CDC Blog: Broad or narrow – follow your own path

- - - Consulting Blog

Broad or narrow – follow your own path

Posted At : February 25, 2010 6:42 PM by David Kunzmann

Graduate Programme: Consulting

This Blog was written by Matthew Ford. Matthew joined Capgemini Consulting in September 2008.

Looking back to a little over two and a half years ago when I was in the final year of my degree, the task of finding the right graduate job seemed unbelievably daunting. With graduate brochures piled high and subscriptions to student forums aplenty, I started the unenviable task of blanket applications to tens of companies across numerous industries – a few investment banks here, a couple of accountancies there, and a selection of consultancies thrown in as well…why not! To be completely honest, at twenty-one years’ old, with a history degree to complete (not to mention a dissertation to write!), I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do as a career. Despite completing an internship in accountancy, I was yet to find my ‘dream job’ and was hoping something would jump out at me. Luckily it did…

In September 2007 I attended an assessment centre at Capgemini Consulting. The promise – “a challenging, varied, entrepreneurial graduate scheme with the opportunity to work across various areas of the business”; two and a half years on and one big decision later I can safely say that the reality is exactly that. My goal was to find a job that is exciting, stimulating, stretching and also fun. That one assessment day in September 2007 answered all such questions and confirmed to me exactly what career was right for me…Management Consulting at Capgemini. What was my main reasoning behind this? The variety…

As you can see on the website, the graduate scheme is a broad programme that enables new graduate joiners (called Associate Consultants) to work on projects and experience life across all areas of the business including Strategy and Transformation, Supply Chain, Marketing, Sales and Service, Finance and Employee Transformation, and Technology Transformation. In addition to this, these projects can span a variety of sectors such as Financial Services, Energy, Utilities and Chemicals, Consumer Products and Retail, and Government & Public Sector. For people like me who have little prior functional or sector experience, such variety is a great opportunity to find what excites you and where your skills lie. Having taken advantage of this variety and developed a range of skills, after fifteen months I realised that Strategy & Transformation is the area that I am suited to most and have since transitioned to that business unit.

There are other graduates, however, who have prior experience, a related degree or a passion for a particular business area; for these people there is a slightly different graduate track that can be followed. All new graduates join the graduate programme together, follow the same training curriculum and have the opportunity to work on the same wide variety of project. The only difference is that ‘content-focussed’ graduates are aligned more closely to a business area from an earlier stage. This does not restrict them from working across other areas of the business; it simply helps to develop a greater degree of specialism earlier on.

So how would I sum up the best thing about Capgemini Consulting’s graduate programme? As mentioned already…the variety. Broad or narrow, experienced or not, there are a wide range of opportunities available for people from all backgrounds at Capgemini Consulting. My only advice is to follow your own path and find out which one is best for you!