[Ed. Note] This article features answers by various analysts working at Accenture. Please note that their opinions and advice are not necessarily reflective of Accenture’s or Accenture Recruiting’s formal views.
In the third installment of “The Recruitment Refresher” series, we’ve asked your most frequently asked questions to various Accenture analysts. So without further ado, let’s get started!
Today’s “Ask an Analyst” will feature the following lovely individuals:
My major was Industrial & Operations Engineering at University of Michigan. I did a consulting internship with the Accenture office at Singapore as well as a supply chain internship with Unilever in Chicago, as well as an investment bank in New York. I also spent a summer scooping ice cream in Singapore.
I graduated in the class of 2014 at Brandeis University, double majoring in economics and sociology. I was interested in exploring the social priorities of the market — how to help society using economics as a tool, so I learned a lot of marketing and finance. I decided to do an extra year and get a Masters of International Economics and Finance at Brandeis as well, where I did a lot of data analytics courses. I loved marketing so I wanted to find a career that used analytical skills in more of a strategy and creative role. I ended up interning in Brussels in Belgium at a lobbying firm in the financial sectors, mostly insurance. I then interned at an M&A consulting firm, specializing in life and science. Policy was too slow for me and life sciences was too disheartening, so I became more interested in consulting with a technology focus.
I went to Santa Clara University, where I studied Management and Information Systems. I also minored in Studio Art and Italian, and worked in the business school as well. For my work experience, I interned with Apple doing online marketing. I also interned with Cisco in their services in the integration of a new support system. That was for a year during school and then a little for full-time.
I majored in Marketing and Management Information Systems at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. During my junior year, I interned with Accenture in Minneapolis as a Management Consulting analyst, and I also worked for US Bank while I was going to school.
To be frank, I ended up picking Accenture because I wanted to be in San Francisco and my other offer was in New York City.
I had been targeting Accenture as a firm since sophomore year in college. I was interested and really believed in their six core values. I appreciated the fact that it’s the most global consulting firm and I wanted a company with a strong global footprint. Finally, its diversity and culture.
To sum it up, Accenture was, to me, the “Brandeis” of consulting firms — quirky people who embody core values.
I wanted to pick something challenging. There’s diversity in the roles that you do and the opportunity to not do the same thing every day. I think of myself as an outgoing person and I think that the people here are great. It’s an opportunity to work with smart people all the time — everyone carries their weight. And of course, it’s an opportunity to travel.
Two reasons:
1. People — the people we work with are smart, hardworking, fun, and down-to-earth. I felt like I could be myself around them, and my local office proves that true every week!
2. Company Vision — Accenture is investing heavily in digital in all areas of our business. I think it positions us strongly as a leader in the market, and it’s a team I want to be on.
*Alignment here meaning Strategy, Consulting (Technology, MC) or Digital
In Strategy, at least at the analyst level, we focus and stress more on generic business strategy skill sets across the board, across different industries and different strategies. In other alignments, you might be focusing in a specific area. For example, in MC, you’d be focusing on a specific industry and in Digital, you’d be in a specific function, such as Mobility, Smart Cities, Analytics.
Think of management consulting as an industry — hey you have a problem, here’s our solution and the strategy. Accenture is different from the industry standard, where we look more for a partnership with our client. At the client, we get rated on our collaboration. We’re not there to just work on implementation or strategy; we’re there for the entire life cycle of a project, including strategy and implementation. We’re more hands on for the entirety. We’re there more for the long-term, rather than the short-term.
We work on projects related to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings and Salesforce Development Community (SFDC) implementations and transformations.
Accenture Digital is broken down into three main organizations: Accenture Interactive (our digital marketing agency), Accenture Mobility (our team that focuses on mobile development and Internet of Things), and Accenture Analytics (our big data wizards). I am a part of the Marketing Platforms practice in Accenture Interactive, where we help clients implement and scale digital marketing automation technologies.
I’m on a communications company right now where we’re doing a huge network optimization project. There’s about 60–70 of us on it and the work stream I’m on is called supply chain, sourcing & procurement. My responsibility is to lead strategy sourcing in specific categories for the client. So what that means is that we take specific contracts that the client currently has with suppliers and we apply strategic sourcing methods to them, looking at strategic levers we can use with suppliers, such as bidding strategies to reduce cost in that manner.
I’m currently on a marketing and sales team at Google. I’m an analyst in the Project Management Office. Functionally, it’s not so much PMO. I do a bit of onboarding and resource management. The day-to-day is financial analysis and management — how w track our finances. We work closely with our operations leads and other leads in our account to track resource and financial management.
I’m working on a transformation of financial claims management and partner compensation for a worldwide high tech company. I’m the Salesforce Business Lead, so I sit in between my client’s business team and IT. That means that I take requirements that my client wants and see what’s feasible, and then we design it in Salesforce. You can think of my role as an interpreter. They’ll say “We want XYZ”, so then I take that and translate it into a language that IT can understand. Lastly, I monitor the entire process, making sure that what we scope and design is actually built.
I am currently on a project with a high tech client in San Jose that is developing its marketing cloud (integrated set of cloud technologies that manages a customer’s digital touchpoints). My role is to discover and define relevant data sets that will enable personalized digital marketing experiences for its customers and then deliver on the integration of these datasets to the main orchestration platform in the marketing cloud.
For me, it was when I was working with a Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) company. The team I had was very intelligent and bright. It was a really fun engagement and I just had never worked with such brilliant people before.
This is my only project so far. My most memorable experience was our Christmas holiday party where I got to meet not only leads, but see them in a casual space. I got to learn about the account on different levels. I helped facilitate more team events and account-wide events and now I’m part of planning these events.
Travelling to Romania for face-to-face client meetings to review design materials. It was extremely cold, but it was a cool experience because I got to travel and present to the client as a first year analyst. It really showed to me that they valued my work. It was also a fun experience to travel.
Recently, I worked on an app cloud assessment, where we first reviewed the client’s desired digital marketing capabilities and assessed the maturity gap between it and the industry. We made recommendations on what technologies the client should invest in, in order to close the gap and provided a framework for future investment decisions. It was a very short timeline, and something I haven’t done before; so it was exciting to learn quickly and ultimately deliver something the client valued.
Conduct an honest self-evaluation on whether you are adaptable to frequent change. Everything we deal with, especially in Strategy, will deal with change, whether it’s changing projects, supervisors, team members, clients and industries, you’re going to be facing change every couple of weeks. Even if you’re on the same client or same project, your client can change their minds quickly because of different circumstances and other factors that you might not see. It’s a very dynamic career and if you’re uncomfortable with change, you should reconsider it.
You have to be extremely flexible — not just with time, but with your career and goals. You’re not going to get your dream role immediately, so prepare to be super flexible. Time management, your personal financial management, personal life. I work hard, but it’s worth it, because I’m learning. Have tough skin — dealing with clients and people can be difficult. Consulting is inherently messy and dynamic, so you have to be prepared for whatever happens.
Be honest. Be prepared to work really hard. Sometimes jobs out of college are a roller coaster, but if you’re learning and growing, it’s worth it and Accenture provides this.
Be comfortable with ambiguity, be ready to learn, and be excited!