Week 2 of Consulting with Jamie Yieh

Hi everyone,

Here’s another update! This past week I was in Hartford on Monday and Tuesday working on my project at Aetna then flew to Atlanta for the two-day Deloitte National Strategy & Operations (S&O… acronym!) training. There were about 55 other interns from all over the country attending this training. I met people from offices in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, D.C., New York, and even Houston.

Over the two days, we received coaching from 2^nd-year S&O Business Analysts (BA’s), senior managers and partners of the firm. The BA’s were once interns and so were able to relate to our experiences and provide great feedback on what it’s like to work at Deloitte. We received training on PowerPoint and Excel as well as on soft skills such as electronic etiquette and interviewing tips. Lastly, we broke up into 10 groups and worked on a strategy case, which we all presented at the end of the 2^nd day in front of a panel of senior managers and partners.

It was interesting to see the different speaking styles and analysis from all of the groups as they presented one by one, but it was nerve-racking for me to present in front of Deloitte leadership and receive feedback. We were taught how to “storyboard” our thoughts, or in other words draw out an outline of our reasoning, before finalizing an argument and putting together a slide deck. It was difficult to brainstorm that way since most of us were used to diving right into the research, but we were warned that if we did not know what to look for, we would easily waste hours of time filtering through unnecessary information. Overall, training was a great learning experience and I was excited to meet two other interns who were staffed on the same Aetna project in Hartford!

I was back in the Pittsburgh office on Friday and had a meeting with my counselor to update him on my experiences these past two weeks. I remember during my first day on the job, there was a guiding principle that everyone kept referring back to when speaking about Deloitte and consulting in general. It went something like this: “You shape your own career.” It’s short and it’s somewhat catchy but as I am progressing through my internship, the more truth I see in it. As an intern, I am given a whole lot of autonomy and independence over how much I want to do and what I want to do on the project. In just two short weeks, I have learned so much about the healthcare industry and the consulting lifestyle but it was up to me to choose my pace and show some self-initiative and intellectual curiosity to “shape my own career”. Talking to my counselor, he admitted that finding a good pace is apparently the hardest thing to do as an intern and new hire BA but he nevertheless challenged me to find that balance between wanting to learn and being a living human being who still talks to her family and has a social life.

But anyways, my goal for next week will be to interact with the client a little more (maybe even independently lead a few small meetings!) and better understand the company’s problem areas in order to receive more responsibility in the following weeks. Wish me luck!

- Jamie