My SA exprience continued…
Many, well actually, all of my blog posts thus far have described what they day-to-day of consulting is like and hopefully that information has been valuable (I know when I was recruiting I was most curious about what the real consulting was like behind the glossy photos and food-laden presentations). However in the interest of full disclose, and pseudo-journalistic accuracy, I want to make sure that I describe as many facets of my summer at Bain as possible and therefore would be remiss if I left out the summer offsite.
Each Bain office holds an offsite each year. The goals of the offsite were to provide an update on the business, to recognize specific individuals and case teams that have exceeded expectations over the past year, and to provide a relaxed opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues. However there are a few traditions at the offsite, one of which is that both sets of interns (SAs and ACIs) must perform along with the Bain band (more on this in a moment) that I got to experience first hand. Since I had typically spent Monday through Thursday at the client site each week, I was really looking forward to the opportunity to meet and talk with some Bainies on other case teams.
I arrived at the Bain office Thursday morning as they had scheduled a shuttle to transport us to Palm Springs which is roughly a 2.5 hour drive east of Los Angeles. While I expected a typical bus, perhaps with some nice padded chairs, I was surprised to find a limousine-esque shuttle complete with multiple televisions, iPod dock, and leather couches that was more worthy of Lil Wayne then lil ‘ol me (seriously, the driver informed us the last passenger of the bus was none other than Snoop Dogg).
We arrived in Palm Springs to a comfortable 102 degrees (but it’s a dry heat so it’s ok, sort of). After a quick lunch and getting settled in my room that reminded me of Vegas in the 1950s (had I ever seen Vegas in the 1950s) we went to the main ballroom. We first got to hear presentations from three different Bain teams all vying to be chosen as winner of the Bain Results Challenge, an annual competition to reward one Bain LA team that has had a significant impact on their client. After voting for the winner American Idol style via text message, the head of our office spent some time walking us through the discussions that took place at the most recent worldwide partner meeting as well as describing the company’s strategy going forward. We then had the pleasure of hearing directly from one of our clients who discussed what it was like to work with Bain and why it was their best experience ever working with consultants (they happened to be the clients on the team that, spoiler alert, ultimately won the results challenge, a very interesting coincidence…or was it?). Interspersed between each of these discussions were some clever videos written, acted, and filmed by local Bainies. The program ended with the culmination of a near month long ping-pong tourney, a best of three that went the full three games. Of course, they brought us vuvuzelas to ratchet up the excitement to World Cup levels (I mean that in the positive way for all those non-soccer fans).
After a few hours of free time where I had the difficult decision of whether I should head to the main pool or the north pool (I chose north), we enjoyed what might have been one of the better dinners I’ve ever head while at a resort (in all fairness, it’s a relatively small field). Then we made our way to the huge outdoor field where the Bain band, composed entirely of Bain ACs, consultants, and managers and I think one Bain significant other began playing popular songs with the lyrics tweaked to make them just a little more Bain-centric. After about 5 songs it was our time to shine. While I won’t give away exactly what we sang (half out of a desire for literary suspense and half out of a desire to preserve personal dignity) I along with my 4 other SAs took the stage to perform one of the greatest hits of this, or any, generation. We coordinated by wearing all-white outfits (Bain was kind enough to provide a small budget for costumes) and had even spent some prior weekends putting together some rudimentary (and that’s putting it kindly) choreography. I’m not much of a performer (I think my last starring role was in a 5th grade play for the D.A.R.E. program) but you would never know it by the cheers of the crowd. I’ve heard a number of times this summer that “A Bainie never lets another Bainie fail.” Little did I know that this extends beyond client engagements into synchronized choreographed dance numbers.
We certainly are busy around the office so the offsite was only a one-night affair. But it was certainly a memorable one and while I doubt they’re reading this, I certainly wanted to extend my thanks to the amazing LA admin team along with everyone else the helped put on the event. It definitely was one of the highlights of the summer…so far.
Filed under: Case team experience, Internships, Outside the office, Week in the life
