Haas Alum Discusses Inclusion and Accessibility on Business School Campuses
Alvaro Silberstein MBA, ’17, chose to attend the Berkeley Haas School of Business not only for its proximity to Silicon Valley and educational strengths, but also because the school had a proud history of helping students with disabilities.
Continue reading…Top MBA Recruiters: Charles Schwab
With close to 350 branch locations and a headquarters in San Francisco, Charles Schwab is one of the country’s ultimate destinations for business school graduates. Its solid reputation and a history that spans almost fifty years make it appealing, but the efforts Schwab makes to recruit are also part of reason to explore working there.
Continue reading…How Can You Earn a Career at Deloitte?
In 2017, Deloitte placed 11th out of “Fortune’s 100 Best Companies” to work for. It achieved its top slot thanks to the company’s focus on work/life balance where “you decide how fast paced/slow paced you want to take it.” In fact, 91 percent of Deloitte employees say their workplace is great with:
- Great challenges (96 percent)
- Great atmosphere (95 percent)
- Great rewards (94 percent)
- Great pride (97 percent)
- Great communication (95 percent)
- Great bosses (94 percent)
So, it’s no wonder that Deloitte is a top career choice for many MBA students. The company fits the 33 percent of 2016 post-graduate MBAs who want to work in consulting according to the 2017 Prospective Student Survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). And Deloitte also falls into the Big Four—KPMG, EY, PwC, and Deloitte—a prestigious place to be.
In addition, Deloitte is a major MBA recruiter with a depth of different career opportunities including Strategy & Operations, not just consulting. According to Transparent Career—a GlassDoor for MBA students—Deloitte ranks as the seventh best consulting company to work for with a composite score of 81/100.
Why You Should Consider Deloitte
So, why should you consider Deloitte as your next career move?
- Culture: For 18 years, Deloitte has been on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. That indicates consistency.
- Giving Back: Deloitte supports more than 5,000 nonprofits each year through its workplace giving program. Plus, workers gave more than 440,000 volunteer hours in 2016.
- Inclusion: Approximately 2/3 of Deloitte’s new hires were women and minorities, and DiversityInc ranks it as one of the “Top 50 Companies for Diversity” and has done so for 13 years.
Deloitte also pays very well. In fact, according to a recent Business Insider article, Deloitte is ranked as the fifth best paying consulting firm for MBAs. Deloitte Consultants can expect a total compensation package of $221,250. The break down is as follows:
- $25,000 signing bonus
- $149,000 base salary
- $2,500 relocation local or $10,000 relocation out-of-state
- Up to $37,250 in performance bonuses
As for what working at Deloitte is like, according to efinancialcareers, “People say they love working for Deloitte because of its ‘dedicated workforce, dynamic and exciting work environment [with] opportunities for professional growth and advancement,’ as well as its ‘flexibility and mobility’ and ‘interesting assignments.’”
And one current employee described Deloitte as “invested in learning and development” saying that “partners and directors are very approachable” while coworkers are “well-educated and professional.”
Life at Deloitte
What’s a day in the life of a Deloitte new hire look like? It depends on where you work. Deloitte isn’t just a consulting company. MBAs can work in a variety of industries including banking, energy, national defense, real estate, and entertainment and in a variety of functions from mergers and acquisitions to audit and assurance, tax, and financial advisory.
Your career path at Deloitte will depend on where you’re hired. If you’re thinking of a career in management consulting, then joining the Strategy & Operations program as a Business Analyst is a smart move. As an MBA, you’ll start at the senior consultant level for two to three years. From there, you’ll move to manager for three to six years, senior manager for 406 years, and then finally reach principal/director. Within this career path, you’ll help market-leading client organizations tackle their complex business programs to drive results. You’ll be exposed to a variety of industries, clients, and projects.
There are quite a few other options as well. You can join Deloitte as a:
- Senior Consulting in Technology, where you’ll make strategic decisions where technology intersects with business strategy. In this position, you’ll use technology to help companies grow and evolve.
- Human Capital Consultant, where you’ll help clients develop solutions across their enterprise looking beyond human resources.
- Audit Staff Assistant, where you’ll work with a team to navigate the difficult landscape of auditing first-hand.
Depending on your previous experience, MBAs at Deloitte can work in one of eight divisions:
- Audit
- Consulting
- Financial Advisory
- Internal Client Services
- Real Estate
- Risk
- Tax Consulting
- Technology
Landing a Deloitte Career
Landing a job at Deloitte starts with their Deloitte Consulting Immersion Program, Client Service Internship, and various competitions. In each of these programs, MBA students will have the opportunity to interact with higher-ups at Deloitte who are responsible for hiring.
During the internship, MBA students will spend eight to ten weeks working in one of four business functions: risk and financial advisory, audit and assurance, consulting, and tax. On the other hand, the Immersion Program is just three days in length but provides MBAs with the opportunity to evaluate the depth, breadth, and quality of the job opportunities at Deloitte. As for the competitions, the National Case Competition and the National Consulting Case Competition are held at Deloitte University each year—inviting top students from MBA programs around the world.
