Job Title: Senior Consultant, Deloitte
USC Course of study: Communication Management master's degree
Describe your current occupation:
I am a change management consultant for Deloitte Consulting. I work with clients to facilitate large-scale change within their organization using communication, training, and leadership alignment strategies.
How did you get there?
Through networking. My first job out of Annenberg was at Towers Perrin. A former colleague from their introduced me to a contact she had at Deloitte. I interviewed with Deloitte and was offered a job as change management consultant.
How did you get your first job?
My first job out of Annenberg was with Towers Perrin – a consulting firm specializing in human resources. I worked as a communications consultant. Towers Perrin came to Annenberg for interviews. I went through a series of interviews with them and was finally offered a job.
How did your experience at Annenberg help?
My time at Annenberg honed my writing and other communication skills, but more than anything it honed my critical and strategic thinking skills.
During my classes, we talked about real world problems and through our class work had to approach them and resolve them just as you would in any job.
What advice do you have for current Annenberg School students in your occupation?
If you are interested in consulting, talk to people in the field in order to find out what it is really like, go to the on-campus information sessions that most firms host and absolutely hone your interview skills. Consulting firms are rigorous interviewers with as many as six rounds of interviews.
There are also several consulting periodicals and Web sites devoted to consulting – all with very good information. And consider starting with a small firm. Smaller firms offer the opportunity to do a lot of different things (instead of the same projects over and over) and take on responsibility/projects much sooner in your career.
In your opinion, what is the Annenberg Advantage?
I think Annenberg offers two advantages:
- The education is strong and very much oriented toward the real world. I still use things that I learned at Annenberg every day in my job.
- Annenberg also offers access to a lot of job opportunities. Many good companies recruit from Annenberg because of its reputation – which makes your job search much easier.