Goldman Sachs. BCG. Then She Walked Away to Build a Brand | Kelly He-Sun

Unlocked Professional: AI and Future of Work: I was very interested in social media actually, and it was my dream to be a fashion and travel blogger back in the days. When you were younger, did you know that this is where you were headed, or did you have a different plan in mind? Depends on how young we're talking about. That's the first. But of course I thought, well, I'm in university, I have to get a real job, quote unquote. The second reason why I didn't expect this is because I didn't expect myself to be the person out of all the competitive candidates to land these positions. I don't think I was particularly like, ⁓ wow, she is the president of the investment club or president of the consulting club. Like that kind of brand reputation. Like that was not particularly me back in university. Human to human interactions will still be very valued. I don't think we'll ever get to I don't see us right getting to a place anywhere near my field of thinking where we will start valuing AI interactions more than we value human to human. What do you think the future of work looks like in the next three, five, or even ten years out? In the next three years, there will be some faster movers and some movers who are still getting the gist of it. But I think it's very safe to say AI at work will be more very much more common than not. And I think there will be more tools that will have AI naturally embedded. I think new people who are newly joining the Work for is many of them will just use AI as a muscle, while some people who are not as used to it will have to train that muscle. But I I see in three years more and more AI usage across everything that we do will be naturally embedded. And I also see there are some new companies in the AI startup space that could grow and boom very quickly in the next three years, just given how quickly things move, how fast products can be developed. And there could be many companies that will be generating a lot of equity value for their ⁓ founders and investors. investors in the next coup up upcoming years. People who move fast, the ones who get promoted early, get hired at the best firms and build careers that last, they think differently. They lead with the answer, they structure everything, and they never hope the story tells itself. Our guest today didn't stumble into success. She started at Goldman Sachs, then landed at Boston Consulting Group, one of the hardest firms in the world to get into. She didn't just get in, she got promoted ahead of schedule to Twice. By twenty-five, she was one of the youngest managers at BCG globally. She became a project leader. She coached over a hundred consultants across twenty-five engagements. And she interviewed and hired the next generation of talent coming through the door. Business Insider called on her to break down what actually separates the people who get the offers from the ones who don't. Her superpower is top-down thinking. You lead with the answer, then you back it up. No burying the point. No hoping the audience figures it out. The answer comes first every time. Now she's built something of her own, a brand that aligns to career strategy, AI tools, and what it really takes to get ahead in your career. And when she's not doing that, she runs a separate fashion and lifestyle account. Business in one window, style in the other. I'm a big fan of her content and the lessons she shares on Instagram at KellyCareerMode. Really looking forward to this one. Kelly, welcome to the show. So you went from Goldman Sachs to BCG, one of the youngest managers in the firm globally by twenty-five. When you were younger, did you know that this is where you were headed or did you have a different plan in mind? I suppose I mean to depends on how young we're talking about. So I will say back when I was even huh, even back when I was in first year university, I don't think I would have imagined myself to have had this particular career. I don't think I would have imagined this in second year. I don't think I would have imagined it ev until the point where I landed these jobs that only until then did I think, ⁓ wow, okay, I see. This is going to be my career. ⁓ because you know what prior to that, ⁓ it's a couple of different factors. One is I was very interested in social media actually, and it was my dream to be a fashion and travel blogger back in the days. That's the first. But of course I thought, well I'm in university, I have to get a real job, quote unquote. The second reason why I didn't expect this is because I didn't expect myself to be the person out of all the competitive candidates to land these positions. I don't think I was particularly like, ⁓ wow, she is the president of the investment club or president of the consulting club, like That kind of brand reputation, like that was not particularly me back in university. I actually partied a lot in second year university and ⁓ and so on. ⁓ so it was a bit surprising to me. And once I did w start working in terms of what, you know, might have prepared me for these challenges, I think a lot of that was just feeling like it was do or die. I think it was surely powered by adrenaline and the pressure that I put on myself to do well. And the pressure that I put onto myself to land those early promotions, ⁓ and work really hard to improve. Almost like a video game, right? Like I thought of every day as leveling up in a video game. And you're referring to getting into that career or when you got into the job itself? ⁓ so getting into the career w felt like I was jumping off a ⁓ a cliff with nothing to nothing to land on. So I absolutely had to make it. That's how it felt when I was recruiting. And once I was in the job, it just felt like I was just in this long, maybe it's a long, very very difficult training boot camp. And there is always fire under you and you have to keep moving and you have to keep climbing. And it was nonstop. And ⁓ if you wanted to make it and l get better at it, you just had to really push yourself every day. And that's the difference between the recruiting segment versus the actual job itself. Yeah, exciting trajectory there. One thing that I n noticed that you mentioned is that you like to party a lot in college, which yeah, is is I think is something sometimes