Meet Summer Associates

My internship with BCG was the best possible way for me to learn more about the firm. I knew I wanted a job that combined variety, steep learning curves and lots of interaction with people, but I worried that I wasn’t the ‘City’ type and that I might not fit in. What I found at BCG was a collection of eclectic people who were interested in me, valued my opinion from the start and wanted me to stretch myself beyond just getting to the right answer. I liked the emphasis on the journey to the answer. Was it a practical and effective way to solve the problem? Did I have the opportunity to learn a new skill or to strengthen existing ones? Could I build solid working relationships with the people around me – both within BCG and with the client?

The two months I spent over summer in the London office were extremely valuable in understanding more about BCG as a firm and about strategy consulting as an industry. During the internship I worked in the Industrial Goods sector and quickly developed skills to analyse an industry in which I had no previous experience. Training was conducted at various levels, and it effectively combined formal local and regional training with informal training and mentoring from senior Principals and Partners. I particularly valued the emphasis placed on team members developing and managing independent modules within a case. I also appreciated that there was always an opportunity to openly discuss and brainstorm ideas within the team. The internship was a balance of constantly pushing boundaries to deliver more for the client while providing the best possible experience for me!

I joined BCG initially for a two-month internship, where I worked on three very different cases in IT and financial services. Both were subjects that I did not know much about, but BCG provided me with an incredible amount of support getting to grips with the topics, and very soon I was discussing my findings directly with our clients. In those eight weeks I grew in confidence, found strengths I didn’t know I had and learnt more about my own potential than any other job or university had ever shown me. I was especially surprised by BCG’s commitment to being a learning organisation – not just learning about companies and industries, but about how we work as a group and how we can maximise our impact as individuals. I was thrilled to be offered a full-time position, giving me the opportunity to grow as an individual, working with people I believe in and never doing the same thing twice.

The eight weeks that I spent at BCG as a Summer Associate flew by with a healthy mix of exciting projects and fun social events. Throughout the summer I worked in Private Equity, on a mixture of full cases and proposals. The variety of tasks (anything from organising teams to do store checks, to involved excel analysis, to coming up with new products) made sure that each and every day was different and interesting. What struck me from the moment I started was the enthusiasm and quality of the people that I was working with. Without exception, everyone would listen to what my take was on the way we were planning on doing an activity, or on what conclusions I thought that we could draw from a particular piece of work. BCG proved itself to be a great place to develop and learn – an encouraging and challenging environment – and for this reason I was delighted to accept my offer on completion of the internship.