Junior Consultant Review

Enjoyed the year hugely. A great variety of work was open to me, and people in the business really took an interest in my development as a professional.

Due to the huge nature of the business (~400,000 globally), you often find yourself meeting new people. In terms of the team in which I worked, the situation varied. I felt like some viewed me as in 'the intern', and gave me the smaller, menial jobs to do (e.g. staple inserts into brochures for a conference). However most of the team were willing to take a risk and put me into new and challenging situations, and let me know when I had done a good job, or helped me to review how I could improve.

Support was great at the start of the placement, weekly meetings with my supervisor. The problem later on is that the senior people who manage the interns are often very busy, and may struggle to prioritise their time for you. Perhaps this was because they felt I had improved enough to reduce the frequency of these meetings. This is only my experience as a junior consultant, as part of a mobile team who work around the country, I know other interns who sat at the desk next to their manager.

The nature of consulting means that it is sometimes difficult to achieve a constant workload. Taking on projects means that you may have some quieter time in between projects. The culture at IBM, particularly in consulting is to work slightly longer hours, but this is not enforced by any means. There is plenty of training and learning to do for those who are more proactive during the quieter parts of the year.

Early in my career, I could not have expected more responsibility in a placement. I started off with small simple tasks, which gives you the chance to impress your manager and those around you. If you create the right impression, the opportunities in consulting are almost endless. By the end of the year I had presented to clients, was billed to clients as a graduate etc.

The lessons learned from my year with IBM will stay with me for a long time. A few people in my team were really interested in developing me as a management consultant. The experience from working with clients should hopefully set me apart from my peers in applying for graduate roles.

The flexible desk working in the consulting part of the London office meant you were always meeting new people. It is far from the games rooms of the Google and Twitter offices, but the atmosphere is lively and everyone is approachable.

Due to the huge HR and admin setup at IBM, everything ran smoothly. My team were also in contact before my start date to brief me on what to expect and how to prepare.

I was sent away on formal training courses with full employees, my supervisor set aside time every few weeks to review my progress and give me some professional 'coaching' - looking at minor details eg. body language, presenting skills, writing etc. I feel I have developed hugely in the year.

If you perform exceptionally in the year, you'll be invited to skip all graduate assessment centres. Some will be invited to skip the 1st of 2 assessment centres. The team I worked with have openly said they will offer me a job should I skip all the assessment centres.

Start of the year tends to be weekly drinks after work in London. This fizzled out somewhat, but there are so many interns that you are likely to make friends for life.

Living in London is expensive!! Be prepared to pay around half your salary to live in a decent area. The expenditure is worth the experience though.

Central London - need I say more? Something for everyone.

Huge scheme called Giveback - lots of charity work, job exhibitions, schools work.