mis sometimes people mistake That is an important part of college and building relationships and the social aspect of things that you should be focused on. I've seen a lot of people that are buried in the books and the technology, but then when it comes to to the workplace, when they get into it, they have a tough time socializing and understanding and connecting with people. So not that everybody has to go out there and party, but I think that it does serve an advantage to the folks that do. Yes, and I think that there are many different ways to socialize, right? ⁓ so I will never promote, ⁓ you need to go into a late night party or, you know, a bar and you need to drink alcohol. Like I n I will never promote that. There are so many different ways to build connections. fitness now like now as we're out of school, fitness classes, right? Crafts. Other hobbies, other classes, ⁓ you know, other ways, just regular dinners, brunches, networking events, so many different ways to socialize, but I definitely agree that the the act of socializing and building your network and keeping connected with people beyond just formal coffee chats is very important. So outside of work, you're into travel, wine, cocktails, like we just mentioned, workout classes and fashion. And you also run a separate lifestyle account on top of your career content. What's your favorite way to recharge after all that work? I'm an extrovert. So after a long work week in consulting, I would need to go out on Friday night and see people and socialize. The thought of a long work week and then staying in on a Friday night and not, you know, talking about non work things and not laughing and not, you know. Letting my brain not think anymore and not being stimulated by other things, that for me would be really exhausting. But I think every single person would have a different approaches, right? But I think it's a balance for me. it's more like a mix of I do need that social stimulation. But I also love having relaxing days by myself, ⁓ calm, slow mornings, calm slow days. I realize so not I can't d if I do that did that every single day. Then you become slower too. So there's also a danger in that. You need to be aware of does your s environment stimulate you and give you adrenaline? Because that adrenaline could actually help you keep that snowball rolling for your work, your thinking, how sharp you move. Whereas if you're in an environment that's continuously very slow and complacent and peaceful, I think it's very hard for you to go into that adrenaline mode and really push on work in that kind of ⁓ situation. So do you feel generally when you wake up and you get ready for your day and the work that you're doing? Let's compare it both previously and the work that you did now and before and the work that you did now. Were you generally pretty enthusiastic about getting into your day, getting into the work, and pretty motivated already? I was always quite I'm I was always very motivated to be able to do the work, right? But back in consulting, the first two years it was pure motivation because I was For that promotion. I wanted that first promotion, the earliest window. There was no need to for me to be so invested into that emotionally, but there are several windows you can get the promotion. And getting it a couple months later doesn't mean you're bad or it doesn't mean you're not skilled. It doesn't mean anything. It might just be that you didn't work on enough projects that developed a certain skill set that was needed, right? It could just be that. But I was very emotionally invested. So I was heavily motivated, thought about that every day. Towards the end of my BCG career, I was waking up and still motivated, but it felt different because I knew that I wanted to try something else and the motivation was more, ⁓ I can't let my team down. Now I'm on the hook for so many things during the day. And it was just driven b more so by adrenaline and the pressure that I have all these responsibilities, not just for the work but also for the people. And that's what kept me going for the last part of my consulting career. Yeah, interesting. I've been thinking about that a lot lately with my career as well and my trajectory. And I think we connect on that. I would say for I was with the same company for roughly 17 years. And I never really people a lot of times they say, Well, that's a long time, right? Why would you why wouldn't you bounce around? Why would you leave after a couple of years? I was progressively growing. I was getting new opportunities to develop. I was doing things that I like to do. So All those things align. I didn't wake up in the morning dreading the role that I was in. I always had a heavy degree of motivation and I was having fun, right? Even though it was a job. So I think those characteristics are important. Ultimately, at some point, I did reach, I would say, the peak moment where maybe it wasn't so much fun anymore. And yeah, there was a shift where I was like, a lot of people were relying on what it was that I was doing, but it I just wasn't necessarily appreciating the work. So I probably Stuck around a little bit longer than I needed to just to ensure that the boat was rolling in the right direct or floating in the right direction. But I think again, I just think this is interesting because probably a lot of people get into a situation in their career where maybe they're frustrated or maybe they get burnout. And what you did and kind of what I what I did is we decided to make a change, right? We're we went down a different path. And there's some risk maybe associated to that, but also some excitement. So If you have the means and the capabilities out there, my suggestion to everybody is whether it's starting a business or or building a brand or starting a new career path, those are all things that are completely attainable these days, especially with a lot of the advancements and tools that are available for with AI, which we talk about a lot. Yes, absolutely. And that's very impressive that ⁓ you stayed for I think that you staying for that many years, it's normal. It was no very normal at one point and now we're shifting. I think work is shifting and like you mentioned there's so many tools out there and I feel like n the new ⁓ I I'm not I'm not even old I think but the