Internship Spotlight: Accenture Consulting with Maddie Arnold

by Camille Shen

This week, we sat down with Maddie Arnold (‘21) of WiB Team Management to chat about her experience as a consulting intern at Accenture. Planning to return as a full-time employee after graduation, Maddie gives us all the details about the company culture, lessons she learned, and advice she has for students interested in landing an internship at Accenture.

What was your role in consulting at Accenture?

So, the way that the internship program works is that you get put on a typical consulting project at Accenture. Most have been going on since before you got there, and will either continue on or end when you leave, depending on the length of the project. A lot of the time you’re coming into a project that already exists and filling a role that they haven’t filled yet. The good thing about that is you get a lot of mentorship from people who already know what they’re doing, but just need help doing a different task within. You get ownership of whatever you’re in charge of doing; you’re filling a role that they need filled in the project. So you have actual work experience, it’s not like you come and sit in on a bunch of meetings. 

My sophomore year I was on a healthcare project, and there I did a project management role where I helped them staff the role, helped people get onboarded, and make sure all Accenture employees met the training and confidentiality requirements the client required of Accenture employees. I wanted to be in the healthcare industry, and they match you with the function you prefer. But after that summer I realized that healthcare probably wasn’t for me. 

So the next summer I got put on a finance project. The project actually started at the same time that I started, so a lot of people didn’t even know I was an intern, which was a great experience. I was in charge of this thing called user story mapping. We interviewed a bunch of brokers because it was an insurance client doing high net worth insurance. We found out all their pain points, as well as the problems they ran into when they went to go sell a policy, so we could make recommendations on those changes after. 

You mentioned that they didn’t even know you were an intern. What do you mean by that?

No matter what, you’re going to be put on a project that has full time employees. You probably won’t even be with another intern— some really large projects you’re with another intern, but for the most part you’re with full time employees who have been working at Accenture for a long time. Usually there’s one other consulting analyst who would be an entry-level analyst, in their first or second year after college, and then another person a little bit higher up, and a partner. I was actually on huge projects both times, but I was still the only intern. You’re working a lot with consulting analysts who have been there for a year to 6 months to make everything look good, use Excel, find the data, and ask the questions you need to in order to present to higher management on your side, as well as on the client’s side.

Right. You mentioned that you went from working on healthcare projects to working on finance projects— it sounds like you had a lot of say in the projects you worked in. Is that a part of the larger company culture at Accenture or something that was unique to your role?

It’s a little bit of both. It’s definitely part of the culture that you get to choose what you work on. You get to control your own career in a sense, because you can find any project that exists in the whole Accenture sphere to work on. It’s a very big company— there are 500,000 employees and there are a lot of projects going on at once— so you have a lot of choice. You can either use connections you have at the firm from your past projects or network to find a completely new role in a new industry with people you’ve never worked with before. You go in as a generalist, so at Accenture you aren’t put into a certain industry or function right away— that’s completely for you to choose. If you do a project and find out that you love it and the people you worked with, you can just work with those people again on every project for the rest of your career there. 

There’s also something called the Career Counselor who helps you find projects you’re interested in and that your skill set would be a good match for. If you worked on a healthcare project and didn’t like it, your Career Counselor could introduce you to people around the office who are working in different industries or recommend to you a project that exists that you may not have had any idea about. Their whole job is to help people get placed. As an intern, it’s a little bit of a different experience: you fill out a survey about your interests and what you want to do, and they’ll put you on a project— you don’t have to find it or anything like that.

You also mentioned that when you came in, you were working with some entry-level consultants and analysts. Did you have any mentors in your time at Accenture?

Definitely. Something that was so great about being at Accenture is that they really make their interns and younger people known to the entire company, they’re not just hiding in a corner. There were a lot of times where I would present to people, like, “Hi, I’m the intern. This is who I am and this is what I’m doing here”. It was either to people on my project (because it was such a big project), or other interns, or with my whole office. Because of that, there’s a lot of exposure and I actually ended up getting tons of email from Vandy alums saying, “Hey, I saw you go to Vanderbilt, anchor down! Do you want to catch up for 15 minutes?” Even senior managing directors were asking to meet with me, and they would then email my boss saying great things, who would then come back to me saying they’ve heard great things about me. They would tell me that they think I’d be a great fit for Accenture and for getting a return offer, and then ask if I ever needed help finding a project if I did join full time. 

