Blogging about the BOC w/Jake Yosafat

Hey guys,

While you may not know it, chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’ve read a lot of the stuff I’ve written this summer. As the BOC Intern, I’ve been the person primarily in charge of the upkeep of the blog, the BOC Facebook page, and writing new HTML content for the BOC website’s company listing.

While not an official member of the Tepper Interns blog team, I though it would be a good idea for me to lend some insight into what it’s like being part of an internship program that is less formal and in which you are working for a lot of individuals who already know you. Chances are that many of you will be faced with the potential situation of working for a small business or interning at Carnegie Mellon. Here is my take on the whole situation.

The hardest part of the job is autonomy. Being the only individual on campus working for the BOC day in and day out doesn’t lend a lot of oversight to the process. I decide when to come in, when to leave, and how many hours to work (within reason of course). No one is here telling me what to do each day, whether it is researching additional companies, writing recruitment letters, tracking down bad debt from past conferences, it is largely up to me. I can guarantee this is not going to be the case with most internships, but I can attest that it is a great exercise in self-motivation.

The other primary challenge is coordinating all the committee members. This summer we have had directors in the Eastern and Central U.S. time zones, the United Kingdom, France, a semester at sea in the Mediterranean, Rwanda, India, Singapore, China, Malaysia and Indonesia. Having to coordinate email schedules and cycles of productivity has lent insight into what transnational corporations must go through on a day-to-day basis.

I can assure you, I along with the rest of the Committee have been working to make this the best conference in years. We are already ahead of where were last year on company recruitment and we have six times as many high-level sponsors as we did last year. The BOC is still a mammoth operation, so I encourage you to get involved. Attend, volunteer, interview for a director position. I continue to look forward to September 16^th, as I’m sure you do to.

Until Then,

Jake

The Core of a Consulting Internship w/Byungwoo Ko

Hey All,

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. I want to give you guys quick updates on my internship at Accenture.

Last weekend, all Accenture interns were invited to St. Charles, which is located outside of Chicago for a leadership conference. It was awesome to see people from different locations, different backgrounds and different projects. The conference focused on teaching interns how to become better team members and better leaders; it entailed a series of lectures, team-building activities and seminars. It was really fun. I got to know so many new people and got to listen to what senior executives at Accenture had to say about leadership. Only bad part about it was that I had to go back to work on Monday after a busy weekend… haha.

I am currently working on a couple of big projects. First, the fiscal year for Accenture ends in August, so our team has been putting a lot of effort in reviewing the numbers for the current fiscal year and planning for the next fiscal year. This has been a very exciting experience as I get to learn how professionals plan and decide what their goal should be for the future. There are many factors that must be considered and every factor should be considered very importantly. You learn to constantly question yourself on how this process is going to affect your team, your company and your client, how much are we going to save, how can we generate more review and so forth. I am sure many of you have already done this through some classes but the process gets extremely intense when a huge amount of money is on the table. Secondly, my supervisor assigned me a summer project that I need to present to his team members. The project needs to cover the overall contingent labor industry and how our team can improve to lead the trend and not follow it. I have been doing a lot of research to understand how contingent labor works, why companies want to use contingent labor, how can we our services to our clients and etc. I just want to make sure that I deliver something that can be useful to the team and Accenture. I will be holding interviews this week with some team members to get their input and to learn how they fit into the big picture of the procurement process. The presentation is coming up soon, so I will be working long hours for the remainder of my internship. Wish me luck!

BK