The A.T. Kearney Internship: Interview

What do MBA internships at elite consultancy A.T. Kearney have to offer its candidates? Ross Geraghty talked to Emmanuel Hembert, Principal at A.T. Kearney about the company's summer internship program.

According to a recent survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), choosing the right internship can make all the difference to your future career. The survey of nearly 700 companies around the world found that 62% of them took on MBA students as interns over the summer months. And of this group, almost three-quarters considered their interns before looking at external candidates for full-time roles.

The typical company reported that half of its new MBA hires would come from the internship pool.Consequently it looks as if sacrificing the beach for the office over the summer is a useful investment for any ambitious MBA student. And with demand for MBAs reaching new heights, the choice of internship is broader than at any time since the late 1990s. Major employers are competing for the best students and options are no longer limited to the very large organizations that provided opportunities in the past. In the case of the London office of A.T. Kearney, one of the UK's most prestigious consultancy firms, that figure stands around the 80% mark of the ten summer interns that the company offers places to.

What role do interns play at A.T. Kearney?

We take interns for the summer for a period of between one-and-a-half and three months and these are mainly from the same MBA programs that we choose our Full-time MBAs from, particularly London Business School, INSEAD and Manchester Business School. There are several activities in the A.T. Kearney summer internship program, including an induction, and the same training that is given to all consultants, though it is shortened for the summer interns.

Interns are immediately put on projects with clients so that they have the immediate and genuine experience of the life and work of a consultant, both within a consulting and a client team. They are also given a piece of intellectual capital to develop for the firm on which they will need to work to develop the objective of the project. An example of the kind of task they could be given would be developing an analysis of the development of TV through the Internet in the UK, but subjects will be wide and varied.

We have around ten interns, in London. There are 42 offices in around 30 countries which take interns too, but each office has its own specific program.

Do you generally look at interns as potential future employees?

The main idea of an internship is for the incumbent to have the time to assess the job and to decide if A.T. Kearney is a company and consultancy a job that they really want. Of course, the company simultaneously assesses the intern - we ask ourselves if we believe they will be successful here with us. The interns are evaluated on their projects throughout and at the end of their stay at A.T. Kearney there is an evaluative committee to decide which ones will be offered a permanent job. It's a good way for both parties to see if they would like to work with each other. There is no limit to how many summer interns we will offer full time positions to; it really depends on the performance of the intern. If they all excel we will make all of them offers, as it is clearly less risky for us to hire someone we already know than a person we have hired through the normal recruiting process. At the London office I would say that there is an 80% acceptance rate of interns to full time positions within the company.

Where do you traditionally get your intake of summer interns from?

Interns are from MBA campuses and we recruit MBAs internationally. We have people from different schools such as London Business School, Manchester Business School, INSEAD, Cranfield and Cambridge Judge School of Business. These are the same campuses we recruit from for full time positions amongst MBAs. The timing of this depends on the school's individual recruiting period; for instance we visit London Business School at the end of November and INSEAD in late February. We visit the campuses to recruit full-time staff and, at the same time present our Summer Internship Program.

What opportunities and challenges does your internship program uncover for A.T. Kearney, as well as the intern?

For the intern the opportunities and challenges are really to apply themselves to the real job of a consultant on the client side and to accept the challenge we set them to adapt very quickly to the company, to the client and to the project team. They are expected to perform at the same level as a normal consultant. It is very challenging and we put them through a rigorous program of work and development. It is better for them to get a flavor of what being a consultant is; and for A.T. Kearney our job is to test them, to be sure they are well integrated and that they have a wide and challenging variety of assignments.

In our program each intern will go on two different assignments so they can experience different types of assignments, work with different teams, consultants and clients for a broad exposure to the job. It is our challenge to integrate them and to provide them the chance to network with the company, as often, when you are on the client side, there is no time to do this. Each intern has a mentor to ensure they get enough exposure to assignments, projects and to people in the office.

What are the characteristics of a good intern, in your opinion?

A good intern is one who is eager to learn, who is adaptable and will feel very comfortable working directly with a project and a client immediately when arriving at A.T. Kearney. Successful interns are very hands-on, analytical people, with a good strategic mind. Those are the types that will succeed.

What does it take for a business school graduate to be successful at A.T. Kearney?

A lot of the qualities we look for, such as academic and communication abilities, are given among the best business school graduates. The key extras we look for are curiosity, a passion for learning, and a readiness to push into the unknown so that you are always growing and developing. That means being entrepreneurial, taking the initiative and aiming to make a difference, not just theoretically, but in the real world. Perhaps, most importantly, we need people who want to work alongside clients, rather than in some form of teacher/pupil relationship. It's collaboration, not lecturing, that achieves results.