Week in the Life of a Bain Summer Intern (Podcast)

In this episode, Nicole Ryeom – Management Consulted Content Intern and Incoming Bain Associate Consultant – shares her summer at Bain, specifically:

• What a typical week looked like
• How Bain incorporates fun into the internship experience (i.e., Bagel Wednesdays)
• Personal highlights from Nicole’s summer
• Tips for standing out to secure a return offer

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Transcription:

MC: Japheth Mast  00:33

Today’s episode focuses on Nicole’s summer at Bain. Nicole is a management consulted content intern who leveraged her summer internship into a full time offer and she’s starting at Bain as an Associate consultant. We’re super happy for her. Today’s episode is really fast-paced, it walks through her summary of Bain, what a typical week in the life of an intern looks like, her highlights and favorite memories, and what made each week fun and memorable. It’s a really interesting episode. So if you are an aspiring Bain or MBB consultant, it’s going to be really great for you. So keep listening for Nicole’s summer at Bain.

Nicole Ryeom  01:11

Hi, guys. My name is Nicole I’m currently a content intern with management consulted. And I’m also an incoming Associate consultant at Bain in the Boston office. So in today’s episode, I’m going to talk a little bit about what it was like to be an intern in the main office, I interned there last summer. And just talk a little about what it was like to be an intern, what our weeks looked like, what our days look like, and some fun memorable experiences that I had at the internship. 

To start off, I’ll just give a quick overview on what the internship application was like, and then how I got the internship for a more detailed look into this process. So we recorded a different podcast episode on how I got the internship. So definitely look out for that episode if you’re more interested in the application process. But I started considering recruiting for consulting probably in June, after my second year. And I was lucky to have an internship that was growth marketing based, which is very similar to consulting in terms of the problems that you’re solving. But definitely more focused on the marketing niche. 

Through that experience, I decided that I wanted to recruit for consulting. I would say mid-July I started reaching out to different people ,doing networking, and started to get pretty serious about the consultant recruiting process. At the time, the deadlines were a little bit different. This was the first summer that they had offered a July application deadline and also the September application deadline. 

I knew I wasn’t going to be ready for the July one and might submit my application in September. So I spent the rest of the summer and the month in September leading up to the final application deadline working on casing, networking, and making my application unique in any way I could. That’s what the application process was like. 

I think that something I did throughout the process that really helped me was that I was really intentional about networking, really intentional about how I prepared myself, really intentional about who I talk to. That’s a really good way to make sure that you’re meeting the people that will be able to help you a lot and make sure that your recruiting process is as smooth as possible. But for more information on that definitely go to the other podcast episode because I talk a lot more about the process there. 

So jumping into the episode. What a week in the life of a Bain intern is like: every week is different and weeks and days look different for different interns based on the case that you’re working on. But this is a general outline of some of the responsibilities that I had as an intern and also some of the fun events that we got to go to as interns. I would arrive to the office every day around like 8:30-8:45am, depending on what we had in store for the week.

My first meeting of the day typically wasn’t until 9:30am. But I really like to use that 15 to 20 minutes to myself in the morning to catch up on any emails, write out my to-do list for the day and then send out a morning message to my supervisor so that he would know what my priorities were for the day and he could assign me more work or move around my priorities accordingly. That was a really helpful way to get started and was really helpful for him for his first message of the day to be what I was working on. He was able to think about what’s on my to do list. That’s what every morning kind of looked like, doing that same process and it became routine. 

My first meeting of the day was typically around 9:30am and that was with my workstream which is a small team of three to four people that report to the manager on the case. And typically on one case team there, there are typically two workstreams, sometimes three, if it’s a bigger case, but it’s broken down.

So one workstream is working on one specific deliverable or one specific goal. And for our project we were working on one specific thing, while the other workstream was working on a different specific project. So my workstream was me, my supervisor who was an AC 2, which is an Associate consultant in the second year of his Associate consultancy. And then my supervisor was a C1, so a consultant in the first year of her consultancy. And in this meeting, it was pretty informal, we’d always catch up about what our nights had been like, what our weekends were like. And then we would talk about our priorities for the day and week. We would also talk about who would be presenting what information to our manager, or other workstream, in our meeting with everyone. So that’s typically what we covered in that meeting. 

