Archive for November, 2011

By Onyeka Azike, Communication Shawdow Chair – TMCA

OPEN UP. This was the crux of the presentation skills workshop delivered by Prof. Baer. The session kicked off with Prof. Baer laying out the agenda for the session as well as anecdotes highlighting the importance of good presentation skills. If you lack the ability to clearly and effectively communicate your ideas, people will underestimate your business ability. Although it is ok to be nervous – because it shows that you are taking the presentation seriously – you must OPEN UP: Organized, Passionate, Engaging, Natural, Understand and Practice.

Prof. Baer recommended that you identify three critical points, state them at the beginning of the presentation, expand on them and then end the presentation by reminding the audience of those three points. This results in an organized and structured presentation that is easy for the audience to follow. Prof. Baer also mentioned several times in the session the importance of having an executive summary. CEOs do not want to wait until the end of your presentation to find out what you need from them. Tell them upfront. Delivering your presentation with passion, using assertive words, is an essential part of an effective presentation.

Avoid umms and like other…err…ummm…like other “verbal graffiti”. Speak clearly and pause deliberately for emphasis. Visual aids should be simple and easy to read. Additionally, your audience is likely to enjoy your presentation more if you engage them by asking question, for example. Let your delivery be natural and conversational. Gestures can be used to highlight important points, for example, extending your hands from low to high to show increase in revenue.

Before the presentation, make sure you completely understand the audience, product, company etc. It is important to understand who is in your audience, why they are there and what they want to hear from you. Lastly, practice, practice and then practice some more, if possible in the venue of the presentation to get acclimated to the environment. Pay particular attention to your body language and ensure that it conveys confidence. Standing tall with your hands at your side is the best posture; not slouching or with your hands in your pocket, or folded at your back or in front. Prof. Baer’s workshop ended with three volunteers from the audience each giving a short presentation and receiving constructive feedback from Prof. Baer and other students.

Written by: Jessica Macias Bochatay, Shadow Chair CMC at TMCA

Do you have a passion for consulting and the determination to succeed? Do you need knowledge, skills and experiences to make a significant impact as a consultant? Are you trying to be an effective catalyst of consultancy at Thunderbird? These were some of the questions which TMCA’s marquee event “Clash of Consultants 2011” helped answer for the highly-competent students who participated in the event and the audience who came to cheer them.

The Clash of Consultants (CoC) is TMCA’s premier consulting case competition for Thunderbird students. Over the course of the competition, participating students worked in teams, analyzed the case of Sompack, a Turkish manufacturer of cosmetics packaging that has traded off quality for cost, in order to compete with low-cost products from China, competed in a Preliminary Round, attended a presentation skills workshop by Professor Baer and attended the finals on November 4^th 2011. Pitching to a panel of judges made up of some of Thunderbird’s foremost professors the final six teams pitched for the coveted title and exciting prizes.

On September 25^th 2011, TMCA members were invited to participate in the CoC and asked to create and develop their own teams. Within a few days, 14 teams were created by 60 applicants, 60% of which were 1^st trimester students. Due to the overwhelming response to the event a preliminary round was held on October 21^st and each and every team was given an opportunity to present their preliminary assessment of the case to a panel of judges comprised of Prof. Elizabeth MacDonald, Michelle Toto (TMCA President) and Anuj Mathur (TMCA Vice-President). The quality of the preliminary presentations was excellent and the judges selected the top six teams who had the opportunity to move on to the finals.

On November 4^th – the day of the finals, each team pitched to a panel of judges which included Prof. Michael Finney, Prof. Rick Baer, Prof. Gabriel Gonzalez and Thunderbird student Porter Searcy. The finals was held in AT&T and was attended by a number of students – many of them came to learn, others came to support their fellow colleagues go through this challenging yet enriching experience. Although the caliber of every presentation was impressive, only two outstanding teams had the joy of winning the competition. The team made up of Darshan Shah, Munish Jhaveri, Karan Singh, and Vinod Jayavelu won the first prize and walked away with the honors and a $300 gift card. The Runner Up team made up of Sandeep Das, Navjyot Ukarde, Anisha Vinny and Jaseem Pookandy received $200 Gift card. The awards and recognitions were certainly not cut short, Nick Ford and Navjot Ukarde received special awards for the ‘best presenters’ and the audience also had the opportunity to play a raffle in which one fortunate person received an iPod.

