A Summer Internship at Deloitte that Ticked Every Box

When asked what sets UCLA Anderson apart from other top business schools, Morgan Muhonen (’23) answers decisively: “Anderson goes the extra mile to provide the courses, support resources and advisors to help us succeed in every industry. I’ve benefited immensely from it all, and I am so excited to pay it forward!”

In summer 2022, Muhonen landed a stimulating and challenging internship at Deloitte Consulting in the company’s customer strategy and applied design division. Faced with many options and opportunities, Muhonen knew this internship checked all the criteria she had set. “My career goal is to work at the intersection of entertainment, consumer products and hospitality,” she says. “When I was considering my options for the summer, it became clear that an internship in consulting would enable me to gain the experience and perspective necessary to accelerate my career.”

The selection process for consulting internships is notoriously rigorous, and Muhonen knew it would require careful preparation. Anderson’s Parker Career Management Center gives students access to resources vital to a successful recruitment process. Students benefit from services such as Anderson Career Teams (ACT) and Interview Prep Teams (IPT) to prepare for recruitment.

“These programs, the Parker advisors and the interview and case prep curriculum provided by the Management Consulting Association were the most helpful throughout the recruitment process,” Muhonen says. “I could not have secured this internship without them.”

Muhonen’s Deloitte internship focused on client-facing work, a key experience she needed to round out her professional skill set.

“I was assigned to a team helping a restaurant company scale its technology across multiple countries,” she says. “My tasks were to help define and align the company’s vision within the context of different regions and stakeholders, identify gaps that exist in the company’s current technology and build a plan that will enable the company to pilot and scale future technology. I supported the team with analysis, deck creation, meeting facilitation and workshop development to bring together leadership and other teams.”

Muhonen was especially gratified by Deloitte’s collaborative culture. “I appreciated the open relationship my team maintained with the clients. While building decks for the client is a standard task for consulting internships, we regularly dedicated time to brainstorming and exploring creative, strategic ideas with the clients, without having to even put one slide together. In my opinion, these were the best meetings.”

In addition to developing client-facing skills, Muhonen wanted to further her mastery of quantitative subjects. She says her Foundations of Finance, Accounting and Business Analytics with Spreadsheets courses at Anderson “raised my comfort level in reading financial statements and evaluating business problems through data. And I was able to apply these skills to the analysis required for the client.”

Muhonen’s first year at Anderson was instrumental in helping her optimize her internship experience. “The engagement allowed me to put the knowledge I acquired as a first-year Anderson MBA directly to use, as well as to leverage my ability to learn and deliver quickly. Just like in our classes, there wasn’t enough time to research and perfect everything, so I approached every experience as a learning opportunity to improve my work.”

Muhonen’s favorite first-year course was Managing Disruptive Business Technologies, which took a close look at what characterizes a technology as “disruptive” and sustainable in today’s ever-changing world.

“We read multiple books and case studies about companies that both succeeded and failed in their attempts to change an industry, trying to ferret out the principles we could apply as future business leaders,” Muhonen says. “Understanding the paradigm-changing role that technology plays in various industries helped me to bring a more informed perspective to the analysis of my client’s global technology requirements.”

Muhonen’s summer internship helped round out her portfolio of skills and experiences, as well as clarified her goals for her second year at Anderson and her post-MBA career journey. “I chose UCLA Anderson because of the unparalleled student culture and unique range of job prospects I’d have access to,” she says. “Anderson students aren’t afraid to pursue their dream jobs no matter the challenges. More important, they also help their classmates achieve their goals along the way.”