After that meeting, would do some independent work. Sometimes I’d meet again with my supervisor, just one on one so that we could go over anything that his supervisor had told him or something we touched on in the meeting that I wasn’t aware of that I maybe needed more detail on, things like that. But that time in between would differ based on what we were working on for that day or week. My manager was based in the LA office, so our first team check-in for the day, with both of those two workstreams and the manager, was at 12:30pm. That definitely was different for a lot of other teams, a lot of times people have team meetings around 9:30 or 10:00, but because she was LA based, 12:30 was the earliest that made sense. 

In this meeting, our manager would listen to what we had done, what our priorities for the day were, and then reassign and give you assignments accordingly, or tell us to reprioritize what we were working on. This was also a good way for us to learn about what the other workstream was working on, just so we can make sure that we’re all in alignment, even if we were doing different projects. 

So after that check-in, I didn’t really have a set lunch time but I typically would use lunch to get to meet new people in the office and hear more about their work at Bain. Our supervisors and teams and our recruiters were really great about encouraging us to reach out to people at the office who might have worked on cases that we’re interested in. I used that time to really get to know the other people in your office, which I really enjoyed doing. I thought it was a great way to meet other people who weren’t on my case team, people who are managers, things like that. 

Sometimes I would eat lunch with my team, would eat lunch with other interns, in depended on what the day was like and who was free at that time.  Afternoons were typically used to work on the projects that we were assigned to. So we would do a lot of independent work. My supervisor and I would work pretty closely together, which I think is the case with a lot of interns and supervisors because interns obviously have a little bit less experience than everyone else in the office. So they would use a little bit more guidance from supervisors and from other team members. 

A lot of time that was independent work, where we would do whatever we were working on for projects. And then at the end of the day, which is not the actual end of the day, but the last team meeting of the day around like 4:15pm. We would have our end of day meeting, where we would discuss what we had done, and then what priorities priorities were for the rest of the night, which was a good way to get to know how much work you had on your plate for the rest of the night. So you divvy that up accordingly and then also prioritize what you needed to have done for the next day and what maybe could wait one more day to be done. 

All of our meetings would end with something that Bain calls team fun. So we would do a fun game with the whole team, whether it was doing the worldle together, doing Pictionary, fun games like that, which was a good way to get to know other people on your team in a more informal environment and didn’t always just feel like we were always talking about work, we got to mix some fun into that as well, which is really awesome. 

I typically left the office around 6 to 7pm. My case was an internal case, which meant that our client was Bain instead of having an external client. So that definitely meant that we had a little bit of a lighter load than some of the interns that were on really tiring cases.  I actually lived with three other interns who went to college with me at UVA. So at night, we got to talk about what our days were like and then oftentimes we just hang out, maybe watch TV for a little and then go to bed just because you are oftentimes pretty tired after a day at the office.

Nicole Ryeom  10:30

On Tuesdays we pretty much had the same standing meetings. So we would have that 9:30 check-in with me with my workstream and about 12:30 Check in with the team and then the 4:15 end of day with everyone with the same team as before. But obviously, day to day work would vary based on what we’re working towards for the week. 

One of my big projects was building out a survey cutter for a survey that I had created the week earlier. So when I was working on that a lot of my free time was spent working on that survey cutter and setting up meetings with people who had built out survey cutters before so that they could help me and share their expertise with me so I could make sure that I was doing it as efficiently as possible. 

Wednesday was a fun day because it was always bagel Wednesdays in the office. So they would provide a ton of bagels for everyone, just a really fun way to get to see people in the office and get to hang out a little bit over a bagel. And that was just fun, because Bain would make sure to make some fun events and surprises throughout the week. So as interns we get to experience all of the benefits of working at an office like Bain as well as like getting exposed to really important work that Bain is doing. So that was a special fun treat for Wednesday’s. 

Again, Thursdays, we would have the same standing meetings. Sometimes we would have meetings with important shareholders that we were hoping to get information from or feedback from. But again, this would differ on what we’re working on what we’re doing and the schedules of everyone that was involved just because we had some people who were in different time zones. So it was important that we were able to schedule those when we could. 

Friday was a fun day because that was the day that we would do our full team meeting with not only like our other workstream and our manager, but also the partner on our case. Since my case team was an internal case team, we also got to work with people from other realms of Bain, besides just people who are on the consulting side. So as people who are on the global performance team, people who were more on other more internal teams. That was always a big meeting. A lot of people were in the office, but then some people were in other places like Chicago or LA or New York, wherever that may be, so that you’d have a bunch of people on zoom as well. 

