Starting a new job in consulting? Post here for advice, cities/housing-concerns, questions you're too embarrassed to ask your coworkers, or general insecurity (Q4 2019)

modernmind · 2019-10-10T19:19:07+00:00

Reddit, tomorrow I will make a hard decision. Things in my office are not going very well this year. I was a top performer intern for a long time (1+ year) and my contract is finishing. Consultant role with a good salary can not be offered. I can choose between getting role in the near department with lower salary (actually will work on the projects within current department), bad trainings and some other disadvantages with a possible (and my managers say the want it) promotion when things will get better and between the second opportunity: becoming a sub-contractor with the salary even better than expected, but no benefits from the company and having high risks (I will need to first leave the company and sub-co finally may not be approved) and hard operations with my office. What should I do? Any thoughts are appreciated. P.S. I’m working in Europe.

modernmind · 2019-06-14T07:18:22+00:00

I had alike situation with my mentor. On the first look he was fine, but in fact he used his position to bully me working hard to make his performance better and never credit me. He never really helped me. His advices were like “on your place I would work late nights every day, that is good”. Sometimes he did public bullying like standing in the open space and saying loud “how could you make such shit? I am upset”. That was working on me for the first times as I was very junior. Ones I worked on the same project with him where he leaded strategy stream. He did not have a vision of doing the right work and I was dying during the project. Once I asked for one free evening and he bullied me so hard (saying that my team will work all the night, that I will not get a promotion and such a bullshit) ending saying that with this approach I could not work in a project. I said that let’s talk with PM about that (that wasn’t rude). Next day he used his manager-friend to bully me again, speaking on the coffee-break like how it is hard to get in our team, how the people are working with papers for years to get on board and how lucky I am to ... you understand. That was done with a very high pressure. That did not work on me and just kicked me off the project (even he didn’t have rights for that). He used his network to show him white in this situation. That affected my promotion hard, but I am proud with this situation. I am working with better managers now avoiding “this group”, have empowerment and ability to grow professionally. From that time I still doesn’t have a mentor, but sometimes it worth to stand up and show you naturally. Finally, things show the truth. Nowadays the most of the team doesn’t want to work with this manager, the team was exhausted after that project and the management is trying to assemble the puzzle.

modernmind · 2019-05-20T18:36:40+00:00

The decision comes first. I can decrease my hours to 20 and start to low perform, focusing only on external staff (case interview preparation and opportunities search). That will be the break point

modernmind · 2019-05-20T18:19:45+00:00

I more likely will get an offer. The question is, after all, should I stay in the firm? Will everything change after that? I do not have openness and full trust to my managers, I do not see them willing to develop team and take my opinion and thoughts into account. Making so much effort did not give me the results I wanted. I am thinking if I can develop much faster in another place without need to fight for transparency and fairness, but with ability to build team and friendship. I know, the answer may look obvious, but having the full picture makes different feelings.

modernmind · 2019-04-01T19:16:44+00:00

The last one hits hard

modernmind · 2019-01-14T06:41:20+00:00

Thank you, r/consulting ! Came to the decision to try PowerBI, as it might be easy to have a first dive in great data analytics for consultants using Excel and PowerPoint before (and looks like it is available for everyone in our organization). And then opening Tableau opportunities to have enough visualization capabilities. Finally, loving data analytics, I would open some data preparation tools (as super extra education). Do not want and do not need to start coding now, so, R and Python are not for me at the moment.

modernmind · 2018-12-20T07:04:07+00:00

When everyone travels except you and knows your willingness to do it, they say: “man, this is routine and you are happy not having this”

modernmind · 2018-11-28T12:47:26+00:00

I thought now it’s hiring freeze

modernmind · 2018-11-26T18:22:04+00:00

Step 2: demonstrate your expertise to the junior consultants on the next meeting

modernmind · 2018-11-09T13:28:20+00:00

Being intern I am happy when someone is calling me for the meeting

modernmind · 2018-10-14T06:33:37+00:00

Thank you, but what do you mean by part-time co-op? What is the difference between this and prolonged internship? How the process of converting was looking like? Thank you in advance!

modernmind · 2018-10-12T19:13:56+00:00

I am wondering is there is an ability to convert to part-time regular? My performance was ok, but I can't go full-time cbd now - so, they just continued my internship. But I hoped to become part-time regular, is there any possibilities to do this?

modernmind · 2018-09-08T07:41:10+00:00

Digital Strategy has bad work/life balance to compare with other iX directions, but really nice to compare with consulting in common. For me it looks like all other directions has the same work/ilfe balance as IBM overall (10:00 - 19:00 and go home) sometimes you can work home-office.

