My name is Sina-Marie Rieke and I am in the fifth semester of my studies of business administration at the University of Applied Sciences Dortmund. As part of my course of study, a compulsory internship was planned in the fourth semester, which is supposed to have a duration of at least 5 months. Since the beginning of my studies and the first lecture in “Introduction to Economics”, it has become clear to me that I would like to complete my internship in a management consultancy. No sooner said than done – I applied at HPP Strategy and Marketing Consulting because the focus areas were very appealing to me personally and I wanted to further develop my previously acquired skills in these areas by focusing on marketing and strategy development. In addition, I found the idea of staying in Germany’s “Mainhatten” for a while very attractive – so attractive that I extended my internship to 8 months!

On my first day, I was curious to see if the announced “Open Door Policy”, the flat hierarchies, the friendliness of the colleagues and the pleasant way of working were just empty words or if HPP actually kept all these promises. The rough manners and the long working hours in management consultancies are probably familiar to everyone who is interested in the field and therefore become the norm. I was very surprised when, on my first working day, I was greeted extraordinarily warm in the bright rooms in Frankfurt / Niederrad by friendly colleagues throughout the whole introductory round. HPP has established its own internship offices, in which at least two but often also three interns sit together. In the likely event of someone moving alone to another city without knowing anybody, just like me, that is of course an absolute stroke of luck. We explored cider houses together, visited various festivals in Frankfurt (for example the Roman festival, the Mainuferfest or some of the many Christmas markets) and enjoyed after-work events. This has led to some very good friendships for which I am grateful. The consultants at HPP are always open for questions and a chat – the atmosphere is consistently positive across all levels. The management team members work as project leader in the project groups and give valuable input for an optimal fulfillment of the customer’s wishes in joint meetings.

During my internship, I worked on two large projects in the automotive sector which helped me to significantly improve my project management and conceptual design skills. On the one hand, the projects involved the development of new processes and role profiles in the context of the introduction of a retail brand architecture and, on the other hand, the restructuring of a nationwide regional after-sales support for an internationally active automobile manufacturer. I worked on the latter project together with my colleague Alexandra Schumann. Within my small project team I was given the opportunity of handling my own work packages from the first day onwards for which Alexandra always assisted me with advice. As part of the project, I collaboratively worked on the implementation of the new support concept. Our task was to develop a concept which ensured the internalization of content on all levels. So I developed a training concept in the project team, created a training document as well as requirement specifications and evaluated files in Excel. Moreover, I assisted in the creation of offers, which is a clear difference to the daily project tasks – here it is necessary to develop a comprehensive and graphically highly appealing presentation for different customers, sometimes in very short time. In addition to the automotive and telecommunications industries, I assisted in the creation of offers for commercial kitchen manufacturers and utility companies in the electricity and gas sector.

For questions outside of the project business, every intern at HPP is mentored by one of the consultants and there are regular intern meetings with the intern management, where everybody presents their current project for the cause of having a good overview of the projects’ diversity and content at all times. For comments, suggestions for improvement or other concerns, there is always a sympathetic ear at HPP.

Through the continuous use of MS Office programs, I have expanded my computer literacy skills as well as my English proficiency which has remarkably enhanced with the usage of industry-specific, economic terms and the preparation of English presentations.

A big thank you to the entire HPP team for the educating, exciting and wonderful time! I can recommend an internship at HPP to anyone who is interested in the consulting industry and wants to get an insight into the everyday life of a management consultant. Retrospective, I can only say: The “Open Door Policy”, the flat hierarchies, the friendly colleagues and the pleasant working atmosphere are 100% alive every single day at HPP!

Intern and working student

Markus Adler