I started work at BCG in July this year, and was eager to do my job well and settle in. Starting with a top consulting company can be an exciting, anxious and stressful time. On top of assimilating a new company culture, I was also experiencing a new city and culture. To perform well, you need to have a clear understanding of the expectations on you. In particular with consulting, we land in new environments and need to get up to speed fast. After six months in, I have a firmer grasp on the expectations and how to succeed at the job. I wanted to write up a reflection on this starting period and provide some advice for others. I want to provide some practical tips on getting orientated at the company and getting up to speed on cases.

One of the most common pieces of advice we receive is to 'ask questions'. This is the right approach, but I wanted to unpack this advice a bit more so we can be more effective when asking questions. When asking questions we are seeking knowledge transfer between experienced and non-experienced parties. Before we go into what makes a good question, and good questions to ask, I want to explore some other factors that drive good knowledge sharing.

Besides the questions, other factors can come into play. An expert may struggle to transfer knowledge to someone with less experience due to 'expert blindspot'. This means the person answering questions may not know all your knowledge gaps, and you should seek to make your gaps clear. You may or may not have rapport with who you are seeking knowledge from. Having a rapport allows more social safety when asking for help or for posing 'dumb questions'. Large organisational structures lend themselves to levels of specialisation and formality. A side effect is that it can be hard to work out who exactly to talk to about certain issues. All this is to say there is some nuance to consider before firing off questions.

One of the most important resources to orient yourself to the company is your peer group. I was lucky to join during a busy period, and naturally grouped up with a few new joiners. As we know we are at similar stages we can safely ask basic questions, help to find the right resources. Extending off this, the 'Gamma buddy' system is another important resource. It helps provide a view into your career plus one or two years.

When on casework, the best resources are your Gamma project leader, and colleagues. Now we'll turn towards phrasing questions and what to ask to help with knowledge transfer.

Being able to phrase questions well is an important part of bridging the knowledge gap. There is common wisdom that 'understanding a question is half an answer'. Both parties gain from a well phrased question. It helps the listener to answer, and the questioner to clarify the problem. A good question demonstrates your knowledge or expectations, and asks for help clarifying some unknown. While this sounds obvious, think about the benefit that the listener gets when they have context.

As for what questions to ask, I've compiled a list of things to ask about and understand generally on cases. This can be a good launchpad into discussing and asking about more areas. I have chosen areas that are good to get an understanding, because it will make you feel more confident on the case. So here is a list of things to ask about with your project lead and colleagues;

The people. Ask about who is on the case team, who is on the client team, who reports to who and how people relate. From there you can research on linked-in and other internal sites to better understand where people fit together. It can help to draw up some diagrams connecting people. Add contact details to your contacts list, and add helpful notes to trigger memories of discussions.

Infrastructure and access. Particularly for technical people, diagrams of the infrastructure are useful to all. It took me almost 3 months on my case to fully understand how everything connects, along with the methods of access. This information can come in handy for documentation efforts for later handovers to clients or onboarding for others.

Seek to understand and be a champion of the team code-style, and create a data dictionary. Understand where data comes from, who handles it, how to describe the data, and how it is used. An unexpected approach we took was to rank data sources by their ‘popularity’, that is, how utilised they were by people in the project. This helps address issues with the team using stale data or incorrect references. By absorbing this information, you can meet the expectations of your code-master. And, you can help in the communicate the goals of the style to others.

Any repeated task you do, even manual work, write it up as if it is a program, then execute. I wrote the process for logging into my computer, onto the VPN access, and starting up work in clusters. This is a good way to store (non secret) process code, as well as provide a central place to make small productivity improvements. It will help you solidify your understanding of the process. It will also start to lead the way for documenting access for others. Lastly, while you’re busy getting used to everything else on the case, this will be one less thing you have to think about in the morning when starting the day.

Further on the above, always be documenting. Any code you write, document why you are writing it and what is the design of the function. Do this early and do this in the standard python docstring format. This will save you a lot of time during handovers and also support good code reviews.

Your on boarding experience is everyones, contribute! It is unlikely that you will be the last person to join the case. For the people on the case, their memory of what it’s like to start off fresh has passed (leading to expert blindspot). If you can document, show process for onboarding to others, they can take on the responsibility to make improvements to the process.

Through trial and error I found the above approach and outlook useful to getting started. Going into more detail about asking questions and phrasing good questions can help knowledge transfer. Knowing who to talk to for orientation, and what things you can do on your case to start learning were useful. Hopefully this gives you some useful things to think about implementing. The aim here is to reduce your anxiety and help you enjoy your work. Remember that you can always ask for help, we’re not alone in this as consultants. It can be a lot of fun and very rewarding once you’re geared up so enjoy it!