That part of it is great— I got a lot of mentorship from Vandy alum in general, people of all levels, not just entry-level consultants. On my most recent project, I had an amazing mentor who had just done the role for a week before I got there (the project was really new), and she was teaching me everything. She was so nice, and a friend outside of work, too. My sophomore year was in-person, so it was really easy to make a lot of friends around the office. The office managing director would always be like, “Hey, do you want to come see what I’m working on today?” Virtually, that was a little bit harder to do, but this woman was still an amazing mentor: she always took the time to make sure I not only understood everything that was going on with my role, but also that I was having fun. She would always call me randomly throughout the day to tell me funny things that happened, she was a really good person to bounce ideas off of, and I would always reach out to her if I had any questions about anything. Mentorship is a really big part of the culture there, and you can see that in the little interactions you have with people, but also in the people you work a lot with side-by-side.

Coming away from this internship, over the course of two summers, how did it shape your career path going forward?

Honestly, doing an internship where you had real work experience that actually mattered to the company was so effective for me. I figured that I’d be going in and doing the menial tasks that weren't that important. But on my last project, I had to create this huge document explaining everything I did and I had to train the next person, which showed me that I was actually really competent and able to go into the workforce. Obviously, I knew this was going to happen, like I thought it would be a sink or swim— but I also realized that I’m actually really ready for this, and having that responsibility showed me that and made me better prepared. 

I will be working at Accenture full time, and something that I also took away from my experience was that it’s really important to like where you work and the people you work with. Having that mentorship is so important for your own career growth. I don’t know what it’s like at other companies, obviously, but I had those people who are one, or two, or twenty steps ahead of you to bounce questions off of, like, “Where should I go? What should I do? Can you help me, I can’t figure out what I’m interested in? I want to get on this project, do you know someone?” Having those connections and having people who are willing to help you is something that’s really important to me. I got really lucky that I had that the first time I was at Accenture, and then got to stay there, for sure. 

Do you have any advice for students who are interested in landing a consulting internship at Accenture, and can you speak a bit on how you found this opportunity?

Accenture doesn't recruit directly at Vanderbilt like a lot of consulting firms do, so it’s a little more of an indirect process. I got really lucky to find out that they do take sophomore interns and just applied on a whim, not really applying to other consulting companies because most consulting companies have junior year internships, and people also do other things before sophomore year. 

First of all, don't be nervous or feel like you’re far behind if you don’t have an internship sophomore year at all, especially if it’s not in consulting— as long as you’re able to get any experience. For example, people do Accelerator, which is a class at Vanderbilt where you get consulting experience through Owen Business School. People do all sorts of different jobs and end up doing consulting, so there’s no pressure in that route. 

But in general, for getting to work at Accenture, you’ll apply and you’ll get randomly assigned a recruiter, and the best way to prepare and give yourself a leg up is by reaching out to those Vandy alums. Accenture used to recruit here and they do have a lot of Vandy people who work there, so see if they’d be willing to refer you or just help you tweak your resume or cover letter. I cold emailed someone from an Accenture newsletter I was signed up to because I thought her article was so interesting, and she ended up being an amazing person. The people at Accenture are very friendly and want to help everyone. There’s also a ton of MDs who went to Vanderbilt who are very passionate about getting more Vanderbilt talent in there, so that’s a great start. 

From there, start practicing your case interviews, obviously, but that’s such a different process for everyone. For me, I used the Management Consultant database that the Career Center gives everyone a membership to, and I watched their videos because I found that a little more helpful than reading a book, but that’s a personal preference thing. Just be well prepared to talk about the company if you do end up getting an interview. They ask a lot of questions about what you think a project would look like at Accenture, or what you would specifically be interested in at Accenture, so just be prepared to answer questions about whatever industry you think you might be going into, as well as general questions to show you’ve done your research about the company. At the same time, though, don’t feel like you need to end up there after your sophomore year or even your junior. 

One more piece of advice I wish I had followed when I was younger, not specifically about consulting, but in general: wherever you intern, if you can, you should make an effort to meet people while you’re there. Ask, “Hey, do you want to grab a coffee?” or “Do you want to sit together at lunch today?” and try and chat with people. Keep a spreadsheet of all those people you’ve met with from the places you’ve worked, so if you worked somewhere different after sophomore year and junior year, follow up with them throughout the year a few times and let them know your career path, if you’ve decided to come back, or go somewhere else, just so you can start building your network early. It’s good practice for when you get somewhere post-grad.