Well, its Friday and I am helping with a local office recruiting event. I have done this several times, and I really enjoy meeting interview candidates. Talking about Accenture reminds me of all the great things about my job, so even if I was having a tough day before I arrived, I always leave in a great mood.

I want to share some tips about interviews that I’ve learned over the years. I know that Shawn has also posted comments about recruiting events, but I’ll try not to overlap.

Prior to landing my first role, I often wondered to myself, why a client would select to have an analyst on their team over a consultant or a manager. After all, most of us are fresh out of college, working our first jobs in corporate America. Was it just luck of the draw, or availability perhaps?

I have discovered, that while this may be the case, we as analysts, are not a “last resort” to the client. They are not only paying for our knowledge, our reasoning, logic, and leadership skills; they are paying for our unlimited access to resources and experts. Through this first project, I have learned that it’s OK to say, “I don’t know.” We aren’t expected to know everything. Consultants are not expected to know everything. What we ARE expected to do, is to pull our resources, FIND the answer, and see the bigger picture.

One of the things I like best about working for Accenture is the network of people I’ve created, which I touched on in my last post. I feel lucky to have exposure to talented colleagues who I can build trust with by doing my best work. Perhaps just as important are the relationships with colleagues that form outside of work. I share this because I spent a fun-filled Monday evening with members of my start-group (and friends) at a Ben Kweller show in San Francisco. Although it’s almost been a year, we still make the effort to keep in touch. You’re all rock stars in my book.

Speaking of rockstars, I'd like to belatedly welcome Jacky and Cristin to the blog. I look forward to hearing about your experiences and encourage audience participation.

People regularly ask what exactly I do on a day to day basis as an Accenture Analyst. I know that I asked that question of every Analyst that I met during my interview process and the answer was always a lamenting “Well, every day is different” type of response – like they wanted to answer my curiosity, but they really couldn’t. Now, when I help with final interview rounds and candidates pepper me with specifics about my job, I really understand why that is such a hard question. We’re bound by NDAs [non disclosure agreements] and the fact is, truly, every day holds different challenges and activities.

As we move through the Accenture Delivery Methods, we are faced with different deliverables, making every day actually different than the day before. Today, however, was a fairly typical Analyst-style day for me, so I thought that I’d seize the opportunity and explain part of how I spent my 8-5.

It’s hard to believe that women in the work force have come so far, in so little time. It was only three years ago that women were earning on average $.76 to the dollar of a man’s wage, for comparable work and experience. (www.aflcio.org) I just finished reading Carly Fiorina’s memoir, Tough Choices. I think this is a MUST READ for every female in Corporate America. It’s absolutely mind-blowing to see how much women in business have progressed. Today, more then 10.4 million firms are owned by women, earning $1.9 trillion in revenue annually.

Accenture constantly strives to make the work place more equitable not only for women, but minorities as well. Sixty-five percent of women in senior management positions today not only have families, but full-time jobs as well. (www.womensbusinessresearch.org) Check out this great link for more information about Accenture’s views on strengthening women’s presence in the workplace.

It was about a year ago when I needed to make the decision of what to do with my life after college. I interviewed with an array of companies: some very big, some very small. I was torn by two decisions: Join a small start-up of a few people, where I may contribute directly to company decisions, and where the entire company fits in a small meeting room; or join a corporate leader, where my contributions are part of larger, long-term goals, and where my co-workers span the globe. Both choices are intriguing. My purpose here is not to convince you one option is better, but rather why choosing Accenture was right for me. I’ll try not to sound like a billboard.

I like the idea of being part of something larger than myself, where people like me in Bangalore and Sydney work towards similar goals. I instantly share something in common with 146,000 people in 49 countries, kind of like a MySpace for the consulting world. While I’ll never meet most of them (much like the millions on MySpace), this worldly perspective tends to be contagious amongst those I actually do work with.

Hello! For my first blog entry, I thought I would just describe a little bit about my current project. I have been a strategy business analyst for Accenture for almost a year now, and am working on completing the sixth month of my first project. I am based out of the San Francisco office, working on a price optimization project for a major consumer electronics retailer. The main objective of our project is to help merchants strategically manage their pricing while balancing customer price perception with margin improvements.

I’ve never done my own taxes before (Thanks Mom). I’m sure many of my fellow new Consulting Analysts are also tax filing newbies. Having filed for the first time this week makes me officially old. Granted, they only took about 20 minutes and required nothing more than flying through a web-based application. But it still doesn’t feel right.

This got me thinking about what Americans pay to federal, state and local taxes relative to what people in foreign countries pay. After a quick Google search, I found this article. The article has a chart showing taxes around the world and some peculiar facts, like taxation on illegal drugs in 20 states in the U.S.