Beyond the Hedges: An Interview with Tay Jacobe‘18
Tay Jacobe
is a Business
Analyst for
Deloitte
Consulting,
LLP in McLean,
Virginia. A
member of
Wiess College,
Tay graduated
from Rice in
2018 with
degrees in
Economics and
Policy Studies. enjoy tackling interesting challenges and
want to explore your options, while still
being employed by one company. I can’t
emphasize enough how useful this career is
for exploring multiple career paths; within
consulting, there are so many industries you
can work in and service types that you can
explore! with people who are smarter and more
experienced than me because I can learn
from them. My non-work-related favorite
part of my job is the travel! I get to explore
and experience new places around the
country without money as a consideration,
which is an amazing way to live at this
point in my career.
How did your classes at Rice as well as
your overall student experience help you
prepare for current role in your career?
In what ways do you feel you could have
been better prepared? How do you like living in McLean,
Virginia?
How have you enjoyed your first year at
Deloitte? I can’t say that any specific class I took at
Rice comes into play in my daily work,
but I do think my time at Rice was great
preparation for consulting. Rice taught me
to work hard, to work well with others,
and to lead. These skills come into play
every hour of every day in consulting. It is
an incredibly team-oriented job, so being
able to work well in a team is a vital skill.
One way that I could have better prepared
for the position as undergrad is investing
more time in developing skills in Excel,
Tableau, SQL, and PowerPoint. Strong
technical skills really help you stand out as
a consultant, and they also make you more
desirable to managers, so that you’re more
likely to be staffed on projects that you’re
interested in. I would definitely recommend
gaining familiarity with some of these
platforms if you’re interested in consulting!
Consulting definitely has its ups and downs.
There are moments when I am really
excited about my work, but it is a difficult
role that sometimes requires tedious
deliverable-making. I really enjoy the
parts of my work that present interesting
challenges that allow me to work directly
with people to help them solve their
problems.
What can you tell interested students
about consulting?
Consulting, like Rice, is hard. The job
requires you to devote most of your time
during the week to work, and sometimes
you will be away from home for the entire
week. With that in mind, I think that
consulting is the type of career that is suited
for certain types of people. I wouldn’t
recommend that you pursue a career in
consulting if you really want predictable
work hours or work-life balance in a career.
However, I definitely can recommend
pursuing a career in consulting if you
I’m originally from Virginia, so it’s great
because I love the DC area and living close
to home. However, I’m not actually home
that much because I am usually working at
a client site elsewhere in the country during
the week. On the weekends, I often exercise
Deloitte’s “alternative travel” option, which
allows me to fly to another city at no cost
(so long as the flight costs the same or less
than the flight home). I’ve been trying to
take advantage of this opportunity as much
as possible and have visited many of my
Rice friends, who are working all over the
country. This past year has been interesting
because it has definitely become a nomadic
point in my life in which I feel as if I don’t
live in any one place!
What are the best parts of working at
Deloitte?
I really enjoy working with such a talented
group of people. Everyone I meet at
Deloitte is smart, and I love working
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