Still, landing a job at Deloitte isn’t easy. Heidi Soltis-Berner, the Managing Director for talent at Deloitte, told efinancialcareers:
“We’re always looking for the best talent, and we’re pretty selective in who we hire. Overall, our applications were very similar to last year—we got around 500,000, and in the fiscal year 2016 we hired approximately 18,000 individuals, about 50 percent to 60 percent were from a campus setting, which equates to about a 4 percent hiring rate, pretty close to what it was last year.”
Specifically, at the graduate level, Deloitte added 6,400 new hires in 2016—most of those post-internship. According to the Deloitte website, qualified MBA candidates looking to earn a Senior Consultant position should have:
- 3-5 years work experience (preferably in a large company)
- A high level of personal and professional experience and history
- Superior analytical skills
- Willingness to travel
- Leadership capabilities and solid teamwork skills
- Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills
Berkeley Haas Debuts Dialogues on Race Seminar Series
Discussing race, identity, and power among colleagues can be a tough hurdle for any group, but the new Berkeley Haas School of Business ten-week, student-led seminar entitled “Dialogues on Race” is leading students to a more welcomed environment to do so.
The Race Inclusion Initiative surveyed MBA students and found that despite the fact that the vast majority “believes that understanding racial dynamics is a key component of effective leadership, less than 50 percent say they are comfortable talking about race.”
“Dialogues on Race” co-facilitator Liz Koenig, MBA ’18, believes, “The ability to reflect on identity and power is a core competency, certainly for being a leader of any kind, or a manager of human beings. My hope is that we get to a place where this is considered core to the fabric of any MBA program.”
Koenig, co-facilitator Om Chitale, MBA ’18, and faculty sponsor Assistant Professor Drew Jacoby-Senghor, “actively recruited a broad cross-section of students,” which ultimately yielded a 60/40 racial and ethnic breakdown similar to that of the US. “We didn’t want to end up in a situation where there was anyone who felt like they had to speak for a group,” adds Koenig.
Students who participated in the seminar were prompted to share reflections about when they first began to understand their racial identity, as well as “past experiences talking about race, and hopes and concerns for the class.” Anne Kramer, MBA ’18, offers, “We were there to understand differences and then have a dialogue about them.”
As someone who identifies as both black and Pacific Islander, Erin Gums, MBA ’18, and VP of Diversity of the MBA Association, explains that she had “thought about and talked about race her entire life—but was not having those conversations with her white peers.”
“Issues of race and racism are so complex and messy—there’s no one approach or one good way to solve it. If it were that simple we would have figured it out by now. There are many roles we need people to play to address systemic issues,” Gums said.
She adds, “I have chosen to be in the business world and be a business leader, and I have chosen to play a role in pushing for a less racist society. My fluency with these topics is going to be greater than that of people who have just started thinking about these issues for the first time in their lives, and that’s okay.”
Adrian Williams, MBA ’18, remarked on the evolution of the seminar’s goals over the ten-week span. “At first it was giving people practical, tactical tools on how to attack issues of diversity and inclusion outside of the classroom. Over time, we realized some of the issues were a lot more nuanced than we thought. It also became apparent that I had some blind spots that required me to think through some of my arguments.”
Of the seminar’s overarching goals, Chitale concludes, “Businesses have power and influence in society. If we can get business leaders to be open and vulnerable on ideas of identity and power and privilege, I truly believe that’s going to have an impact on society.”
Haas Hosts Discussion With Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao
Ellen Pao, the Kapor Center for Social Impact’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, spoke at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last week, discussing her tumultuous time as Reddit CEO, her new book, and the difficulty women face in business culture.
The Berkeley Forum and Asian-Americans@Haas co-hosted the discussion, which was moderated by Berkeley sophomore Shaina Zuber.
Prior to her much-publicized stint with Reddit, Pao, a Harvard Business School MBA graduate, worked for law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, WebTV, and several Silicon Valley companies, including BEA Systems. She joined Reddit in 2013 as the head of business development and strategic partnerships, and quickly filled in for the recently-departed CEO Yishan Wong in late 2014. She and the company had a mutual agreement for her resignation the following year.
Last month, she released “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change” (Spiegel & Grau), which chronicles her unsuccessful 2012 gender bias lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, as well as her time in Silicon Valley and with Reddit.
Pao discussed her seven years as a junior partner at Kleiner Perkins as a way to touch upon a number of topics related to how we need to work together to level the playing field for women and people of color.
“Throughout my career, there would be little things I noticed but brushed off,” she noted. Pao argues she was routinely excluded from communication, meetings, and decisions.
“Despite evidence showing that the women’s investments were doing better than the men’s, none of the women, who seemed to have more education and work experience, received promotions,” she recalled.
Pao says her colleagues distanced themselves from her and avoided in-person contact during the lawsuit. However, she did receive encouraging private messages that commiserated with her battle and confirmed the company’s sexist culture.
Pao emphasized “the importance of workplace relationships in career-building.” She concluded, “Everyone has a voice. There is a systemic problem where people are not being included. And we need to change the whole system so everybody gets included fairly.”
You can read more from the Pao interview here.
HubSpot Chief People Officer And Sloan Alum Hacks Diversity in Tech
Late last month, MIT Sloan spoke with Cambridge-based HubSpot Chief People Officer Katie Burke, MBA ’09, in advance of her talk at the upcoming Sloan Women in Management Breaking the Mold Hackathon whose prompt is “Hacking Diversity.”
