Hi! I am Liz, and I’m a freshman in Accounting, and Business Analytics & Information Management. Last Fall, I came into Purdue not knowing about consulting as a career path, but now I am incredibly passionate about it. Essentially, consulting is assisting businesses in finding solutions to their business problems with multifaceted and data-driven approaches, varying project to project.
After getting to know more about consulting through case workshops and callouts, I joined PurdueTHINK, a top consulting club in Purdue for social impact. Soon enough, I was recognized as a consultant in the Data Mine team. We were given a relevant problem in the Data Mine with which we were tasked to curate a solution to. As a new consultant, I had the opportunity to be part of a team in creating a tool that would bridge the gap between past and present members of the Data Mine learning community. This initiative aimed to provide a structured and easily accessible way to track alumni, fostering mentorship, networking, and long-term engagement.
I found this as a valuable experience, especially since this is how I built my foundation for consulting, learning so much from my project managers and fellow peers. One of the key takeaways from this project was the importance of organization and clear communication. Given the long-term nature of the database, we had to ensure that our structure allowed for automated updates over the years. We established an avenue to retrieve new alumni data, categorized past data fields to maintain consistency, and outlined a sustainable updating process. We couldn’t do this with only our perspective, so we ensured to work closely with the Data Mine team in order to fulfill and align our deliverables with their needs.
Additionally, this project reinforced the significance of problem-solving and adaptability. Initially, we faced challenges in data collection, particularly regarding privacy concerns and alumni engagement. To address this, we explored various methods of outreach, including direct surveys and LinkedIn connections, while ensuring compliance with data protection guidelines.
Looking at this project beyond its technicalities, this was an avenue for me to hone my communication, presentation, and collaboration skills. This project needed a clear communication line in order for our client to be satisfied with our work, so that is something that we regularly implemented (i.e., setting up meetings with the client frequently, presenting updates, seeking feedback). Touching on the presentation skills, we eventually had to present our solution to the club’s executive board and the rest of the THINK consultants. Thus, we had to present effectively, ensuring that they could understand the problem and our proposed solution with zero background knowledge throughout the semester when we were working on this. Moreover, working on this definitely enhanced my collaboration skills because I was with a team all throughout the processes I experienced, which made it both fun and challenging. Fun, because I was able to hear so many different ideas and perspectives that I couldn’t even think of myself. For more context, we developed a dashboard and web-scraping, which are things I didn’t have experience in, but through collaboration, our team was able to work hand-in-hand to accomplish these deliverables. I also said that it was challenging because since we had different ideas, there were times that we would have opposing views in which we needed to find a compromise. However, I would say that this is all part of project work and what enhances the project’s output at the end of the day.
Overall, the Data Mine Alumni Database project has been a rewarding endeavor. Not only did it provide an opportunity to apply data management and project planning skills, but also emphasized the impact and importance of well-structured alumni engagement. This experience has strengthened my ability to work with a team– especially for long-term initiatives, perform through challenges, and create sustainable solutions that will benefit the Data Mine community for years to come.
But for now, I hope you were able to learn more about consulting and gain insights from my experiences in PurdueTHINK so far. I am so grateful for this experience, and I’m thrilled to share that I am on my next project, jumping from a consultant to a project manager this semester. This will be another valuable learning experience, and I can’t wait to share it too.