A Day in the Life: Consulting Firm Associate in Shanghai

A Day in the Life

• Wake up in the hotel near the Shanghai office at 7:30 AM. Hit the gym for 30 minutes, shower and change.
• Have breakfast at the hotel at 8:30 AM. Recognize which day it is by the same food spread.
• Reach office after a quick cab ride through heavy and noisy traffic at 9:00 AM.
• Prepare for the day, finish checking messages and replying to e-mails while waiting for colleagues to stream in at 9:20 AM. Working hours in China start and end late.
• Review work done by two research assistants who come from the top-ranked Chinese universities at 10:00 AM. Assign them additional areas to verify by calling or going through secondary research reports.
• Synthesize some of the findings from the RA to prepare for a problem-solving session with the team at 11:00 AM.
• Go out for lunch with some office colleagues at 12:00 Noon. Having lunch outside the office with colleagues or clients is very common in China.
• Work with another associate and project manager for a problem-solving session at 1:00 PM. Realize the need to “sanity-check” some of the data from the RA. Secondary research reports in China are often less reliable than those in the U.S. or Europe, so primary research is critical to ensure better accuracy.
• Make calls to Chinese companies and associations to verify data and industry trends at 2:30 PM.
• Work on a few presentation slides that capture the insights from the research and problem-solving session for the midterm review with the client at 3:30 PM.
• Review findings from RAs and provide additional guidance for further research tomorrow at 5:30 PM.
• Check in with the project manager on the day’s findings at 6:30 PM. The project manager reminds me to check with the other associate on her work stream to make sure we are coordinated.
• Catch up with the other associate on her work stream informally to make sure we are not overlapping at 7:00 PM.
• Go out to a really crowded restaurant for some excellent Chinese food with other consultants at 7:30 PM. Continue to marvel at the range of dinner choices in the city.
• Return to hotel, check personal e-mail, bathe, call wife at 10:00 PM.
• Sleep at 11:30 PM.