August 3, 2020, by Leah Sharpe

My Bright Network Consulting Internship Experience

By Leona Rose Goodey, BSc Psychology with International Studies

After having an internship cancelled at the beginning of the summer period, I started looking for online opportunities that could potentially provide a similar level of workplace experience before applying to graduate roles next year.

I found the Bright Network’s experience through LinkedIn, and was accepted onto their programme for consulting (one of multiple). Throughout the short, three-day experience, we were introduced through webinars to a multitude of different consulting firms. This included an introduction to consulting through Bain & Co., ELIXIRR discussing innovation within consulting, and Accenture highlighting critical stages in change management. Some of these topics I had covered before, however, it was extremely interesting to learn through the perspective of various organisations, and how this may affect their approaches.

In addition, the experience was a fantastic networking opportunity. I was not only able to connect with fellow prospective consultants to aid one another during the deliverable work sample on the second day, but I was also able to connect with the key speakers. This provided me with invaluable connections to potentially network with in the future.

The work sample provided an opportunity to practically engage with a case study in a similar manner to a consultant, to present an independently created presentation to a stranger through one-to-one networking, in a similar format as one might to a client. In the last year, I have learnt that presentation skills are much more than choosing a default setting on PowerPoint and talking through each bullet point. It is critical to ensure that they are individually curated for the client, concise and good to look at! Luckily though, when comparing my work sample to the exemplar, there weren’t too many stark differences. Nevertheless, I would advise anyone who has any spare time on their hands to have a look through old presentations that they might have made and review how they might make them look more professional and less like a template format. This definitely helped me progress my skills further.

The internship was not only a productive use of my time in terms of learning more about the consulting industry and its key players, but provoked me to evaluate some of my own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, I recognised that my advanced numeracy skills, especially for mental arithmetic, had been gathering dust in my memory since GCSE days. So that’s something else for me to do during quarantine and much more useful for my future self than watching Netflix!

Overall, the experience was really beneficial and I would recommend anyone to get involved in similar activities. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions by connecting to my LinkedIn profile.

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