A thread for the Oliver Wyman Summer Internship 2024-25
Link: https://au.prosple.com/graduate-employers/oliver-wyman-australia-new-zealand/jobs-internships
What are usually the expected working hours in a day for an intern? Does this change for a grad?
Hi! As with many consulting roles, it’s extremely project dependent, so it can range from your typical early clock off of 5/6pm, or to be frank, much much later. Often though, you’re expected to be somewhat ‘on call’ until the evening; depending on the firm you can specify some nights that aren’t free for you, e.g. if you play a social sport of have a religious commitment like bible study. I like to think about consulting as different to industry in the sense that you aren’t measured by how much you work, but rather how much output you produce (and I’m sure many other project-based industries align with this).
As an intern/grad, your primary responsibility is to help with the research/analysis components of a deliverable, often building out slides or finding supporting evidence to address the client’s key problem. This deliverable often also comes with a deadline. Say it’s Wednesday, and you have a client meeting on Friday morning. The deck likely needs to be turned around by Thursday morning at least, so your very busy manager has the time to review it and you can make changes by Thursday afternoon where the process begins again. This means you have until tomorrow morning to complete all the tasks required to get this deck to a best final draft before your manager reviews it. If you’re efficient, don’t have many blockers, and don’t get other work during the day, maybe you’ll be happy to pass it off by 5pm, your manager doesn’t get to it until about 11pm or Thursday morning, and you’re relatively free for the rest of the day. if its a particularly hectic project, you might have to familiarise yourself with industry technicalities, help out on a few other work streams, or simply take a while to do it, which might mean you clock off a bit later.
There isn’t much difference between interns and grads when it comes to this mentality, other than as an intern you might be striving more to be ‘impressive’ so as to get that return offer - as a grad you obviously want towards a promotion, but may have other work-life balance considerations as it’s a more long-term position and you don’t want to burn out.
Hope that helps!
Wow, thanks for the indepth answer!