STUDENT IMPACT STORY CDO Helps Student Find His Way To Consulting Career
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ometimes the path to success isn’t so clearly marked from the outset. For some, it takes a bit of trial and error and self-exploration to latch onto the right career path. And that’s OK, especially when the Career Development Office (CDO) at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business is serving as one’s co-pilot. Marc Noeh, BBA ’20, is preparing to start a full-time position at Accenture as a consulting analyst in the fall. Two years ago, his future seemed a little more undecided. After beginning his time at Ross eyeing a career in sports-related consulting and advising, he shifted to a more traditional consulting path following a summer internship with Premier Partnerships after his sophomore year. Unfortunately for Marc, he then found himself behind the usual business school career preparation trajectory. Although he had previously undertaken some impactful ventures – including co-founding Goals4Soles, a non-profit he formed with U-M football players to provide footwear and school supplies to underprivileged kids in Detroit, he didn’t have the type of consulting experience many of his peers had after two years of undergraduate studies. His 3.6 GPA didn’t seem good enough, and he did not belong to any consulting clubs or top business fraternities. Marc found himself in need of some experience and guidance. Enter the Career Development Office. There, he met up with peer coach Alanna Clark, who is now an associate consultant at Bain & Company. “I have to give a huge shoutout to Alanna,” Marc said. “She’s a rock star, and it’s been so amazing working with her.” He began meeting with her regularly so she could consistently monitor his progress while meeting with a variety of other peer
coaches on a weekly basis to get a diverse range of opinions on his consulting career-development efforts. In 2019, he landed a position in Texas as a summer consulting analyst with an academic medical research hospital in Galveston, where he redesigned a faculty compensation program to better align compensation with the client’s goals and mission. He also became a peer coach himself, helping to steer others toward success just as Alanna and others had done for him. He fondly remembers an email from a student who had accepted an offer telling him, ‘I definitely couldn’t have done this without your help.’ “That was a very rewarding experience to hear that,” Marc said. This spring, he also started his own small consulting company, Noeh & Co., which gives him the opportunity to consult for smaller real estate companies in the Chicago area. “I’m very appreciative of Ross and CDO,” Marc said. “It’s a great service, and I do think when it comes to recruiting, CDO and peer coaching is the best resource that Ross offers. If you do it right, you can sit down one-on-one with students in every single consulting organization who have had success, and you can learn so much from them. If it wasn’t for Ross’ CDO, it would’ve been much more difficult for someone like me, who’s never been in a top consulting club or business fraternity, to get into consulting. Ross CDO helped me level the playing field a bit.” The career-development services Marc received were made possible in large part by the Michael Gross Student Success Fund, established by Michael Gross, BBA ‘83, and the Career Services Student Success Fund, established by Bryan Marsal, BBA ’73, MBA ’75. These funds were created with the goal of providing students with the resources needed to plan and secure successful careers upon graduating from Ross.