At Protiviti, we take training very seriously. But you don’t have to take it from me. Take it from Eujin, a new hire who bleeds Illini orange and blue, and who recently attended The Consultant Challenge held this fall (see the group picture above).
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Interviewing, process mapping, control testing, documenting….
As consultants, these become your basic tools. The Consultant Challenge is your training ground. From 8am to 6pm, you’re broken down, then rebuilt into a better version of yourself.
Take 40 recent college graduates, fly them out to San Francisco, place them in the same hotel, and give them a per diem. This has the makings of a new reality show.
The Consultant Challenge is a rite of passage, a trial by fire, a spirit walk. It is what, essentially, life boils down to: a huge tightrope style balancing act. It wouldn’t be called a Consultant Challenge if it didn’t actually have the challenges, such as:
- Conducting an interview with a purposefully difficult facilitator.
- Rushing to finish testing before a deadline.
- Averaging 6 hours of sleep a night.
- Subsequently drinking your water weight in coffee and Diet Coke.
- Dropping the 3 hole puncher, exploding all the pieces of paper inside.
- Wearing business casual to every single outing because you didn’t bring any casual clothes.
And you persevere through it all, not because you have to, but because you want to.