Consulting life, compared to others, is on one hand double tough, and on the other hand triple sweat. It appeals to me with the offering of an exposure to diversified industries, and a fast track of self improvement.

I joined A.T. Kearney as a business analyst after my graduation from Tongji University in year 2005. The past year was a transitional period for me from a fresh graduate to a young professional.

Everything was new and unknown when I first started working. I guess this applies to most of my peers who turns from a college senior to a society freshman all of a sudden. There were a lot to learn, from business terminologies to practical skills such as Excel and Power Point, and above all, the way of thinking. On job training and coaching is the common practice here through which you can always feel free to ask for instruction and learn efficiently. There are always people around who can give quick solutions.

Project work by itself is a good training. Life is packed with brain storming, travels, interviews, slides and meetings, which is challenging both intellectually and physically.

I still remember the first time I traveled for project work, shortly after I started working. Without any training on interview skills, I traveled to Guangzhou for interviews with an Australian manager. On the last day, due to her early flight back to Australia, I had to do an interview by myself. I was at first very confident. However, in the conversation, it turned out that the interviewee was unwilling to do it and he for several times tried to avoid my questions and call it a day. With butterfly in stomach, I addressed several concerns of him and explained that the result of the interview might well serve his needs and provide him useful solutions. And I also added that his opinion would be very crucial to our study. That interview was carried out successfully afterwards.

This was my first interview, though. Looking from now, it might be a piece of cake, but I did learn something. That was you had to hold on and came up with quick solutions while encountered difficulties in work. The sense of professionalism, independency and responsibility was embedded since then.

Practical skills such as interview skill can be obtained easily, while insights could only be attained with in-depth study of industries and structured thinking, and that is the valuable part of work. My recent engagement was to work out China market entry strategy for a global supply chain player, which is a typical consulting project. We went through piles of reports and conducted dozens of interviews and site visits. The part I enjoyed most was frequent team discussions in which we listed problems encountered and worked for solution. I enjoyed working here, to crack hard nuts and learn new stuff everyday. I still remember the words of a colleague: "as a junior consultant, at first, you don't know what you don't know, and then, you know what you don't know...". The thirst for knowledge is always with me.

Work is only one part of my life with the firm. The most treasured thing in the past one year is the people I met. People here have great professionalism as well as generosity and humor. They are more than just working partners. I still remembered the "fight" between different groups of "Super Girl" fans, weekly sports session, popular "Killer Game", bar hunting for World Cup, to name a few. The company is like a big family with great diversities.

Work hard and play hard, that's the life I am living, and I like that.