The Consulting Workshop by Backspace Consulting

On the 6 th and 7 th of August 2016, 1 st year students of IIM Raipur had their first tryst with the management consulting industry. The workshop was organised by Backspace Consulting, a renowned consulting firm based out of Kolkata and conducted by its Founder and CEO, Mr. Partha Pratim. 
Mr. Partha, an IIM Ahmedabad pass out, had the experience of working in several major consulting firms before starting his own venture, Backspace Consulting. Backspace, which started off as an education consulting firm has expanded into the communication and strategy consulting space. 
The session was spanned across two days where on the first day, students were introduced to various techniques and frameworks like Guesstimation, BCG matrix, Ansoff matrix, SWOT analysis and Porter 5 force model, among others. These frameworks are prerequisites for an aspiring consultant. Mr. Partha made sure that the students became well versed with these techniques by taking up basic real life case lets. 
On the second day, some more practical case lets were taken up before shifting focus to mock interviews. Students were given glimpse of how a consulting interview is conducted and how they would be tested on their creativity, analytical skills and ability to think on their feet. He gave tips on how to direct your thinking process in interview situations, by applying the techniques taught on the first day. He closed the session by giving insights into the life of a management consultant and the challenges that come along and answered any questions students had about consulting as a career option. 
On the whole, it was a great learning experience for the students and gave them a taste of rigours and requirements of the consulting world.