Student Spotlight: Justin Zhang

Topics of Interest: EY, Big Four, consulting, internships, finance, rotational programs

Junior Justin Zhang is making history – not only because he’s a double major in Business Honors and Finance with a minor in MIS, but because he was a part of the first-ever EY Business Consulting Launch Internship. EY is one of the big four accounting firms, but all of those firms are now expanding into the consulting world and Zhang was one of the first-ever selected to intern in this new position. Keep reading to learn more about his time as an intern, his biggest takeaways, and his advice for his CBHPeers that want to pursue consulting in their futures.

How did you get to be a launch intern at EY?

During my time as Vice President of Corporate last year on HBA, I worked with the EY sponsors and they were super nice to me and treated our organization as a whole super well. I was really impressed by their presentation and was interested in learning more about them. So I reached out to the recruiter, and they were like “yeah here’s the application, do it, we think you’d be a good fit.”

The funny thing was, when I [was an intern] it was their first year doing this special type of launch internship. So typically, the launch internship is interns rotating between three different service areas: tax, audit, and consulting and the interns will do one of two weeks in each. But this was the first year that they had a business consulting launch internship, so I only rotated within consulting. The interns in my cohort rotated within finance, transformation design and supply chain. 

What was it like spearheading a program for a company as well-known as EY?

It was really exciting – I really enjoyed it. It was a pretty big deal, being the first cohort – I think there were 11 of us in the entire country? I was not expecting that. Because I didn’t know that going in, I thought I was just applying for the normal launch program. 

And then the recruiters kind of told me “hey we think you’re a standout high potential candidate, we want to tell you about this program, are you interested?” Of course, I was really interested. The biggest thing that I wanted to do was the consulting part of the three original rotations in the first place. 

How do you think EY was different from other companies?

I really liked how their overall vision was building a better working world, and one of the core ways that they’re going to get there is through their people. Even during spring break, when I was still a candidate, the recruiters were calling me and asking me what I wanted my internship to look like and what I wanted to get out of it. They wanted to best tailor my experience and put me in the office that would actually suit me the best wherever I wanted to go professionally. 

And then, there were several recruiters that caused me to like working with the company before I was even accepted into the program. And so that meant a lot to me. You know, it was like they were also walking the walk – they really care about their people and would take the time out of the day to make those calls. So that was what really sold me on that company. 

What did you do during your time at EY?

I did one week in finance, where we helped a large pharmaceutical company with redesigning their accounting system. In the next two weeks, I was assigned to a transformation project, which was kind of a thought-leadership assignment. So it was the other side of consulting that’s more behind the scenes, doing a lot of research work on a specific area, before you’re even going out to clients. 

I asked myself a lot of questions: how do I present what I am going to say? How can I add value to whatever problem or the solution that I am proposing? And then my last rotation was in supply chain, where I actually got to go to the client site and work with the senior manager and general tax counsel of this large company. We helped do the transfer pricing to make the whole company, which is international, work more seamlessly along their financial terms. 

I got to work with a lot of really cool people on the client side, as well as on my team side. And so I got to be pretty impactful working with their product, project management, and their timeline – and presenting a lot of important facts while working on some of their deadlines and the more managerial side of the project itself.

How did EY make changes to their workplace during COVID?

 I really appreciated that it was a hybrid model. They gave you all the things you needed to work from home, but they also gave you a badge so you could come into whichever office in the United States that you wanted to. It was really cool. I could go as often or as infrequently as I wanted to, and work from home the rest of the days. So it was super flexible. It was like they were in a transitory period of starting to go back into the office, it was completely up to the interns whether or not you wanted to be fully remote, fully in person, or some combination of those two.

What was your favorite part of the experience?

This was my first experience in a professional business firm. Previously, you had your usual high school jobs, maybe a tutor or a coach or a mentor. But this is my first time in a corporate office actually working for a business. And so it was really interesting to see how everything operated, how corporations and their teams were organized, what people did on the teams, the dynamics between colleagues between different levels of reporting, whether that’s a boss, a partner, or, an entry level staff member, and just see how all the different moving parts come together. It was cool to understand more about how corporate America works.

What advice would you give to business students looking to make the most of their time in college?

The biggest thing for me would be to talk to other people: the upperclassmen, the corporate sponsors, everyone who you can meet. If I had never stepped up freshman year to want to join that HBA committee, and eventually become the chair of the committee, I would have never gotten the opportunity to be involved and help with the corporate sponsors.

You can talk to both people that are currently students and also alumni of our program, connecting with them and telling them helps you keep that curious state of mind. This way, you can meet as many people as you can and broaden your horizons to anything that may interest you, even if you aren’t sure where to start.

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