CDC Blog: The start of my consulting career…

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The start of my consulting career…

Posted At : May 27, 2009 8:24 PM | Posted By : David Kunzmann

After returning from my travels earlier this year, it was finally time to kick-off my consulting career with Capgemini. New joiners take part in a two-week induction programme, ran by members of the Consulting Development Community (CDC). You stay away in a variety of pleasant hotels, which gives you a taster of life as a consultant. The schedule included team games, presentations from the leadership team (including Tom Blacksell, CEO), interactive sessions on consulting skills and evening socials, all culminating in a short case study at the end.

All of this sounds quite daunting, but it was a fantastic experience. The induction is run solely for the new graduate intake, and as so it has a great social atmosphere. The evenings provide a chance to relax and get to know your new colleagues, and there is plenty of organised fun as well. I had to organise a Monday Night of Fun, which I did on a “monsters of consulting theme” – all-in-all quite random but very enjoyable.

The sessions in the day start to build core consulting skills such as storyboarding, effective meeting management, presentation skills and strategic analysis. The sessions are run by experts across the business, and as such you get to meet a lot of people in a short space of time. It was incredibly valuable to meet so many people, as building up a network of contacts is important in a consultant’s career.

On the final Friday we were all told where our first project assignments would be. It was time to say some temporary goodbyes as we were all sent to various parts of the country to put the skills that we had learned into practice. After the induction I had made some fantastic friendships and was very excited about getting my career with Capgemini going.

David Kunzmann is an Associate Consultant who joined Capgemini in March 2009.