Business Consultant Review

My role at IBM is Business Consultant within the Distribution sector, sitting within the UKI consulting practice. Day-to-day, the work spans a pretty wide range — from supporting senior partners and delivery leads on active client accounts, to managing internal initiatives and communications that keep the team running smoothly.
On the client side, I've been involved in accounts across retail, logistics, and real estate, contributing to engagement planning, stakeholder materials, and AI-led transformation projects. A big part of the role has been building and presenting outputs that are actually fit for senior audiences — decks, onboarding packs, trackers — rather than just drafting things and hoping for the best.
Internally, I've owned the monthly Distribution newsletter end-to-end, coordinating contributions from across the business and shaping the content into something cohesive. I've also supported major client hospitality logistics, managed cross-team communications, and contributed to intern-led projects with real deliverables.
More broadly, the role has required a lot of context-switching — jumping between a client deadline, a stakeholder email, and an internal project in the same afternoon is pretty standard. It's taught me to prioritise quickly, communicate clearly across different levels of seniority, and take ownership of things without waiting to be told exactly how to do them

From early on, I was trusted with work that had real visibility. Managing the monthly Distribution newsletter meant coordinating contributors across the business, chasing senior stakeholders for inputs, and taking full ownership of the final output — that's not something where you can afford to let things slip, because it goes out to the whole team.
On the client side, I was producing materials that went directly into senior conversations — whether that was decks for active accounts, onboarding documentation, or trackers being used by delivery leads day-to-day. The expectation was that the work was polished and ready to use, not a rough draft someone else would fix.
I also took on responsibility that went beyond a typical intern remit across multiple Distribution clusters and communicating with senior stakeholders directly. That required both attention to detail and the ability to handle things independently without constant oversight.
There were moments where I was essentially the person holding the thread on something, making sure it didn't fall through the cracks. That kind of ownership — where you're not just executing tasks but actually accountable for an outcome — was something I hadn't fully experienced before, and it's probably where I grew the most.

Coming into the placement, I had a baseline level of competence with tools like PowerPoint and Excel, but IBM pushed that into proper professional-standard work. I got much more precise about how to structure a deck for a senior audience, how to make data visually clear rather than just present, and how to build documents that can actually be handed off and used without explanation.
I also developed skills I genuinely didn't have before. Client hospitality coordination, stakeholder management at a senior level, and newsletter production all involved a layer of professional communication and project ownership that you don't really get from a degree or part-time work. Learning how to write an email to a Senior Partner, or how to chase someone without being annoying about it, sounds small but it compounds quickly into something that makes you genuinely more effective.
On the consulting side, I built a much stronger understanding of how large organisations think about AI adoption — particularly through work where I was contributing to real engagement planning around AI tools. That's given me a framework for thinking about technology in a business context that I didn't have before.
More broadly, I developed a much sharper instinct for prioritisation. When you're managing multiple workstreams with competing deadlines and different stakeholders, you get good at working out what actually matters and moving accordingly. That's a skill I'll take well beyond this placement.
My existing strengths — written communication, organisation, picking things up quickly — were definitely stretched and refined too. The standards here are higher, and meeting them consistently has made those skills more robust.

The support I received was genuinely good, though it evolved over time in a way that felt right. Early on, there was more direct guidance — getting oriented with how the team operates, understanding the client landscape, and learning the IBM way of doing things. As I settled in, that shifted into something more autonomous, where I was trusted to manage my own workload and come to people when I needed to rather than being checked in on constantly.
My manager and the senior partners I worked closely with were accessible and straightforward to work with. With my sector leaders and task managers in particular was someone I could go to with questions and get clear, direct feedback from — that kind of access to senior people isn't something you always get as an intern, and it made a real difference.
That said, a lot of the placement taught me through doing rather than being shown. There were tasks I was handed with fairly minimal briefing, which forced me to figure things out, make judgement calls, and ask the right questions when I genuinely needed input. In hindsight that was probably the most valuable kind of support — being given enough rope to actually develop, rather than being micromanaged through everything.
The wider intern cohort was also a source of support in a different way. Having peers going through the same experience meant there was always someone to sense-check things with or work through a problem alongside, which made the harder moments easier to navigate.

IBM's culture was something I had to get a feel for rather than something that was immediately obvious. It's a large, globally distributed organisation, so in some ways the "culture" varies a lot depending on which team you're sitting in — but within the Distribution consulting team specifically, it felt collaborative and genuinely people-focused.
There was a real emphasis on inclusion and wellbeing that didn't feel performative. Initiatives around mental health, ERGs, and internal communities were visible and actively engaged with, not just ticked off on a list. That said, the day-to-day atmosphere was professional and results-oriented — people were busy and focused, but not in a way that felt cold or unapproachable.
One thing that stood out was how willing people were to have a conversation. Whether that was a senior partner taking time to explain something or a colleague grabbing a coffee to catch up, there was a warmth to the team dynamic that made it easy to settle in. As an intern you can sometimes feel like you're on the periphery, but I didn't really experience that here.
The hybrid working setup also shaped the culture significantly — a lot of relationship-building happened intentionally rather than organically, which meant you had to be proactive about it. Once I leaned into that, it became one of the more rewarding parts of the placement.
Overall it felt like a place that took its people seriously, and that came through in how the team operated day-to-day.

Honestly, more than I expected going in — and I went in with reasonably high expectations.
The parts I enjoyed most were the ones where I had real ownership over something. Whether that was the newsletter, client materials, or logistics for a major hospitality event, there's a particular satisfaction in seeing something through from start to finish and knowing the output was genuinely useful. That feeling of contribution — not just being busy, but actually mattering to how things ran — made a significant difference to how much I got out of the experience day-to-day.
I also really enjoyed the exposure to senior stakeholders and real client work. As a Psychology student, coming into a consulting environment was a shift, but it turned out to be a genuinely interesting space to be in — especially around AI transformation projects, where the human and organisational dimensions of change are just as important as the technical ones. That intersection felt natural to me and kept the work intellectually engaging.
If I'm being honest, there were moments that were harder — navigating ambiguity, managing competing deadlines, or working on something with limited context and having to fill in the gaps yourself. But those moments were where I grew the most, so in retrospect I'd count them as part of what made the placement worthwhile rather than a downside.
The people made a big difference too. A placement year can feel quite isolating if you don't click with your team, and I was lucky that wasn't the case here. That shaped the overall experience more than I probably anticipated.

Yes