Finally, everyone was invited to a reception in which finalists received further team and personal feedback on their presentations by the judges and students in the audience. The event was highly appreciated by everyone present for its detailed planning and flawless execution which would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of a team of TMCA volunteers comprised of Amit Ganeti, Joy Ma and Benny Axt.

Please access the winning presentations by visiting  Thunderbird Management and Consulting Association

Sandip Patil T-bird ‘10 , speaks to Karan Singh,T-bird’12  about his experiences at Thunderbird and management consulting as a career.

Karan: What are you doing currently? What is your role and position in your current organization?

Sandip: I joined as part of financial management group. My group is part of performance and technology practices within KPMG. Under management consulting there are five to six groups that cater to various services within the industry and one of the major [services] is financial management and I am part of that group. I usually deal with financial process, focusing on financial practices. For companies that want to do improve cash flows cycle or want to revisit their procurement process. So we basically coach the company and help them understand what needs to be done to get them to a point where they feel confident about what they are doing.

Karan: You come from an engineering background. How did thunderbird help you in making the transition from your background as an engineer to your position as a management consultant? What type of courses did you take? What kind of activities did you participate in that helped you in your current role?

Sandip: In my engineering background, I was basically consulting for a while so I had opportunity to interact with my clients. My interaction with clients really complemented the [management consulting] profile. Management consulting was in the back of my mind when I joined Thunderbird but I wasn’t sure if that way my target. But what was the most important was the Consulting class with Prof. Finney. This was the most important class and highly practical. There are some other courses in the school where you could interact with your clients, describe their issues and help them solve their problems. None of the other classes have the structured methodology to help you as a consultant. In Prof. Finney’s class, the first thing that you do is define the problem. It sounds really basic but it is important in consulting. First you need to know what you are doing, what you are going to solve for the client so you have to define the goal and define the scope of your assignment, prepare a structure, prepare a timeline. You go through the entire process so that class was important and that helped me in my current role. In addition to that a couple of other courses that I would say important are Supply Chain and Managerial Accounting. As part of financial management group when I was getting interviewed, I really surprised to see how much overlap the supply chain and financial management had in common.

Karan: That’s good to hear because many people do not correlate finance with supply chain and they only focus on finance

Sandip: If they are interested in financial management those courses helps.

Karan: As an international student, you managed to land a job in a top 4 consulting firm . How did you prepare for the interviews, what resources did you use?

Sandip: I had four years of experience. It is hard especially in this economy. Networking is really important. When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, it is important to personalize the request and then follow up with either a meeting in person or a phone conversation.

Karan: In management consulting, cracking the case interview is really important, how did you prepare for the case interview?

Sandip: It is really important to have a partner who is really interested in consulting . I highly recommend caseinterviewprep.com. It is by a guy from standford and he has 6 hours of video of how interviewers think about case interviews. That is just a starting point. With your partner, challenge each other and criticize each other constructively. In case interviews, it’s all about logic.You can also use your linkedIn network. You could tap into the alumni network to get more practice for case interviews.Instead of informational interview you can request the alumni to conduct a 20 min case interview with you.

Karan: I know you have been involved in TMCA. What role can the TMCA play in helping its members better prepare?

Sandip: TMCA can do its part by organizing mock case interviews and inviting speakers. In addition to that, arrange discussion panels that invite consultants from the local phoenix area, for example the KPMG phoenix office. Also use the alumni network and talk to people who are doing it day in day out to get a better understanding of what consulting really involves.Your resume should look like a consulting resume. You cannot have a generic resume. It should look like a consulting resume. Also, Believe in yourself that you can do it. You have to believe that one day you would be in consulting for sure. Believe in your dream.