new generation they're much more fluent with AI tools building vibe coding even right ⁓ than any other generation was so I think the barrier to entry for building and entrepreneurship is also greatly lowered now. So you had an inspiring corporate career and at a young age Goldman and then BCG, two early promotions, and you're one of the youngest managers globally. That's not easy to walk into or not easy to walk away from. So what made you decide that it was time to ⁓ leave that comfortable path and build your own brand? What was the catalyst moment? Mm-hmm. This is the question that I ⁓ get asked the most often. I knew that I wanted to leave consulting because a couple of reasons. Most people stay in consulting for only two to three years, right? ⁓ they use it as a training boot camp, a resume booth, and they go off and do something else. so that's normal. I was already there for almost six years, so definitely pushing past ⁓ the normal. And ⁓ for me, I wanted to try something else just because consulting was my first and only job out of school, right? Like I think for that reason alone I should go try something else. You have one life and I don't think it would have made any sense for me to say, Well, I've only tried consulting and I'm just going to stay in consulting and not try anything. It it doesn't make any sense. ⁓ three, I've always ⁓ wanted to try and explore more in the content creation space. Even if I just ended up taking a year off of work to do fashion and travel content for fun. Even if it didn't go anywhere, I thought that I owed it to myself to do that while I still can. And I was open to finding another job in corporate or anything, but I knew I wanted to take at least one year off work. After working pretty much nonstop, ⁓ with the exception of a couple of mini sabbaticals, but I really wanted to take that time for myself. And during that time I again didn't really expect to be making career content, but w as I was playing around with all sorts of formats on TikTok, I was trying everything. I I'm actually originally a photo person. So when the world moved to video, I didn't catch up and I was experimenting with video formats, even like lip sync transitions, here are some tips for travel, just everything. And I had no idea what I was doing, but some of my career content got a bit of traction and I thought, well the career space is a space where I can add more value. This is a place that's not as saturated, more monetizable as in brands here have deeper pockets ⁓ to sponsor collaborations, ⁓ and so on. And overall it's like an area that I can differentiate in, ⁓ more so than fashion or travel or anything else, especially for someone who doesn't know so much about content. And I just took it month by month. I there was no point so I left consulting first. That's the time. Like I left consulting first, did a bit of travel, solo travel, played around with content, tried to see what could work, ⁓ what what would I want to do. And then I stumbled o upon career content creation and then I started my account. So that's the sequence of events. So there was no magical, ⁓ This is when I hit a certain milestone on my career account, so now I'm going to quit consulting. That didn't happen for me. And I just took it month by month. Every month I'm very much like, ⁓ let's see like which collaborations are going to come in this month. ⁓ like I don't really know how what the revenue will look like in this space. I have no idea. And I didn't even expect to really be making any revenue. But so far it has been working out quite well, even though I'm behind on launching some of my Digital products, ⁓ like my consulting guides and other scalable monetization products. I haven't launched those yet, but even without those, ⁓ the revenue that's coming in, it's greatly exceeding my expectations. So, Kelly, going back to your brand in particular, can you kind of give a description or an overview for the audience of what are your focus areas? What do you talk about typically within Rear Mode Kelly brand and page? Yes. I have a social media account called at Kelly Career Mode. I created this because ⁓ as Jeff mentioned I do have a separate personal account and I'm still thinking about how to best ⁓ grow in the future and how I would want to be branded going forward. However, right now it is called at Kelly Career Mode. The topics are tactical advice on a lot of business communication. So how do you communicate? What should you do in this situation? ⁓ how would a top one percent performer do these actions compared to someone who might just be good or just be mediocre. And what about consulting? ⁓ you know, what is consulting all about? and how can one prep for consulting interviews? So it's a lot of educational content right now on really practical work tips as well as a bit about my learnings and where I've made mistakes and how I now think about things. If I had to summarize in one sentence, it would be to help someone become a top 1% performer. ⁓ by coming to my page and looking at the content pieces. As for future evolution, I'm still thinking about this, ⁓ how to make it a bit more even more broad, how to grow this into something that's bigger, whether it is on the career side or on something that's more p personal and more fashion oriented. So these are still top of mind for me. Yeah, and we talked about this before, but I just think this is an interesting topic. It's maybe not necessarily the career aspect of it, but more back to that content creation and your brand and whatever that brand is, it you know, I think it it does align to how a job or let's say hiring managers or companies or recruiters, they're gonna view you based upon that brand that you have and you what you've built out. And what I've learned is that it's an iterative process, right? You kind of have to figure out what is that brand. And then you might kind of lose interest, right? Similar to the way you might lose interest in your job or what it is that you do, but you kind of have to continuously be considering what it is that you want to talk about. So what c what your brand is today may change tomorrow, but I think all of those pillars that you have right now that are in place right now are absolutely valuable and appreci and I like your content. So thank you so much. So you talk about top-down