Internship Spotlight: Finding a Love for Consulting

Tell me about your internship! What are your responsibilities? What projects are you working on over the summer?

At Accenture we’re slated onto different clients, every intern is placed on their team. They try to match your team to your degree. For me, they put me on a client in the healthcare sector that works with a lot of healthcare technology and data as a whole. I'm on their data team. I communicate with the client pretty frequently since that is what a consultant does. We ask them their needs and we do what they ask us to do in terms of technology needs. I also attend weekly meetings with the client and do sprint planning using a lot of Agile methods. We also manipulate the client's data to better reach the audience that they’re trying to capture.

What is the most important thing you have learned thus far?

To be ready for whatever life throws at you. Specifically for my project, I wasn't expecting something to break in production data, but it did and it threw us way off track. That's not what I was expecting, because I expected a linear track when I started this project. I think being able to adapt to change and being able to tackle challenges as they come towards you and not go into panic mode.

How did your school work prepare you for this role?

Specifically for my role, I think a lot of the data science courses I take helped, specifically on the computer science side. For example, I think machine learning fundamentals, which is CSCI 5521, was applicable in this case, because I use a lot of machine learning background in my role. I also think a lot of the platforms that we learn in school, like VS Code, R Studio, and Jupyter Notebooks, are very helpful in industry roles. It's really important to bring those skills into the industry, so coming in with that refreshed knowledge of how those technologies can help a client advance their goals.

How did you become interested in computer science and your specific areas of interest?

I got my undergrad degree from the University of Minnesota where I studied statistics and computer science. Originally I started as a statistics major and we had to take a computer science course as part of the requirements. When I took that course, I realized I liked it and I had a lot of fun taking that class, which is hard to say about a lot of the classes that you are required to take. Once I realized that it was fun, I decided to add it on as my second major, because I still really liked statistics. When I started exploring the different fields as a senior, I realized that data science is a good intersection between statistics and computer science. During my senior year, I started applying to master's programs and I was lucky enough to be accepted into the University of Minnesota’s MS in data science program. Now I’m working on that, it's exactly what I expected with a good mix of statistics and computer science. Along with that, I am also minoring in Astrophysics while receiving a Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. It's really interesting to see how data science can be applied to virtually any field and where data science as a whole is headed now since it's such a rapidly growing field.

What are your future career goals? How has this position impacted your goals?

I do want to stay in consulting, specifically technology consulting if I can. I think having this internship made me step out of my comfort zone a little bit, just because this isn't a typical tech job that most people would apply to with a STEM background. By working here for the past two summers, I realized that you could make your role as technical as you want, which is something I like. You can switch up what you do all the time, because you can have different clients from different backgrounds basically whenever you want. For example, every six months, you can change the client along with your specific job role in the client, if you wish to do so. There are a lot of ways that you can learn and grow in this industry as well since we have to constantly come up with new ideas for clients. Hopefully, I can stay in consulting and obtain a return offer at the end of my internship. That's where I see myself headed in the future.

What advice would you give to someone pursuing a similar internship in the future?

For consulting in general, I think putting yourself out there and networking is super important. That's how a lot of people get into their roles here. Even once you start working, you have to network a ton to get into client roles. Specifically, I got into this internship because I attended an Accenture event they were holding at the University of Minnesota. Just going and introducing myself to the recruiters already put me in a good spot and even helped me get a first-round interview. I know it can be hard for a lot of kids that are naturally introverts like myself, but hopefully I am getting better at that since this is my second year at Accenture as a summer analyst. By putting yourself out of your comfort zone and getting yourself out there, you can transform yourself from an introvert to maybe an ambivert or extrovert. Networking and putting yourself out there in general makes things a lot easier in this fast-paced and communicative environment.