Getting More From A Summer Internship: Advice From Recruiters & Graduates:

Brian Rolfes, a McKinsey partner and global lead of recruiting

Brian Rolfes, a McKinsey partner and global lead of recruiting

Brian Rolfes, partner and global lead of recruiting, McKinsey

McKinsey’s internships are structured to give interns a real experience of being a consultant. Each intern is assigned to a client engagement and becomes part of their office.  They are expected to truly be a part of the team, to contribute ideas, to problem solve, to help create and deliver impact and solutions.  They also get the support a full-time consultant gets including mentors, professional development and local office support.  This helps the interns as they get first-hand experience and can determine if this career might be right for them.  This helps McKinsey as we can see what people are good at, what role they could play long-term, and what new consultants need to be successful.  My advice for interns is three-fold: dive in and fully participate, let your team know what your interests are, and take people up on their offers of mentoring (you’ll get a lot of that at McKinsey). If I were to add a last piece of advice I’d tell interns not to be nervous… the vast, vast majority of our interns get offers to join McKinsey full-time.

Michelle Hay

Michelle Hay

Michelle Hay, head of human resources for the Americas, A.T. Kearney

 An internship is an extended interview for the employer and the candidate.  A.T. Kearney designs the internship knowing that the talent that walks into the door on the first day of the internship is the potential future leadership of the firm.  We have two broad objectives in mind:

  1. To get an understanding of the students’ capabilities to work in a consulting environment, ability to help solve our clients problems and equally as important, to build relationships internally and with clients. We [also] want to understand the student’s values and what motivates them so that we know if they fit with our very collaborative culture and truly care about the work that we deliver and about our client’s success.
  1. The student will get a realistic job preview of the consulting lifestyle, expectations that we and clients will have of them and to showcase the fun that you can have as well as why A.T. Kearney is such a great place to make your professional home.

You’ll get advice to relax and not take your summer too seriously or conversely to take it very seriously.  I will tell you that we take the internship seriously! My advice for students is that you should also.  You will be spending most of your waking hours with your work colleagues and you want to get the information and experiences you need to make the right choice for you.

Know what is important to you and be deliberate about finding out if the firm you are interning with can help you meet your objectives.  Meet as many people as you can and don’t be hesitant to connect with partners – you want to be remembered and to show not just your IQ but also your EQ.  Ask for feedback early and often – firms want to know that you can learn and adjust.

Finally, build strong relationships with your intern colleagues.  This cohort will be important for you as you progress through your career.

Blair Sanford

Blair Sanford

Blair Sanford, assistant dean of full-time MBA programs, University of Wisconsin School of Business

 If a student stopped in my office, the kinds of things I ‘d talk about would be to tell the students to make sure to do the job they were hired to do. A lot of students are so interested in getting to know a lot of people and making great impressions – all of that is enhanced if you begin to do the job they hired you to do.

I encourage students to have clarity on the expectations and deliverables and the knowledge of the resources from the support. And then dive in and do a great job. Beyond that, certainly building the network, and paying attention to the time that they spend doing the work [is important]. For instance, if they hit a bottleneck on something or their supervisor is on vacation, they have to figure out how to work through some of these things. So I think to be efficient, they have to have an understanding of timelines, efficiencies, and productivity.

I generally encourage them to find a mentor at the company so they have people who provide them a little bit of an “in” on the culture and expectations. Sometimes, the things that are just embedded in the organization that’s hard to figure out unless you’ve been there for a while. Get to know a few people well, trust them, confide in them and they’ll usually pull you along.

(Go to next page for advice from the Kellogg School of Management)

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.