They genuinely want to help you learn and advance in your career.

• Why Bain?

  I chose Bain because I wanted to work in an environment where I would be challenged but also be part of a fun, supportive community. I also wanted an opportunity to hone my business skills and learn about different industries while I figure out what my long-term career goals are.

• My passion

  My passion at Bain is exploring new industries. Through my work for the strategy practice, I had the opportunity to create case studies about key strategic decisions at a wide range of companies and now that I work in the private equity group I get to study a new industry every few weeks. It is incredibly empowering to realize that you can become an expert on any industry in just a couple of weeks if you dedicate yourself to it!

• My favorite case

  My favorite case was a due diligence of a restaurant chain for a private equity firm. In the first stage of the case, I was responsible for researching competitors which was challenging because the restaurant is part of a niche market which is difficult to size and analyze. In the second stage I built a model to determine the number of potential locations for the chain. It was a fun industry and a great team; I had the opportunity to work with senior clients and executives at the target. Plus, we obviously had to do "research" by eating at the restaurant and several of its competitors!

• My personal results story

  On a recent case, I was working with a hotel chain that wanted to identify and better serve its key customers. They had been collecting customer satisfaction data for years but they had not been analyzing it in depth or linking it to the economics of their hotels. They were asking customers about twelve different areas of satisfaction but they did not know which ones had the most impact on overall satisfaction or the success of their hotels. We were able to identify a few areas where improvement would be simple and impactful on both economics and customer satisfaction; it completely changed their assumptions about customer satisfaction.

• A final thought

  You should definitely take the time to build mentoring relationships with those around you. People at Bain are particularly wonderful about this; they genuinely want to help you learn and advance in your career. I have several managers and consultants that I can go to when I need career guidance and plenty of peers I can go to when I have silly questions about Excel; this support network makes the job so much more fulfilling and fun.