Shahrukh Islam
“The world is evolving very fast and there are opportunity costs to obtain a skill set, but if you don’t learn new things and think strategically, the world will pass you by.”
Shahrukh Islam, Senior Manager, Enterprise Data & AI Accelerator Office @BMO to share with us his career stories. Shahrukh has diverse work experiences leading to Management Consulting with first Monitor Deloitte, then Omnia AI (Deloitte's AI Practice), and currently BMO Enterprise Data & AI Accelerator Office, where he has gained a broad set of strategy consulting experiences.
Q&A with Shahrukh:
What do you look for in candidates when hiring?
High intellectual horsepower
Good lateral thinking, ability to pick up and learn new domains fast, but also able to translate and communicate across different domains to drive an impact
Ability to zoom out and see the whole picture and prioritizing
High energy
Good work ethic, most importantly intellectual work ethic
Yet, hard work is not working 60 hours a week, but , where if you are able to think through a problem in all aspects
Ability to translate problems that clients face into designs of new solutions
What kind of projects do you think are good in enhancing a student or new grad’s resume?
What is the type of problem you are solving? Is it a relevant problem for the world in general, is it impactful, is it interesting or are you just doing what people have been doing for the past 10 years?
What is your role on the project, are you part of the 20% that was responsible for the intellectual framework of the project, the actual thinking, the horsepower of getting to blocks and solve them, reaching people and setting up what your data sources are, rather than being the 80% that just does the leg work or nothing.
How long does it take for you to review a resume?
Initial scan of 5 seconds , but he’ll then force himself to scan for another 30 seconds.
It’s good to have a executive summary at the top and avoid being long and wordy
What advice would you give to people who do not come from a commerce background to find jobs in Consulting firms?
Employers also hire from other backgrounds, it is something that can differentiate you from others, not something that would hold you back.
And do you have advice for consulting job interviews?
Authenticity and good at telling your stories
Thinking on your feet
Do you use any of the skills you gained during your chemical engineering education at your job now?
Does Econ 101 count? I use Econ 101 all the time...
Now students can learn way more than their majors in an undergraduate degree, a lot of soft and hard skills that they can carry through.
The half life of the knowledge you learned in education three years ago was three years, now I think it’s 2 and half years. So essentially 3 years after you graduate, half of the things you learned during your undergrad is irrelevant, in six years is 75%, in 9 years it’s 90%. So if you are constantly vectoring on what you learned at your undergrad and not learning new skills and not learning to think strategically , the world will pass you by. That’s my philosophical answer to that question.
What would you say is the best route to strategy consulting from engineering?
There’s two parts to this:
Getting into an interview, which means you need to have good grades, and you have to demonstrate leadership in some way or form, and your work ethic beyonds grades in some way or form, build your contact, talk to people, learn the profession, make sure you have good elevator pitch, all those things are important to get an interview, and make people like you
Acing the interview is all about your unique approach to problem solving and practice, nothing beats hard work and authenticity, work hard to get your credentials and be authentic in your story telling and problem solving, then I don’t see why you can’t get in.
How were you able to advance to a senior role as you appear quite young?
It’s all about having a output mindset, thinking about
What they look for in strategy consulting is “strong opinion loosely held”, so basically engage in creative doubts
I am personally a disagreeable person, sometimes I’ll seem argumentive a bit, but what I look for is to get to the right answer.
Having a voice is important, executives would appreciate it, not necessarily offended
When people challenge you with legitimate reason, able to accept that and move away from your opinion is important
3. To be a self starter and have intellectual curiosity, my boss never tell me what to do , and the reason is that I am very good are generating work and I am very proactive in telling my managers “ hey here are the things I’ve been working on and what’s on my priority list, if you want me to add something, I can do that, I’ll just have to shift my priorities around
What is in your mind that 10 years from now, the AI-enabled banking system will be like?
Banks will go beyond banking, they’ll give you insights that will help you to manage your life and business outside what a traditional bank would do
And I think the majority of the innovation in the next 10 years will be data-drive, which is why I switched to the data science field, algorithms will be helpful in making decisions in the areas you won’t even aware of
In the front line interactions in banking, I still think the human part is important, I would want human advice when making important decisions like buying a house, and I think this would always stay, while the menial tasks will be more digital
