Lina Bauer (Cohort 26) and Zach Azrael (Cohort 27) discuss their experiences in the consulting industry during the QUEST Career Paths Night.
In another virtual semester, QUEST Corporate continues to thrive in providing engaging events for QUESTees to network with alumni. The most recent example of this was the QUEST Career Paths Night on Thursday, February 25th.
“This was the first time that we had an event like this! We had never done anything that allowed students to focus on specific career interests. I think students really liked that the breakout rooms were smaller, and they were able to ask questions specific to their career interests,” said QUEST Corporate co-lead Ally Merwitz (Cohort 33). 27 current students attended the event, joined by 12 QUEST alumni!
The most popular track of the night was product management. In this breakout room, Brogan Sheehey (Cohort 22) spoke about her experience at Mastercard and Didac Hormiga (Cohort 28) spoke about his at Microsoft. Michelle Lui (Cohort 34) attended the product management track, and she shared some of her insights from the event. “The most unexpected thing I learned is that people are constantly looking for new job opportunities, even after beginning their full-time roles. It showed me that I’m not stuck in just one career path indefinitely; I can continue to learn about other potential fields and further develop my passions beyond these four years at college.”
Two other popular tracks were software engineering and consulting. The software engineering track was hosted by Zarek Paris (Cohort 29) from Google and Jacqueline Deprey (Cohort 30) from Dropbox. The consulting track was hosted by Lina Bauer (Cohort 26) from Deloitte and Zach Azrael (Cohort 27) from Protiviti. Zach gave some helpful advice to QUEST students looking to pursue a career in consulting. “To choose the best path, take time to consider what you may want your life to look like several decades from now. Then, work backward to figure out the types of careers you may want to pursue based on interest and the lifestyles they provide. Seek out consulting positions not based on which recruiters give out the most free dinners or best corporate swag, but instead based on which best aligns with the life you want to build for yourself!”
Zach also shared how QUEST helped him discern career paths to pursue when he was a student. “QUEST fosters a community of diverse thinkers, each of whom bring with them a unique set of passions and interests. Discussions about professional and post-graduate journeys are encouraged, and for myself it was among the primary spaces where I felt I could turn to my peers for advice based on the shared breadth and depth of their experiences. If not for QUEST, I would never have pursued the consulting path, which has been an incredible learning opportunity prior to my transition back to the environmental nonprofit sector.”
Additional tracks included product design, hosted by Gary Wu (Cohort 15) from 3Pillar Global and Asmi Joshi (Cohort 16) from AppDirect; mechanical engineering, hosted by Mary Smith (Cohort 29) from Oceaneering and Reid Poluhovich (Cohort 23) from SpaceX; and finance, hosted by Mandy Xu (Cohort 20) from Coach and Noah Schiff (Cohort 26) from Deutsche Bank.
“Based on the feedback, I definitely think we will plan to do something similar in the fall, especially if companies are still recruiting virtually,” said QUEST Corporate co-lead Ally. “With many students interested in product management, I think that we may even want to do two rooms with PMs!”
Thank you to QUEST Corporate for organizing this event and to all of our QUEST alumni who helped make the Career Paths Night possible! For interested students and alumni, QUEST Corporate hopes to continue hosting events such as the QUEST Career Paths Night next semester.