Foster Freshman Consulting: DayoSense

Changing Outlooks Through Consulting

Hi, my name is Deepnath and I was a Freshman Consultant during the Spring quarter of 2021 in the Foster Consulting Program. To summarize this experience in 3 phrases it would be: building connections, real-life experience, and changing outlooks.

Through this experience, I was able to build many strong connections between my fellow consultants, my project manager, all my advisors, and my client. In my project, I was a part of the marketing team where we focused on my client’s issues regarding marketing, advertising, and raising awareness of her products and brand. Within my marketing team, I was able to closely work with a few people and build a strong connection with them as we worked together for six weeks. I was also able to build a strong relationship with my project manager by asking her questions throughout the process and ensuring that progress was communicated with her. All our advisors were extremely helpful as well as they were able to review all our work and give their own perspective and expertise into our project. During a certain decision in our research process, the advisors were able to use their years of experience in the field and give us advice on our decisions. Lastly, I was able to learn so much about my client’s motivation and reason behind founding her own catering service. Throughout the whole process, I was able to build such a strong connection with my client via our client meetings, one-on-one informational meetings, and our final presentation.

Being that this was my first time participating in any consulting-related project, I had to learn a lot about the technical parts of consulting and how it differs from other business experiences. I was able to learn about how to do a marketing audit, SWOT analysis, and competitive analysis which were all effective ways to analyze a company’s current situation. Since this was my first time doing these, I got the help and support from my team members and project manager. With their support, I was able to quickly learn about each of these technical analysis techniques and apply them to my client’s situation. In addition, I learned about how consulting is different from other similar business experiences. I learned that unlike my previous experiences, consulting is more about aiding the client in how they can solve their issues, rather than directly solving all of them. This was very interesting as I had to take a step back sometimes and realign my goals throughout the process.

Lastly, this experience drastically changed my outlook on what I want to do as a career in my future. Prior to this experience, I was exploring other areas of business such as investment banking and asset management. However, these careers didn’t seem to completely fit in with some of the core values that I’m looking for in my future career such as being able to work with a wide variety of people from various backgrounds and the ability to work on multiple projects while at the same company. From my experience in the Foster Consulting Program, I slowly realized that consulting might be my ideal career in the future as it encompasses all the values that I look for. Consulting allows me to work with many clients who have their individual background and experiences while also being able to work on many different projects in a shorter time span. This allows me to dip my feet into many aspects of business and get a more well-rounded understanding of my society.

Overall, this past quarter has been nothing short of amazing as I have been able to work with so many people that have supported and helped me through the process along with working with such an amazing client that was always cooperative and excited to see what we would come up with at the end of the quarter. I would like to thank the Foster Consulting Program for giving me the opportunity to take part in an experience that had such a huge impact on my life.