thinking, leading with the answer and then showing your work. Most people do it the other way around. Why does that order actually matter so much, especially when the stakes are really high? The easiest way to think about this is how do you want to be what does your audience want to think want to hear? You are communicating to an audience. And if you are communicating to especially a senior audience or the clients or people who care more about your end results, you absolutely need to lead with the key takeaway first. They don't have interest in hearing first about the methodology or your approach or anything. In fact, a lot of the time you can say, here's the key takeaway. One sentence on this is the approach that I took. I'm happy to schedule time separately, or I'm happy to dive deeper if you'd like to hear more about the analysis, ⁓ you know, the other considerations, the data used, so on. But time is short, people have low patience, and you need to know your audience. Hence why top down communication is very important. Yeah, and I resonate with that in terms of like meetings themselves. When I started working with Meta as my customer, I remember they were going through a hyper growth phase and it was tough sometimes to even get a meeting room. We'd be waiting outside as soon as one opens up, we'd be popping in. We have and usually 30 minute, 15, sometimes 15 minute time slots. And so my experience and trajectory Up to that point had been a lot of heavy relation, conversational types of communications with my customers. And it really came down to we don't have time for this. There's going to be a meeting right after this. So get to the point, get what it is. If there's some time left over at the end, then obviously maybe we can spend it doing other things or discussing other things. But unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of times. But I do think that that's just the trajectory of the way things work these days, especially in like Tech companies or more fast-paced types of environments. And going in as let's say, kind of somebody who's entry level or trying to figure things out, I think that's that's a significant tip. I even learned had a lot of new hire recruiters that I would work with and I'd ask them questions sometimes, and I'm super busy too. And I would say, I'd ask them a pointed question, and they would give me a lot of unnecessary details at the beginning. And I would say, not to rub you the wrong way here, not to be blunt, but I need the answer first, right? Give me the answer, right? And then we'll go from there, right? And then we'll determine whether or not those additional details matter or are necessary. I agree. And I think that's a learned skill, but a valuable message out to the audience as well. Absolutely. So you were coaching over a hundred BCG consultants across twenty-five engagements. That's junior staff all the way up to leadership. What was the most common thing that you kept having to fix over and over again? Yes, I will say there are a couple of things, but the first thing is communication. And it's very broad and it's very abstract, but during my time coaching, ⁓ whether it's formal or informal coaching, you would be very surprised at to the extent of which communication can make or break teams and productivity. And I don't just mean communication in a sense of updating status updates, right? It's also about communicating what is the work that is happening as an What is the actual problem of this work? What solutions do we need? How do we effectively are argue with each other in a way that's professional that gets our point across without diving and ⁓ succumbing to groupthink? ⁓ or work aside, right? Communication as the engine to voice what you need to make the job work for you, especially when you're exhausted. So maybe communicating your needs. when you need a break, what could ⁓ be a really meaningful thing that you can that the team can do for you that will make your life easier. It could be communicating when someone needs feedback. So communicating feedback to them or someone communicating feedback to you. And it's because this is so ambiguous and nuanced that it's such a difficult and specific too that's a very difficult area f to get right. And there's no right answer, but there it's just something that everyone constantly needs to improve on. Especially because communication styles between people who depending on who you're dealing with, you need to change that every single time. So I would say communication is a very big part of the coaching aspect. And the other coaching aspect I think it's it's very specific to the t the teens themselves, is just really w how do you approach the work? How do you think in this way? How do you bring on more structured thinking? ⁓ which resources can you leverage that you're not thinking about? So then all of that is just a bit more, you know, work-centric, ⁓ but broadly communication. And this is true across all organizations. Yeah, and I think this conversation piece is suit is definitely important, especially as we move into technical tools that are going to be able to do a lot of tactical stuff. I think the differentiator for a lot of people is that communication piece. And I think it's important to also consider the different environments that you're working in and how. how the folks that are in that environment operate? What are the what what are the personality types? And as you mentioned, like determining whether or not people are frustrated or challenged. And so I'm curious, like in the environments that you've worked in, what how would you explain your style? What was your style of communication with those folks w when let's say you were running into meetings where there were challenges or they weren't going in the right direction? How did you navigate those and what is your style? Are you very direct or do you sugarcoat things? My area for development is to be more direct and more assertive assertive in my communication. And that is something I've had to work on. My default tendency is to not push back. Like my default is not to think, ⁓ okay, they said something. I want to push back, right? My default is okay, I want to t take what they said, I want to. really think carefully before I push back on anything at all. But oftentimes you don't really have the