For this you normally have a pretty specific agenda for this meeting, just because we only have an hour, and we had a lot of things that we’d want to get through. So again, depending on what we’re working on, we’d either have everyone go around and talk about what we were working on. Or if we had one specific thing or one specific meeting that we were looking for, we would talk about that. And then we’d always do a little bit of Team fun, something fun with the whole team, which is a great way to get to know more people. 

So that’s kind of what a week in the life would look like for an intern. Obviously, it’s more specific to the case that I was on and the work that I was doing. But I think that a lot of the schedules are kind of the same. With consulting, it’s not like your day to day is going to be the same every day. So obviously things would change. And this isn’t what every single week looked like. But I think this is a pretty good general outline of what a week in the life of a Bain intern looks like. 

Just a few tips I have on trying to be the best intern that you can be and make sure that you’re really utilizing your time. First of all, don’t be afraid to take initiative. I think when I started out, I felt really inexperienced, and was definitely really wary to add my voice into the mix just because I didn’t necessarily feel qualified to speak on the things that we were working on. But I think my supervisor, my manager, and they were all great about really encouraging me to get my perspective and get my thoughts. So don’t forget to take initiative. Don’t forget that you always have important things to add to the conversation. And sometimes a new fresh perspective can be really important and exactly what the team needs to kind of get the work moving forward, especially if it’s something that they’re really in the weeds with. So being able to have someone with a perspective that is a little bit more expansive, can be really helpful. 

I think another thing that I’d say is always make sure that you’re asking for feedback and asking for ways that you can improve. Showing that you’re open to constructive criticism is a really great way to show your supervisor or your manager or the partner on your case not only that you really care about the work you’re doing and making sure that you’re producing top quality work, but it also shows that you really want to improve and be better. I think that’s always really important. Because you don’t want to be like complacent and just thinking, Okay, well, I got the job and now I can just sit here and do the bare minimum, you always want to be seeing like how else you can improve and what else you can do to be better consultant, be a better supervisee, whatever it is. 

Then finally, I would say, be willing to jump in and try new things. I think that there are a lot of the times, where my supervisor would ask me to do something that was definitely a little bit outside of my comfort zone, something that I hadn’t had experience with or something that I didn’t know or didn’t feel like I can necessarily handle on my own. But something that he really valued was that I always said, great I, I had x, y and z, which might be relevant to this, I don’t have specific experience with this, but I’m happy to jump in and like do a first pass at it. And then maybe we can go over it together and see how I can improve.  That also shows that like you really do want to learn and you really want to do things and take ownership over your own work. And I think that’s awesome for a supervisor who definitely wants to be guiding you as much as they can, but doesn’t necessarily want to be holding your hand through every single experience that you might be doing. Those are a few ways to be a really great intern. 

Also just make sure that you’re doing everything you can to convert that internship into a return offer. And then I would say last summer was just such an incredible experience. I think there are so many things that I remember and take with me from the internship. But there are definitely a few things that sticks out to me as being specifically memorable in terms of my learning and my work. 

One of the things that really taught me how to take ownership over my work and creatively problem solve was building out that survey cutter that I had mentioned before, on my own and then getting to present the results to my full team. That was a really good learning experience for me, from start to finish. I really learned how to like take ownership, how to utilize the people around me to kind of help me with things that I didn’t know how to do. And then also how to be creative and be able to problem solve when I ran into a roadblock, and I had no idea how to get around it. Yeah, that’s definitely a really memorable experience for me in terms of my learning and the things that I learned from my internship. 

Another thing that really sticks out to me is that being is really intentional about creating a good work life balance for their employees. So one of my favorite memories from the summer is one of the last days of the internship where all the interns got to go out on a fun paddle boat for the day, and then spend the afternoon together at bar taco. So I think that it was really great because the mix between all the fun things and all of the bonding moments with the interns, as well as all of the work that we got to do, really made it the perfect experience. And I’m so grateful that I was able to have that experience with Bain.

Thank you so much for listening, I hope that you got some good tips on how to convert the internship into an offer and also what it’s like to be an intern at Bain.

MC: Japheth Mast  18:16

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