More Learning than a Classroom
As someone who undauntedly keeps looking to acquire the ‘latest skills’ to increase her knowledge base, and can be found spending endless hours engaging with MOOCs on Coursera and edX, I was amazed when I realized how my experiences at Kepler have surreptitiously added to my professional skillset without my ever having to attend a ‘course’.
So, being the economics major that I am, I’d like to throw some light on how experience in consulting provides one with valuable skills and propels them up their knowledge curve!
In essence, there are the 3 things that will happen to you:
- You’ll become a no nonsense person: We follow the MECE – Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive principle everywhere. Emails. Conversations. Decks. You name it! This principle will transform you into someone who can bring structure to haphazardness & can elicit the true meaning of things from amidst marketing jargon. I’ve gone through 100+ documents and extracted valuable information to define the major pillars for an industry. I’ve developed issue trees to drive focus to the right problems. And most importantly, I’ve learnt to always ask the ‘so what’ of things.
- You’ll break up with the random approach: We are data driven. We thrive on analysis. We deep dive into complex problems to come up with legit solutions backed by facts. I’ve used excel analysis to solve major business problems, to plan Kepler’s Diwali party, to find the best hotel in Hong Kong and other endless issues.
Your decisions will never be random, not anymore. Heck, you’ll even take the randomness into account as the additional epsilon to the problem equation. You’ll have the sweet satisfaction of having accounted for every factor and making the best choice always. - You’ll have a strong sense of independence: I make this ‘facts backed’ statement for I’ve had the opportunity to engage one-on-one with executive level clients at the client site in Hong Kong, contribute to projects with freedom of opinion, present my findings to senior clients with the team, be a part of campus recruitment, organize Kepler events, work on Kepler’s branding and the list goes on.
- You’ll be the go-to person: Within 6 months of working at Kepler, I’ve gained proficiency to some extent in topics around insurance, practice management and technology and am on my way to write a white paper on the Indian insurance market. You’ll get to deep dive on a plethora of topics across industries with strong mentorship & support to gain command of the subject.
So, while I continue my journey with MOOCs, I hope consulting keeps inculcating new skills in me that can only be gained with experience. And I promise I’ll share them in the next blog post to come!