Kok Tjun Chan, Boston Consulting Group

Junior consultant Kok Tjun Chan works for The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). He studied government and economics at the London School of Economics.

Did you do any work experience before starting at BCG?

I had done a formal internship at another consultancy firm in London and also spent some time in Mexico understanding and evaluating food security projects by UNFAO. I also spent a couple of months in India attempting a newspaper start-up with a friend from university, which BCG was flexible enough to accommodate.

What does your employer do?

It provides an external view on a business problem, across a number of industries and business functions. The focus is on providing new ways to approach a problem, as well as planning and executing projects effectively and efficiently. We tend to work closely with clients as developing these relationships increases the chances of success and impact.

What do you do?

I work on a project-by-project basis under a manager. Typically, each project poses a large overall question that gets split into smaller questions which members of the team own and try to answer, with input and support from the rest of the team.

What are your main responsibilities?

I take on the full range of tasks to answer my sub-question, from structuring approaches to my question to data collection, analysis and presentation. Essentially, the better you are at driving this module on your own, the better a consultant you are!

How’s your work/life balance?

Overall, I am satisfied with this aspect, though one can realistically expect things to be more challenging at the start. Things take a little longer and you need some experience to pre-empt and manage peaks and troughs in your workload. The issue in consultancy is less the hours than the volatility – you can get a mix of severe and relaxed periods at different stages of the case.

There is a strong culture here supporting openness in discussing needs and setting expectations. If the manager is clear on expectations and commitments upfront, he or she can help to manage the process in the team's favour.

What gives you a buzz?

It’s a privilege to be working on high level strategic issues so early in one's career. I feel quite inspired by the richness of the discussions between partners and clients, and between colleagues, and their insights in approaching business problems.

There is a strong culture here supporting openness in discussing needs and setting expectations

Any downsides?

Each new project can be in an industry with which I am unfamiliar, with a different type of problem to solve – it can be hard to have to climb a new learning curve with each project, though of course, it’s a valuable skill to develop.

Tell us about your training.

We are formally trained by experienced BCGers and professional trainers, but what really sets us apart is the informal culture of development. There is a genuinely engrained culture of teaching and learning among the consultants and senior individuals. Informally, I have learned a lot from the consultants sat around me. I have also received very useful advice through more formal case feedback ranging from ‘the detail’ (how you could have done that analysis better) to broader career advice (eg understanding how different stakeholders might view consultants or how to think about my portfolio of skills). There is a genuine sense that these discussions are taken very seriously.

What skills in particular do you think you’ve developed?

I've become a lot more confident in presenting findings to clients and managing my work independently. I've improved my capacity to structure approaches and foresee potential limitations in the analysis. I've also become better at communicating effectively.