A Day in the Life of a Junior Consultant at Emerging Asia
Every industry is different, every client is unique, and every project is customized to a particular situation and need. As a result, no two days at Emerging Asia are exactly alike and each consultant at Emerging Asia spends their day in a slightly different way than a fellow colleague.
In general, consultants spend their time identifying issues, forming hypotheses, designing and conducting primary and secondary research, analyzing results, distilling conclusions into recommendations, and presenting results to the client.
Here is how one of our Junior Consultants spent a recent day:
9:00 EMAIL AND SECONDARY RESEARCH
“At the beginning of the day, I checked my calendar and action items; read e-mails sent by other team-members or clients. I have a new project beginning soon, so I conducted some background research in order to educate myself about the subject and to begin developing a secondary research file. ”
11:00 PRIMARY RESEARCH
“An important aspect of my job is to conduct primary research, which often means making cold calls to middle and senior level executives in order to learn more about a specific company or industry. I had two telephone interviews scheduled for this morning. The first one was great! The interviewee was friendly and talkative and helped me gain excellent insight into the issue I am researching. The second interview didn’t go as well — the interviewee was in a hurry because of some deadlines at his company, so we agreed to reschedule the interview for later in the week.”
12:00 LUNCH TIME
“There are many options in this part of Shanghai. Today some friends and I decided to meet for lunch in Xintiandi. Yesterday I brought lunch from home and ate in our great dining room. I made some fresh pear juice for myself. We even have satellite TV, and a Nintendo Wii in there!”
13:00 ANALYZE RESEARCH, WRITE
“My current project is nearly complete. I have been adding new research into the report each day. Based on what I learned from my interview this morning, I added some more data into the report. A few things I learned today contradict what another interviewee told me last week. I will need to conduct a little more research to sort this out. I like analyzing research results and fitting things together into a report. Sometimes it is like a jigsaw puzzle.”
14:30 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
“The Director has a meeting tomorrow with a prospective client. He’s asked me to create a short briefing document to help him prepare for this meeting. I conducted some online research about the company, its products and the scope of its business in Asia. Also checked LinkedIn and our CRM database to find out more about the specific person the Director will meet. Then I put together a two-page summary and emailed it to the Director. ”
15.00 BRAINSTORMING SESSION WITH THE TEAM
“We’re meeting every two days as a team to discuss our most recent research findings and analysis, and what it means for the overall project. Today was a longer session since the project will end within a few days. We spent two hours in the conference room, making sure the presentation was accurate and precise, and that our conclusions were backed up by research. We also spent some time discussing the specific wording on some of the summary pages, since it is important to provide a clear and consistent message to the client. The whiteboard was quite messy by the time we were finished. Lots of arrows, boxes, and text. We helped ourselves to some coffee from the Espresso machine in the dining room. That was a good session.”
17:00 TRANSFER NOTES FROM THE MEETING
“As the junior member of the team, I am responsible for writing the notes from our meeting and making sure that everything we discussed this afternoon is updated in the report. I like to do this right after a meeting, so that I don’t forget anything by the next day. After finishing today’s draft PowerPoint report, I emailed it to the project manager so that he can review it in the evening before sending it to the client. He will send it to the client before 21:00 China Time so that our client (in Boston, USA) will see the draft report as soon as he arrives at his office. By 18:30 I was on my way home in the Line 9 subway.”