luxury of that time to do so. And this is a area this is an area that I've had to really work on, especially during live meetings and live sessions. If it's with my team, so since I became a manager with my direct reports, that naturally became less of an issue because your job as a manager is to pressure test many of the things that your direct reports raise. And so I'm switching gears and I my my default muscle with my direct reports is always to think pressure test like are they missing anything? Is this really correct? Have you really thought through, right? And that helped me improve a lot in that aspect. Otherwise I would describe my style as it varies in this world of corporate of corporate ⁓ employees and some A-type personalities. My style probably leans more towards a more relaxed, friendly, friendly style. More relaxed, friendly, less assertive. But I think maybe that's just me comparing this to my consulting colleagues and consulting seniors and senior clients. Maybe if you took me in in a maybe like a regul more, you know, relaxed corporate environment on a more relaxed team, maybe my communication style would be extremely comprehensive, sharp, and a lot more direct than what they're used to. Maybe it's just like a matter of comparison. It sounds like what you did worked, obviously in the environment that you're in. And what I heard you say, which is important, is that you were asking why, right? Seeking to understand what challenge is and explaining the answers behind or try dig digging deeper. And I think that's an important aspect with is to not just leave if you're identifying a challenge with an employee or if you were an employee and you're identifying a challenge with your manager, trying to understand that why, just l leading with that thought process, maybe not always using the word why, but you're Essentially trying to go down that path of understanding that person and understanding what the motivation is behind it, that'll help you not only again from a managerial perspective, but also as an employee. Sometimes we make decisions based upon what we think is relevant, but we're not necessarily looking at that bigger picture or what the impact is on the organization. So I think you're doing it the right way. Thank you. So you use a tool called Perceptus AI. It forces top-down thinking from the start and builds consultant grade slide decks. I think you're gonna give us a brief little demonstration about this as well, but can you just tell us what it actually does? Yes, Perceptus.ai was ⁓ developed with the input of many expert consultants and they are an AI slide maker that is very effective for consulting and corporate purposes. What it does is you can type in prompts ⁓ and it could generate real decks for you based on your storyline. It can also generate individual slides and with tons of graphs and different ways of of inspiring you to show your analysis the most effective way to get your points across. And I will share my screen. This will only take a f quick moment. I just want to show you what perceptus.ai actually looks like. So, what I really like about Perceptions.ai, ⁓ here, so I have a deck open. You can see these pages are very detailed. So if you are working on slides that require heavy analysis and reporting with all sorts of different visualizations for corporate purposes, right? If corporate finance, take a look at this, the way that they do the waterfall charts, the way that they highlight the insights on the side, it's very, you know, even reporting the financials, it's very aligned with how top consulting firms Create their slide decks. And what I really like is you can actually edit some of the changes just by typing. So if I I if we have time, I'll show it. But basically, if I go on to this slide and I say, okay, can you add a ⁓ few arrows on the graph to point out the key insights? And then I can submit that. So essentially Now while that's working, ⁓ we can, you know, do other things, but you can edit the slides themselves just by typing and describing the changes. ⁓ and again, they can create real slide decks like end to end or individual slides for all sorts of purposes, whether it's marketing, finance, strategy, so on. I like it. Yeah. I know obviously that's a big part of our part of a lot of people's jobs is Presenting data, analytics and reporting and a tool like that seems super useful. Yeah. You can see that they've added some arrows and some pointers. Of course it might not be perfect on a first try, but you can go in and and make some direct edits and you can also command it to do different things too, like create a new section, change the look of that graph, right? Add new call out boxes. So plenty of things you can do without actually manually having to do it. Yeah, really cool. So you spent 30 days straight inside Microsoft 365 Copilot, including the agent mode, where edit your documents directly. What was the moment during that challenge that you genu that genuinely surprised you? I d under I underestimated how big of a difference it would make for the AI to directly have context into my work and be able to reference my work. So for me to be able to type and have a reference documents. in Word and so in Word as an example, in Word if I'm typing in discussing an Excel analysis, I can reference that Excel file while I'm in Word just through simple typing commands. So I don't have to go into that Excel file, open it, you know, manually type in these numbers. The co pilot can just pull that for me and that's wonderful. And with agent mode they can make direct edits to my documents throughout the actual document itself. And that's amazing. Like that's just not something that I would be able to do so easily on Chat GBT and on ChatGBT I would have to re upload all the files and give it context. Here I don't have to and that's very powerful. It can reference say emails or meeting notes. So I can go on my Word doc ⁓ or I can go into an email and say, ⁓ can you summarize the key takeaways from this meeting and it will summarize it, I review, I check it and then I can send it off ⁓ in that email. So it makes things very efficient and ⁓ that's something that I underestimated. Yeah, I've played around with co copilot a little bit myself too. And that that memory feature of understanding what's going on with previous