Gurdeep Kaur
Das Tor Events Reporter
The Thunderbird Global Consulting Club (GCC) had the Honor of having Patrick Lynch, Ph.D., spark an insightful conversation at the Thunderbird School of Global Business (Thunderbird) kickoff event on August 30th, 2022.
The group of global professionals comprises students of the highest caliber at Thunderbird with extensive field experience. Its mission is to provide an atmosphere where students may help one another enhance their consulting careers.
They provide students with the tools they need for their career development in consulting; the group collaborates with the larger ASU community, the Thunderbird Career Management Center (CMC), and Thunderbird alums. The GCC organizes workshops, seminars, and other professional development activities to provide students with the knowledge and abilities needed for developing a successful consulting career.
The kickoff event started by first providing lunch for those attending the event. There was a great turnout, with nearly 60 students showing up. After all the students had settled, club president, James Greene, started the event by welcoming everyone and making a few announcements. Among these, you will find opportunities for vacant positions, like the director of operations and a role in the leadership team of the GCC. The president proceeded to introduce our guest speaker for the event.
Guest speaker Patrick lynch, Ph.D., is a clinical assistant professor and the senior director of innovation and research at Thunderbird. His consulting experience in emerging technologies to advance strategies and ensure new approaches are scalable across businesses.
He taught guests about the ABC methods for consulting roles and interviews. Some of the extensive knowledge he shared at the event related to applying these methods to projects, such as the Global Challenge Lab, internships, and engagement for problem-solving. All are essential for a successful education at Thunderbird and to ensure good grades.
Some further vital learnings mentioned at the event were:
- A student must build up stackable credentials like python, tableau, and excel.
- Certification for these credentials can help you improve your resume and LinkedIn profile.
- Most consulting job interviews require solving some basic math principles at lightning speed and dealing with logic tasks.
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- Thus, before interviews, students should attend case study interview workshops and do mock interviews either with themselves or with their friends to learn to solve economic questions.
- Also, a person should be well aware of their strengths and weaknesses in the workplace.
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- For example, do you work well under pressure or in teams?
- To strengthen your professional profile, you should also know about basic consulting processes such as strategy, process, and metrics.
- When real-life situations such as a lack of data for a proven situation happen, you should be quick on your feet to handle the situation.
- Also, to increase one’s wisdom in consulting, one should gain more knowledge through books and online resources.
- Be comfortable with storytelling.
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- For example, make sure to practice for behavioral interviews.
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- Using the S.T.A.R. method is another vital process a person should follow, which stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
Students were delighted with all these takeaways from the guest speaker during the event. The roadmap he provided for all attendees pursuing a consulting career was excellent. Attendees were grateful to have him as an instructor and look forward to learning more from him at the thunderbird school of global business.
Note: students interested in consulting, please join the Thunderbird Global Consulting Club’s WhatsApp chat at: https://chat.whatsapp.com/D7lGw1bGDy9FBIADm6CEqN
