Narrowing Down Career Interests

Name: Noah Scantlebury

Year: Junior

Major: Political Science

Minor: Economics

CFS Class: Business Field Studies

Employer: Axxum Consulting

For my Fall 2020 CFS internship, I worked as an analyst for Axxum Consulting LLC., a human capital and organizational strategy firm. Going into this experience, I was very interested in pursuing a career in consulting. I had previously had experience with social impact and business strategy consulting, but wanted to explore human capital, as well. While I have learned a lot about organizational structure, and how integral realignment strategies are to ensuring optimal practices for different businesses, I have not really enjoyed the day-to-day work that I’ve been given, which has made me re-think my desire to go into consulting. A lot of my work has been to conduct interviews of employees within the client’s organization and to create reports that will better inform the future state recommendations that will be made later on. Unfortunately, most of that just entails taking notes, putting together slide decks, and not really interacting with a lot of the decision-making or implementation of strategies that I expected. My biggest takeaway from this internship is that I want to pursue a career that will allow me to have a more direct impact on the firms that I work with, while also working less with materials that aren’t as impactful (like slide decks), and more with projects where I can develop tangible products/outcomes. In my opinion, this is the best thing that could have come out of this experience. By learning about what I don’t want to do, I have narrowed down other jobs that I might be interested in exploring full-time.