Karla Figueroa ’13 was an Economics and Management and International Relations double major. Despite the professional experiences gained from her time working as a consultant for both IBM and Ernst & Young, Karla still wanted to improve and widen her knowledge further. Currently, she is an MBA candidate at the University of Chicago and MPP candidate in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy.

Sharing about her past experiences in the consulting industry, Karla suggested students to make the best use of the college resources, especially professors’ help in writing letters of recommendation, endorsement or making faculty connections. Proceeding some particular knowledge with excel and data analytics would also be helpful in getting in practice for the career. Group projects are also a great start, for the professional world requires lots of communications and group works with different kinds of people.

Karla’s advice for students who want to pursue consulting as a career in the future is to know what recruiters are looking for and get yourself prepared for case interviews. These include practice solving realistic cases and behavior interviews. One simple tip that she found particularly helpful was to use flashcards in help with preparing for her interviews. Karla would go online for some sample questions and write them down on one side of the flashcards, and her possible responses on the other side. This helped her to be aware of the questions the interviewer would ask, as well as raised her confidence in case solving skills.