Consultant Spotlight: Cliff Zhang
Cliff Zhang is an Analyst at Deloitte Consulting in Los Angeles. He graduated from UCLA in 2019 with a major in Biochemistry and he was involved in UConsulting, Association of Chinese Americans, and undergraduate research on campus. Outside of work, he likes going to the gym, watching Netflix, and playing games with friends. One piece of advice Cliff has for UCLA students interested in consulting is to “figure out a way to show that you’re valuable to a company by demonstrating your speciality and emphasizing your strengths.”
Q: What led you to pursue consulting?
A: When I first came to UCLA, I wanted to work in medicine and that’s why I chose Biochemistry, a Life Science as my major. But when I was there, I started to re-evaluate my choices and what I wanted to do in the future. I talked to people at UCLA who were also STEM majors and surprisingly, a lot of them were recruiting for or doing consulting. I learned from them what consulting was — solving problems, solving big problems for big companies, and working with people. As an intellectually curious person, all of this appealed to me. That’s when I decided to join UConsulting and began recruiting for consulting in my junior year.
Q: What does a typical workday look like for you and what do you do outside of work?
A: My day begins as early as 6:30 in the morning with meetings with our offshore teams from different Deloitte offices outside the U.S. The offshore team shares the work they’ve done during their day, and my team usually picks up where they left off. This is what we refer to as ‘24-hour coverage’ — we have to align our work with our offshore teams for client meetings later in the day. I then prepare for client meetings, which are generally from 9 AM to 12 PM after which I take a break for lunch. Post-lunch, in between meetings, I will complete my ‘heads-down’ work, which is the work you’re assigned and do independently for your project. My day generally ends by 5 or 6 PM, which is pretty great, but I do have to start early for that to happen! I don’t have to work late nights or on the weekends, so I have a good work-life balance.
Outside of the office, I love to go to the gym! It’s a good way for me to relax after work. However, because of COVID-19, I can’t go to the gym now, so I take a walk or jog in the neighborhood or exercise at home. To be honest, I don’t think my neighbors appreciate it, but you have to exercise, or it becomes too easy to gain weight when you’re at home! I also love to watch Netflix, play games, and hangout with my friends!
Q: What is the best part about being a consultant?
A: Traveling! I actually haven’t had a lot of chances to travel because of the nature of my specific work, but when I have traveled, I’ve enjoyed it! Because of it, I had the chance to travel to my home city. When I was there, I stayed at the hotel and worked during the day at the client’s office and then at night, I enjoyed a good old dinner at home. It was a good life!
In my opinion, one of the best things about consulting is the valuable exposure that I get. I’m often in these high-level meetings with Presidents or VPs of our client companies. Just listening to their extremely intelligent conversation really prepares you for what you should expect in the future and is the type of exposure which you can’t get as an early professional if you’re not in consulting.
More specifically, I love working as a consultant at Deloitte because it’s a great company to work with. They take care of my well-being and my professional development, and the work-life balance is pretty great!
Q: What has been your biggest challenge as a consultant so far?
A: As a consultant at Deloitte, you shift from one project to another rather quickly, so you have to be adaptable. For me, this change was often uncomfortable because I had to begin and learn from the start and settle in with a different set of people again. Because of this, I have learned to be more flexible, which is an extremely valuable quality.
Q: What surprised you about your role or the industry when you first started?
A: Deloitte is a huge company and has thousands of employees in the U.S., but what surprised me was that the number of people doing a specific type of work or working for a specific type of client is actually very small — often less than twenty. Over time, you will usually work and interact with more or less the same people. This helps you build a circle of colleagues with the same type of interests as you, and it also helps you build your image in such a big company like Deloitte.
Also, Deloitte has this internal directory where you can search up different employees, their backgrounds and what work and project they’re currently doing. For example, as a Biochemistry major, I was interested in working for pharmaceutical, biotech, and med-tech companies and this system connected me with people who were working in these fields, who then helped assign me to these projects. In LA and the West Coast in general, there are a lot of people doing this type of work and I was able to get in touch with them through this directory or by word of mouth.
Q: What hard and/or soft-skills are the most important for consulting careers?
A: When you join consulting, you don’t need to be a wizard at everything, because you’ll learn as you work. However, it is good to learn the basics of technology skills like PowerPoint or Excel. It’s also important to be structured because as an Analyst, your responsibility is to take notes and track each and every detail of the project. Other people are working on specific details of the projects, while you’re viewing the general details, so that’s why you have to be structured. People definitely appreciate this quality!
There are also technologies that you will have to learn and use depending on your project. For me it’s using Atlassian Suite — Jira and Confluence mainly — which are very typical management tools. You don’t have to know them all but you have to exhibit that you are savvy with technology and that you can learn quickly. Familiarity with accounting specifically, and having general knowledge is also helpful. For example, I was working with an e-commerce company on website redevelopment, and although I didn’t know how e-commerce websites specifically worked, I knew how Amazon worked as their consumer, and that ‘general’ experience helped tremendously.
Q: What advice would you give to students recruiting for consulting at UCLA?
A: First, if you’re interested in consulting, you should know that the majority of the time you will be talking to clients and colleagues. Thus, you need to be professional, which means having a good demeanor and personality regardless of where you are or what you are doing: whether you are in interviews, meetings, or are networking. For example, I’ll be often speaking to the VP of our client company, and therefore I need to have the credibility that I won’t be causing problems for the company.
Second, you have to figure out a way to show that you’re valuable to a company. It’s important to know what your specialty or niche is, because it’s good to direct your efforts there, especially at a big company like Deloitte. I knew that I wanted to do technology work in Life Sciences, and as an Analyst I would be able to help Deloitte with biotech, med-tech, or pharmaceutical companies. I emphasized this in my interview and I believe that worked well for me. It’s good for Economics or Business Economics majors to be proficient in all qualities needed for consulting, but it actually adds to your case if you can demonstrate your specialty.
Finally, you have to be savvy with technology and data. Consulting is data-intensive and technology-driven because your hypotheses have to be validated by data using technology, and so becoming proficient in data analysis really helps. Nobody is just sitting around the table brainstorming — you need to be able to go out and be able to support your hypothesis with data.
Q: What are some resources you suggest students interested in consulting take advantage of at UCLA?
A: The most valuable resource at UCLA is people like you, people like me, people at UCLA! Whether it’s your friends or those in your consulting club with whom you can case and do actual consulting work with, or the UCLA Alumni at companies who are eager to hire more Bruins, people are your most valuable resource at UCLA. For me, it was my peers at UConsulting who helped me with casing, drafting resumes and cover letters. Also, participate in as many networking events as you can because that’s where you’ll be able to connect with recruiters and other professionals. There are UCLA Alumni in many companies, and as I said, they want more Bruins working for them because they know that we’re smart! We all have to support each other and initiatives like Consulting Connect are great because it strengthens the UCLA community and brings people together.
Keep up with Consulting Connect, the official community for UCLA students interested in consulting, through our Facebook group and Instagram page!
