also, I will begin to build larger teams, have more direct client relationships and start to be responsible for some business development. This added responsibility is already growing in my job – it doesn’t happen all of a sudden, but gradually.
It’s a cliché – but its true – that it’s the people who are the best thing about the job. You become friends with people who are very smart and dedicated, and you almost become spoilt by having that calibre of people around you. That’s really the thing that I like the most.
Source: QS TopMBA.com