conversations that you've had and integrating those in. Let's say you wanted to update an email and then all of a sudden it's bringing in context from previous conversations you've had is a game changer. And I just see the tools, a lot of them migrating in that direction right now where memory is starting to be integrated and included. So you've done hundreds of coffee chats, which are short informal conversations to learn about someone's work or company. Now most people treat these as just casual interactions, but what's the real game going on inside a good coffee chat? I I would suggest for people to think of it this way. You have you are speaking to someone, whether it's in an interview or a coffee chat, you want to differentiate yourself versus other people. And how can you do that? So I think the first thing is your energy. How do you present yourself? What kind of energy are you exuding? You should get really crystal clear on thinking about what do you what impression do I want this person to walk away with of me? And it does not need to be your full authentic self and And this is something that I've you know had to come to terms with because you how my friends see me outside of a professional environment is going to be very different versus how I am engaging with a client ⁓ or my seniors at work or if I am doing a coffee chat or an interview, and that's okay. So think about really what do you want them to take away from your energy during this conversation, and then also then next think about your content. How can you stand out? How can you ask more thoughts? Questions. How can you show that you've done more thinking and more research than someone else? How can you share more perspectives about you? One thing that's very common in coffee chats is so people do a lot and they can walk away not remembering or knowing anything about you, and that's not good. And so people also underestimate the power of sharing a bit of personal anecdote and background because people remember stories and people resonate and do emphasize with other people. So if you are sharing Sharing real stories about your background, your experiences, your goals, what do you really want? ⁓ what have you found to be, you know, like really inspiring and what are you excited about? Sharing some of this stuff, it's really helpful. Or beyond work, some personal hobbies that you and the other person might connect on, ⁓ some fun conversations that you two have common interests in. ⁓ don't underestimate the power of these two. Yes, I agree. Bring in a piece of your personality, but understand that you need to target your audience and that situation that you're in is probably going to be a different conversation that you're having than you're having with your with your friends or family. And making s a connection is key to those coffee chats and relationships and interviews. And something we talk about I talk a lot about just in as it relates to interviews is similar to what you mentioned. Come in with energy, come in with a plan. And come in also describing how you're planning on solving the problems that employer has. And you're going to put yourself in a much stronger position. Obviously, they do want to get to know you, but they also want to trust you. And so all those characteristics that you mentioned build those building blocks towards the trust. Yes, exactly. So you are also interviewing and hiring candidates at BCG, and you've seen it from both sides of the table. What would you say is the one thing candidates do in a case interview that kills their chances and that they have no idea that they're doing? Also, can you explain to the audience what a case interview is? Absolutely. So I'll start with the second part of the question. So a case interview is the standard evaluation format of consulting companies and now even some corporate companies and startups, depending on your role. The case interview is essentially where you are presented with a problem and you will want to analyze that problem and present a recommendation during that interview. So that's what it is. ⁓ some examples will be questions like ca ⁓ our company has our client company ⁓ has experienced a loss in profitability over the past year. Can you help us understand why and how can we improve this? It could be a question like our client wants to expand into a different market, ⁓ a different geographic market. You know, should they expand into that market? Why or why not? Our client wants to purchase another company, so MA. ⁓ should they proceed with this deal or not? ⁓ so all sorts of different things to think about. And there are actually three things candidates mess up the most on. The first is they jump to conclusions too quickly. So as they're going through the analysis, they're evaluating let's say market size and they see okay China has a bigger market size than Japan. And because of that means we should launch our products in China. And they jump to that conclusion right away but no you need to dive deeper. You need to understand is this even feasible? Do we want to be in this market or Or will consumers resonate? What's our projected revenue and what's our projected profit? What are other legal and ethical considerations? ⁓ so many different things, right? And you cannot just jump to conclusions that quickly, but this is very common. Or candidates say see revenue potential only, and they say, ⁓ well, this one has higher revenue potential, but you need to think about the profit ability, the profit potential, right? ⁓ so that's number one. And the number two mistake candidates make is, especially now with AI, throwing too many buzzwords. So now it's, hey, there's a solution that we need. Let's throw AI at it. Let's use AI to make this better. Let's use AI to reduce costs. You need to be more specific. I don't think the interviewer will appreciate just broad, general, use AI, use AI, use AI. Like what do you mean, right? Like it just feels like a cheap way out of presenting a solution. So that's not great. And then the third is not walking through a thought process. You can actually not arrive at the completely right answer, but if you can show your thought process and your rationale explain, hey, I'm asking you this question because of XYZ. I am saying this because of XYZ. I'm I want to make this calculation because of