2027 Summer Associate - Chicago

Job description

### About The Role We're a consulting firm built to find growth where others don't see it. Real growth comes from understanding a business inside and out: how it makes money, where its customers are headed, and what has to change to get there. It's spotting the white space competitors miss and turning it into a client's next big move. Our Summer Associate Program is built to teach exactly that, from the ground up. Over our 8 week internship, Summer Associates work across the firm with colleagues from nearly every discipline in order to solve our client's business challenges. You won't be watching from the sidelines: you'll learn our approach by doing the work itself from research, analysis, and strategy, to the storytelling that ties it together, all pointed at real top-line growth for real clients. From day one, that means work with real impact for clients and their customers. It means stepping into meaningful responsibility faster than you'd expect, working directly with leaders and clients. It means building next-generation skills that keep you ahead of where business is going. And it means growing a career that connects to what you actually value, not just the client work in front of you. ### Your Day to Day - **Understand the business and the customer** - You'll dig into industries, markets, and customer behavior to understand how our clients grow, using primary and secondary research to uncover insights that drive transformation. - **Blend creative and analytical thinking** - Growth isn’t one lever, it’s brand, culture, digital, marketing, operations, and strategy working together. You'll build the business acumen to know what moves a client's numbers and the creative instinct to bring ideas to life. - **Synthesize, don't summarize to connect the dots** - You'll pull together interviews, data, and market scans to form a point of view. You’ll drive value by going beyond AI outputs and reporting desk research findings. You connect the dots others miss and drive to “so what." - **Contribute to creative problem-solving and storytelling** - You'll analyze data, shape hypotheses, and turn research into persuasive presentations and frameworks; learning to frame the "so what" and present recommendations to internal leaders and clients. - **Collaborate on complex challenges across multidisciplinary teams** - Working alongside multidisciplinary teams, you'll help answer big questions on topics like growth, brand, and transformation from new platforms to market entry; contributing your point of view and refining it through feedback. - **Explore and work with the full consulting toolkit, incl. AI** - You'll use the full range of tools in a consultant's toolkit, traditional research and analysis alongside AI, applied where it genuinely helps. We want interns who are able to amplify AI outputs and innovate with new tools and methods. - **Keep your project moving** - You'll take ownership of your piece of the work; following through, flagging risks early, and holding yourself accountable for quality and deadlines, not just effort. You'll help keep your project moving; staying close to notes, decisions, and status so nothing gets lost. - **Play a role beyond project work** - You'll contribute to firm growth and culture too through supporting proposals, office initiatives, social events, and thought leadership. This is a chance to make your mark beyond client work. - **Learn fast, grow early, lead with a point of view** - With exposure to senior teammates and clients, and regular feedback and mentorship, you'll sharpen your point of view in writing, in presentations, and as a voice in the room. - **Work and grow as part of a team** - You'll be paired with a project coach and a peer buddy from day one and grow through the kind of team-based mentorship and feedback that shapes how we work at Prophet. - **Build relationships across the firm** - Beyond your project team, you'll have built-in opportunities to get to know people across offices and disciplines through intern events, coffee chats, and firm-wide programming. - **Experience what it means to be an Associate** - This isn't just a shadow program. As an intern, you'll have the opportunity to take on real project work and get a genuine feel for life as an Associate at Prophet, from the pace to the collaboration to the payoff. ### What You Bring - A great education: you should be a rising senior, earning a BA or BS degree with demonstrated academic performance (Business, Economics, Management majors preferred, not required) - Well-developed critical thinking capabilities, problem-solving skills, and creative thinking - Comfort working with AI tools for research, synthesis, and building and curiosity to keep exploring new ones - Superior communication skills, both verbal and written - Business acumen and a passion for understanding what grows and transforms companies; brand, digital, and marketing strategy included, but not the whole picture - A curious mind with an unrelenting commitment to get to the answer, to test new approaches, learn new skills, and push others' assumptions - Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to adapt, flex, and change directions given client, project, and team circumstances, understanding the ever-changing business world Due to the fact that our internship program is designed to provide full-time offers upon completion, **we are unable to move forward with anyone requiring sponsorship now, or in the future.** Your submission also confirms that you acknowledge that **post-internship should you receive a full-time offer, it will also be in the same office of the internship.**