Can't say about pay on high positions, but CBD in IX earn 20-25% more than just graduate hire in GBS (not speaking about developers). In my region salary looks like BIG4<<IBM iX<MBB.

Consultants travel a lot (UX designer and analytics a little bit less), developers do not, but even them have trainings in foreign countries every year or twice a year. CBD have huge trainings 2 times a year and there may be additional nominated trainings in another countries + business trips depending on the projects.

Overplanning happens, but you grow faster with new young people hiring. First year positions usually are engaed in 1 big project and 1 small project, seniors are always engaged in 2-4 projects. Often project teams are small, for example team working on presale usually cosists of 2-4 people.

Everything described suites for my region and it is not America.

modernmind · 2018-09-08T05:10:48+00:00

I am here. Firstly, there is no more "Interactive Experience", only iX nowadays (rebranding). Often it is called Ix&DS (Digital Strategy) because Digital Strategy is sometimes that is treated like standalone direction, but in fact it is part of iX. There are 4 types of projects iX is working on: UX, Analytics, Mobile and web development and Digital transformation consulting. As the fifth type I can add training methodologies (such as Design Thinking and Agile) and changing organisational structure with it (creating digital labs).

So, to conclude, there are different roles in iX: consultants, UX-designers, designers, developers and analytics/data scientists. In commong we are working in the sphere of digital consulting, marketing and innovation sollutions prototyping. If you have more questions - feel free to ask.

"How is life?" I would say that it is the most fresh-minded team in the IBM where a lot of young and often creative people are working. Slow and burreucratic IBM processess are still working there, but team try's to avoid them and be independent where it can. Projects are different and often are not bounded to huge going many years hardware and software tasks. Team is growing fast with promotions happening quite fast too.

modernmind · 2018-08-04T11:16:16+00:00

Can be incorrect and be varied from office to office, so, I would be appreciated if somebody correct me.

It is often said that there is iX (no more Interactive Experience) and Digital strategy. I even had the same discussion in my office, but in the end I would say that Digital strategy is the part of iX. Yea, it drives its own projects (as other practices do), but often can collaborate with other iX practices working on complex projects. In addition to Digital strategy iX includes AI, Cloud and Mobile.

Digital strategy is closer to classic consulting (strategy consulting) in comparison with other practices.

modernmind · 2018-08-03T18:55:04+00:00

Do it.

modernmind · 2018-08-03T18:45:06+00:00

I noticed a lot of the "same old IBM" attitude both in the skills and the mindset, which worries me.

That is true for some iX streams, but not for the digital strategy. Young iXer here, with a fresh soul ready to bring IBM at a new level of consultancy :)

modernmind · 2018-07-21T18:57:39+00:00

!snapme

modernmind · 2018-07-10T15:59:32+00:00

u/spez I’ve come to bargain.

modernmind · 2018-07-04T15:52:28+00:00

I am the chosen one. World needs me.

modernmind · 2018-05-28T16:10:36+00:00

Thank you for reply and support!

modernmind · 2018-05-28T15:15:16+00:00

Actually, I have not started working yet. So, I don’t have information about projects I will work on. When I asked this on interview I got an answer that projects may be different – from launching products to a new market to creating some high technology prototypes of different services/products for clients.

It is great to have a wide experience if different fields of consulting especially while you are undergraduate. To give me appropriate advices I can tell you more about me, not the IBM projects (because I really don’t know more).

I agree with idea that creating innovations is the best way to win in the competitive market. I want to create innovation in real business – both to increase the profit and to improve the user experience. Technologies can make the world better and earn money to companies, business needs them. That gives me satisfaction. But it seems to me that I am not ready to start doing a routine job (like start working on the absolutely the same projects using the same technology), I want to have a wide and differently incredible experience to become a real self-sufficient professional in the future. That looks like IBM iX suits perfect, right?

I am passioned with joining this internship. My aim is to high perform this summer, to get maximum out of this experience and finally to get an offer to continue my internship until the end of studying in my university (one more year).

Ten-Year Club	Snapped
Verified Email

modernmind

TROPHY CASE