XYZ. And you explain your thought process very well and justify it. And that is really helpful because a lot of candidates will just say, Well, I think we should do this and not explain your thought process. Yeah, one thing that connected with me, ⁓ all that is great in terms of skill proof. That's what that assessment and or conversation is essentially doing. You're having to prove on the spot that you have critical thinking these you can problem solve and you're proving that, which I think is definitely more of the evolution and hiring and the way things are going. You mentioned it as well. AI tools can do a lot for us to enhance our capabilities, but they're not the ultimate answer. you are and in your ability to understand what that AI is saying, it's you're using that as an assistant to you. So to your point, leading with it and saying we're just going to leave it up to AI to solve it is definitely definitely not going to resonate very well with that person who's interviewing you. But being able to speak to the projects that you've built, let's say with AI or the tools that you used, I think those are valuable types of conversation. It's just the distinction, ultimately not relying and just saying, We're gonna throw it in a chat GPT and we're gonna get an answer because that's just not really how it works. ⁓ yeah, and then I also think really cool too that you mentioned showing your thought process on that as well, which is key. How did you come to it? We're not always gonna come to the right conclusion, but your what's your logic, what's your understanding? That tells a lot about you as an individual in both those meetings and interviews. Mm-hmm. Exactly. A lot of leaders right now are scared that their teams are falling behind on AI. Now you've tested more tools than most. Gen Spark, Perceptus, which we just saw, Lovart, Claude, ChatGBT. Where do most leaders get this wrong when they try to bring AI into their team? And also I think you're gonna give us a quick demo too of Gen Spark. Yes, exactly. So where do most leaders get this wrong? It's very interesting. I was just at a Microsoft Work Trend Index event. And Microsoft publishes the work trend index looking at AI's impact or technology AI impact on work and our future of work. And one thing that they emphasized was leaders need to think of AI adoption in terms of systems. So leaders need to build systems that enable AI adoption more effectively in the workplace instead of focusing on the individual AI tools, right? And so this was something that was emphasized in a again in the Microsoft Work Trend Index. And by system, some examples of this would be things like one is shared workflows. So how can we use AI across workflows and perhaps build an internal AI knowledge database, like an AI operational playbook, where we're sharing AI use cases, prompts, helpful materials inside the workplace. Another one is thinking about it like an AI-first process redesign. Right now, how it works in most places is the process exists. Then we're layering AI tools on top. But what if we thought of this process starting from a blank slate and we're incorporating AI from the very beginning? Then how would that process look? So, how would that process look? What would the people in the process be doing? What would their percentage of time spent look like? And which AI tools would now make sense if we were starting from a blank slate? And that's a big one. Other things include training systems. training people properly on AI, providing the right tools and resources, AI governance, ⁓ seeing how AI could work given privacy, ethics, sustainability considerations, and then AI champions and overall incentives in a workplace ⁓ to promote AI. And so you need to think of this in a very holistic way, not necessarily just, hey, these are the AI tools. We have Gen Spark, we have Copilot. Now let's have everyone just use these piecemeal in whichever way they think makes sense for them. Yeah, all that makes sense. And I can yeah, and I can give the demo of Gen Spark. Works. Okay, perfect. So w first I'm going to come into Gen Spark AI slides and we're just going to start from the very beginning and say, Build a slide deck ⁓ to show, let's say, market entry strategy for a I love to use like snack company, snack company, you know Launching operations in Europe include many graphs and placeholder analyses. Okay, so let's just fire this off right now and while this is being fired off, ⁓ I will share some examples of what GenSpar could do in the meantime. So I also have another t tab open that shows what some examples of the slides will look like. So here you can see what I really love about Gen Spark is it be gets very specific. So you can see here the way that they lay out this the summary, the insights, the graphs if this template loads. It's very it's very precise and even things like KPI trackers, color coding, legends, it's great. Well, this is not loading. So does it I'm curious, going back to that memory conversation, does it have a ⁓ memory of how or like of a style that you typically use, or do you go in and just create a new style or it creates a new one each time? You can choose which template you would like to use. Okay, great. Now it's loading. So yes, you can see like I love the color coding, I love the shading, the legend, the colors, like All of this looks amazing, right? And l see how detailed this is. This is like A plus what we would show to our clients. You see, like the way that the graphs look, the how s how ⁓ ver how how much variety they have in the graphs, how detailed the numbers are, the icon usage, the way that the information flows from page to page, you know, the ability to generate maps so easily that used to take so long to create, right? Even though we outsource a lot that creation. Here you can see like even the colors and the way that ⁓ like the dash versus the l like the ⁓ non dash lines, it's all really great. Yeah. Yeah, and you mentioned before that obviously you guys or you had a it would take time for people to build those. And that's kind of like from my experience going back to software development and the iterative process of that where you ultimately would say, Hey, I have an idea, and then you'd have to go back and forth with the developers, get it created, and maybe throw your your perspective into