Starting out in any profession is difficult. Starting out and standing out simultaneously is even harder.
In this article, we will look at some of the things I learned from my experience interning at a range of consulting firms this summer.
1. The power of networking
Although networking is a widely cited element of success in the early stages of a career, I didn’t realise until recently how critical to success networking would be, or why. I was in a firm for whom I had done no client work, but based solely on the conversations I was having with employees my name became known to management.
I always assumed networking was something that ran alongside the work you do as a professional; the work and the networking being inextricable linked. However, my experience shows that just by having meaningful and engaging conversations with employees of all levels, your potential can be demonstrated to an even greater degree than through the tasks you are given to complete.
Why is this the case? Well, when you are set a task, the opportunity to showcase your ability is limited. The task and desired output are clearly defined. Your opportunity to show your potential is thus limited by these boundaries. Going beyond what has been clearly asked for in a bid to show your potential may even backfire, being viewed as missing the specified brief.
Conversation, however, is not so limited. The only constraints are the minds of the humans conversing. There is no strict start or finish time to a discussion, nor, generally speaking, boundaries to what can be talked about. As such, in many cases you are able to showcase a lot more about your mind, thinking, and capabilities through conversation than you can through completing a rigidly defined task.
2. Be adventurous in networking
How long have you worked at this company? What do you enjoy most about working here? What are your career aspirations? Where do you see the company going in the future? What do you foresee changing in the future world of work and why?
Whilst the questions listed above do get progressively more probing and thus hopefully more engaging, they are unlikely to be new questions for the person you are talking to. Whilst this is not a problem as such, in that you will find out valuable information, they don’t allow the conversation to venture beyond standard networking talk. If you really want to get noticed in the early stages of your career, standard approaches will not help you stand out.
Whilst you may start with standard questions by way of introduction and ice-breaking, instead of continuing along these lines, try to figure out what the person you are talking to is passionate about, and explore those topics. How do their personal interests come through in their work? How do they make them unique as a professional? Not only will these sorts of conversations enable you to gain a far greater understanding of other professionals, they will create more engaging conversations that challenge both participants, and enable you to stand out as an inquisitive, likeable, and hopefully intelligent individual.
By way of example, I always check the online profile of the person I am meeting with before the conversation. I look for something particularly intriguing about their past and consider how I can explore this in the conversation. Perhaps they were in the armed forces before their current role, and so I want to find out how their professional career compares to their military career, and how they use their military training in an office setting. Perhaps they started out in a completely different field, and I want to find out how that experience informs their present work. Perhaps they studied something intriguing at university, and I want to find out how that specialism is reflected in their present day passions and interests.
None of us will be around on this earth forever. When you have the opportunity to talk with and learn about other people, make the most of it. We are complex beings, each with our own story. Use your time to discover the others’ narrative, and feel free to share your own. There is no limit to what you can learn by doing so.
3. Do the simple things extremely well
Doing the small things extremely well is often what counts. In the early stages of a career where the young professional is eager to get out into the world and showcase what they can do, they often aim to go over and above the brief, when they would be better served finding ways to do the simple tasks extremely well. In a sense, finding a way to do something so simple so well is more impressive than completing double the work. Anyone can do more work than is requested of them. Not everyone, however, can improve the way a task is done.
When I was interning this summer, I was given the job of throwing data onto PowerPoint slides. I could have seen this as an extremely mundane task with little room for creativity. Instead, however, I decided that in addition to putting the data on the slides, I would do so in a way that was as visually appealing and easy to interact with as possible. I found new ways of presenting the data, new interactive formats for the slides, and new ways to use the company’s colour schemes to create visual appeal. By doing this, not only had I completed the simple task, but I had done the simple task in a way that no other employee had done before. Doing this received notice and recognition from my manager and client alike.
Sukhi R. is a graduate from Warwick Law School currently studying an MSc in Business with Consulting at Warwick Business School. She has a keen interest in the business psychology of consulting and plans to enter the industry in the near future.
Image: Unsplash