Students of Questrom, MS-MBA Edition: Consulting at PwC

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consulting firm that regularly recruits at Questrom, is one of the world’s largest providers of Assurance, Tax, and Advisory services. Chelsea has a legal background representing large financial institutions in international white collar litigation, and found the transition to PwC’s financial services consulting a natural next step.  During her time as an intern, Chelsea worked on site with an Atlanta-based client, focusing on an overhaul of their enterprise risk systems.  Her role involved a lot of project management work, and she credits Questrom’s focus on teaming with her success.

Recruiters at Questrom know that the emphasis on teaming is one of the MBA program’s greatest strengths, and this was ultimately what really set Chelsea apart from her intern peers.  Without having the same emphasis on teaming in their schools, working on team projects wasn’t as easy a transition for them.  Chelsea’s managers were impressed with how well she could drop into a team and work collaboratively with anyone under tight deadlines and high client expectations.

When asked what she enjoyed most about her internship, Chelsea said it was the diversity of cases and projects, as well as its problem-solving nature.  Not having a consulting background wasn’t a challenge, as one might assume – in fact, it was actually common for PwC to have interns without backgrounds in consulting.  They were looking to draw upon the skills and expertise of people with other industry experience.

The best advice Chelsea offered was to use the internship to continue to build your network.  The company is evaluating you, but you are also evaluating the type of environment the company has and what it would be like to work there full-time.  She suggests meeting new people and talking to them about their roles.  That’s a huge opportunity that interns often overlook because they’re so focused on just doing the job.  One of the things she really admired about PwC is that every year they have a Promotion Day where they celebrate everyone who was promoted within the year.  During that time, they take the entire day off to celebrate, and for the 2016 Promotion Day they hosted Trevor Noah at Madison Square Garden as well as a performance painter.  She really appreciated the way they celebrated employees’ accomplishments.

Ultimately, Chelsea decided PwC was the perfect fit for her, and the firm agreed.  She has just accepted a full-time offer and will start fall 2017.