Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Co-op Interview with Srishti Kundu (April 2022)

Srishti Kundu is a data science and finance major. She joined TAMID in Fall 2020 (Lamed class) and has since been a consulting track and recruitment committee member.

What is your co-op?

“I am a Financial Analysis & Planning Co-op at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), working especially under the Value-Based Pricing (VBP) Pillar. My main responsibilities are to support the VBP team with financial reporting, ad-hoc analysis and case management.”

Why did you choose this co-op? 

“As this is my first co-op, I wasn’t very sure on what exactly I wanted to do. This role specifically was super flexible, so I would get the opportunity to try a lot of different things within finance. Moreover, BCG has a reputation for a really strong collaborative culture (which I can attest to!).”

What was the co-op application/interview process like for you? Do you have any advice to other TAMID members who will be starting their job search in the future?

“I would say the most important thing would be to start early. BCG specifically opens their applications right when the semester starts and their turnover period for interviews and offers is also really short. In fact, my whole co-op application process lasted 1 week and I got an offer within a few hours of my interview! So, I would recommend preparing everything before-hand and starting the semester off with your goals already set, because you may miss the deadline for a company you really wanted to apply to! Also, I would highly recommend talking to other employees or co-ops to learn more about the recruitment process for the specific company.”

What is your favorite thing about the company you work at?

“The people! I love my team and BCG organizes a lot of team dinners and affiliation events which is great for networking.”

What are some projects you have been working on?

“I have been working on improving my team’s weekly reporting process. For context, we prepare a weekly report/email on our biggest clients and projects, however the process Is quite manual, so I have been working on using Alteryx (SQL) and Tableau to improve the system.”

Describe what a day of work look like for you:

“This could really differ depending on the week. But, I would say a typical day would include me working on my main project (described in the last question), while helping my team out with an ad-hoc request. These requests could range from compiling/cleaning data, constructing an excel model to making slides.”

What do you hope to gain or learn from your co-op experience?

“I hope to learn more about finance and the different careers available within it. During my co-op so far, I have gotten the chance to talk to people from very different teams and I hope that this experience can help me get closer to figuring out what I would like to do full-time after graduation!”

Any advice to someone who is looking to have a co-op similar to yours in the future?

“I would say my biggest piece of advice would be that don’t get too demotivated or disheartened if you feel like you aren’t doing something really impactful, especially in your first few months and in a big business. Things will slowly ramp up once you start feeling comfortable with the company’s language, processes and best practices – which does take time to develop!”

Also, co-op is what you make out of it. I felt like I could do more than the work was being given to me, so I went ahead and proposed my own mini project (i.e., improving the weekly reporting system). If you have an idea, don’t be afraid to say it! More often than not, your team would appreciate that you are confident enough to criticize the current process and work on improving it!”