it. But this becomes so much more seamless because you get to interact with it directly and tell it, no, that I'm actually looking for this information or modify this here. And it's just again, significant productivity gains with tools like this that should be highlighted. Such a different experience. Exactly. And so here like let's go back to this tab. All I did here was just, I just said, hey, building a slide deck. I want to show market entry strategy for a snack company, launching operations in Europe. And I said include many graphs and placeholder analyses. So it's ⁓ it's loading. This is more see like the code is being generated so quickly. Like look at that. And you can see here, like this is the title page, it looks pretty clean. Look at that, like look how beautiful this is. Like it's so clean, like the way that like the way that the gr colors are set up, the way the line charts look. I'm so excited about this. We'll give it a few more moments for the rest of the pages alone. But yeah, this is super exciting. Kelly, we talk a lot on this show about being an architect of your career and not just a worker. And as someone who builds the future on purpose. Looking at where things are headed, what do you think the future of work looks like in the next three, five, or even ten years out? Future of work and I know I alluded to this a little bit ⁓ with the Microsoft Work Trend Index discussion, ⁓ talking about AI and systems. ⁓ I think more of this will be will proliferate across organizations. In the next three years, there will be some faster movers and some movers who are still getting the gist of it. But I think it's very safe to say AI at work will be more very much more common than not. And I think there will be more tools that will have AI naturally embedded. I think new people who are newly joining the workforce, many of them will just use AI as a muscle. while some people who are not as used to it will have to train that muscle. But I s I see in three years more and more AI usage across everything that we do ⁓ will be naturally embedded. And I also see there are some new companies in the AI startup space that could grow and boom very quickly in the next three years, just given how quickly things move, how fast products can be developed. And there could be many companies that would be generating j that would be generating a lot of Equity value for their ⁓ founders and investors in the next coup ⁓ upcoming years. In the next five years, I think all of that will continue to expand and I think human to human interactions will still be very valued. I don't think we'll ever get to I don't see us right getting to a place anywhere near my field of thinking where we will start valuing AI interactions more than we value human to human. ⁓ and I think a lot those jobs will still remain. But as for existing jobs, probably a many new AI. Jobs related to AI, like AI testing, AI process redesign, those will open up. And maybe the way that work looks will be different because one person can now take on a bigger scope and scale things more easily with the use of AI. And maybe people who are can use AI better than others will have a differentiated advantage. And it won't be so much about, hey, like, can you talk to me about your experiences? Maybe it'll be, ⁓ like What what experiences do you have using AI to do XYZ task and how well can you do it? And so maybe that'll become a more common part of the evaluation. I don't think that'll be the entire evaluation, but more and more common. And then now in ten years, I think it's very hard to say. I think just give the past four years things have changed so much and in ten years career as we know it might be a different definition. It might look very different. ⁓ new careers will be born and many other careers will look very different. Maybe ⁓ one person will operate just a much bigger scope and decision making, judgment, that kind of thinking will be emphasized versus, ⁓ these are my tasks for the hours. So instead of us being the task doers, it'll be humans being the reviewers and the decision makers and judgment and curators. And I don't know if that means that we'll be working fewer hours by then. It's really hard to say if the average High, you know, high functioning job, high performing, a very tedious job. ⁓ maybe all of this will require fewer hours. I don't know what that means for us and our lifestyles. Very hard to say. Yeah, ultimately I think the hope is that we get to a position where we're able to leverage these tools in order to do the things that we like and avoid some of those things that maybe we don't or are monotonous. I and yeah, it's I think it's critical just to consider along the lines of what you're talking about, is that the jobs will change and we will evolve with the work that comes. I'm not in the perspective that all jobs are gonna go away, but I think you're gonna have a lot more choices and then there's gonna be a shift of what what the work that you're doing right now, absolutely within the next five, maybe even less years, is gonna be significantly different. Put yourself in good position. le learn the tools, understand, integrate with them, understand how you can position yourself. And then again, in the future, the if everything works out right, then you just you have more opportunities to do what you want. If you want to be a travel blogger and maybe more people can do that, right? And and ⁓ and I think that's definitely the hope. I think there's still a great opportunity for that. And I agree with all what you said. I think I'd like to think of it more as a positive opportunity for the future. Kelly, we're gonna wind things down here. Where can people go to follow your work and stay more connected with you and what you're building? At KellyCareerMode across all social channels. And on my Instagram, I run weekly Sunday chat QA. So you can engage with me directly through that. So every single Sunday, I will post an Instagram story and there will be a question and answer box, and you can type your question in. And then the following Monday or Tuesday, I will get back to those questions. Everything we talked about today is also going to be in the show notes, the links, the frameworks, all that. Kelly, thanks for helping our audience stay unlocked. Don't be a stranger. Great. Thanks so much.