How Do I Become a Project Assistant?

PTA is the abbreviation of Part-time assistant or analyst and refers to part-time assistant (enterprise management consulting industry). Generally issued by consulting companies, the requirements are lower than the general intern.

PTA

(Part-time Assistant (Business Management Consulting Industry))

PTA is the abbreviation of Part-time assistant or analyst and refers to part-time assistant (enterprise management consulting industry). Generally issued by consulting companies, the requirements are lower than the general intern.

Chinese name

Part-time assistant (business management consulting industry) ^[1]

Foreign name

PTA (Part-time assistant or analyst) ^[1]

PTA (Part-time assistant or analyst) Part-time assistant (business management consulting industry) ^[1]

1. PTA (part time assistant) requires lower requirements than general interns; there is a big difference from interns: PTA is mainly for a certain project. There is no assistant on this project. The project manager or project leader releases the message. Recruitment of PTA; intern is more for the entire company, is a corporate behavior, most of them have a unified arrangement (including many top companies to recruit excellent interns through recruitment of interns to become regular employees).

2. Generally, the position of PTA is released by a consulting company.

3. Most of PTA's work is divided into:

• Cold call capabilities: mainly for telephone interviews, the content of the questions depends on the needs of the project; data, operating models, intelligence, opinions, etc.

• excel ability: PTA will also be responsible for some simple paper work, complex paper work is still done by BA.

• Of course, in addition to these specific tasks, some comprehensive qualities such as excellent communication skills and teamwork skills are also required of top company PTA.

  PTA was invented by a consulting god. The initial purpose was twofold: to save costs + to train potential university students. Therefore, in the earliest days, the PTAs of major consulting companies were generally recruited to students who were offered by the company but were still studying at school waiting to graduate. After PTA came in, from treatment to training, there was little difference between basic and formal workers. The project team also regards PTA as its own colleagues to cultivate and get along.
  However, as the price of consulting has decreased, PTA has become a solution to reduce costs to ensure profitability. Projects are tight in tasks and have few resources. Finding project managers and dignitaries basically let you add PTA. At its heyday, the consulting company will have a library of dozens of PTAs for the project team to choose at will. But these PTAs came in after some strict procedures.
  At this time, the PTA was basically used as a laborer and the pay was not high. The most basic work: cold call, check data, excel sort data and other repetitive work. (By the way, if at this time PTA can be any language such as Python or VC / VB, you can basically build an ant colony and kill most tasks. Because there are not many people who write cycles in consulting companies. In addition, there is a The farmer s boyfriend is more reliable!) This seems very hard, but in fact college students are very willing: first, mix the experience of an international big consulting company to add color to the resume; second, the international big consulting gives fair money It has never been in arrears and has a bright office environment, which is better than odd jobs. Third, the International Consulting Group selects outstanding PTAs from outstanding PTAs to become regular employees.
  There are also times when this model changes taste, especially in the era of fighting dad. In the modern times, more and more officials, the second generation and the rich second generation, came through the experience of Lao Tzu. I have brought the daughter of a big boss of a central SOE to be a PTA. The task given by the boss is basically not to make her tired or idle, and to wait for lunch and dinner.

There are many types of PTA work, including Data Collection, Slides work, Cold Call, Store Check, etc. I don't know much about it, but I will talk about the projects I participated in. The company helps customers enter a certain market to make decisions, and I am responsible for a certain market segment to do competitive analysis. The customer's field is retail. From the beginning of the retail business segmentation, there has been a different degree of emphasis on section, category, brand, sku, price, promotion and so on. Therefore, the analysis of competitive products is mainly carried out from the above perspectives. Deep Breandown, then audit, collect.
Specifically, we will have a template designed by the company describing the model for competitive product analysis. Starting from this model, you can collect data to meet the requirements.

1. If as a PTA, the simple machine performs the tasks given to you by the company, then this precious opportunity is too wasted. In the process of implementation, you can think about why the company designed such a template for customers. For example, why is this survey particularly sensitive to price comparisons and strict? Is the customer's original format sensitive to prices? Not the price sensitivity of the target market group ... etc. The expensive price charged by the consulting company is not arbitrarily collected. Such a simple template must have experienced the hard work of previous generations, just like some audit procedures of the Big Four. These professional firms have survived for decades or even hundreds of years. A lot of value learned.

2. Then, in a specific operation, as a small PTA, the hotel and the aircraft that the company arranges for you are fixed, and it is your task to do the required work within a fixed time. Then a plan must be considered before the task, such as doing a store audit like me, and encountering a large-scale mall, so many brands and skus, should have a good store visit strategy in mind. When to walk a category, how long to stay, what equipment to use for recording, how to record, how to respond to the security personnel's inquiry or being rushed, these are very detailed but important issues. For specific strategies, please follow your task content.

3. When I finished a super 10,000 square mall in Hainan, I really learned a lot. For example, when you do some key sku collection and price collection, you have a hundreds of product forms. In the face of a store, there are dozens of product prices to ask clearly. Asking so many sales will bother you and even question you. For liquor, different capacities are counted as different skus; even if the cosmetics are combined, they are counted as a different sku. In this process, slowly learn to talk, you want the sales MM to answer more questions than ordinary people, then you have to make her think you are not an ordinary person. Some soft skills can be shared. For example, at popular tourist attractions, sales MM has to face thousands of consumer consultations every day. Can you take the initiative to greet when you talk to her? Pretend to ask why you are on duty again today? Pretend to ask me to buy a lot of cosmetics tomorrow, when are you on duty, and I will patronize you (she will have a commission, will be happy you can do it, but ordinary consumers will not do it) keep trying different Inquiry skills. On the last day, I directly got a price list of a Hennessy product, which was taken by MM personally ... It was so cool to the sky but still calm and calm! Since then I feel that the grasping skills of my sister have improved a grade (I know this sentence is most attractive to you haha) ...

4. Finally you will need to turn in your homework to the boss. So in the face of the boss, thinking about how to quickly submit complete , accurate , and easy-to-read assignments is a very worthwhile question. Developing good habits will make it difficult for you to lose points. Write your e-mail clearly and cleanly, give timely feedback to problems that cannot be solved, don't make mistakes, and the system will logically arrange any of your homework.

5. What is PTA? You can find the answer from the predecessors above. For specific work, you can refer to what I wrote.
   Is it related to consulting? Some of the data sources for consulting work need to be obtained by PTA, and some basic work needs to be shared by PTA. They belong to the lowest level of work, but they will be of some help to your own abilities and career prospects.
   How to do PTA? Follow your target company's social platform / know the insider and be ready for yourself (CV, GPA, internship, English)

I feel that compared with other top 500 companies, the consulting companies' respect and training of PTA is always a little worse. To sum up, two points (the following feelings are from some self-proclaimed top strategic consulting, and other consulting areas may be wrong Bias):
(1) Weakness of belonging. It may be because of the project. The time for consulting the project is not long. The short period is two weeks to one month and the long period is three months (less). It is often that you can jump away or change the boss without doing much. The emotional establishment is not in place. The bosses do nt have much time to teach you about the project in a hurry. After an internship period, you do nt feel that you have learned a lot. Instead, you feel the empty side of the consulting industry (especially strategic consulting). There is also the problem of the PTA library mentioned earlier. I previously entered the library in a top strategic consulting company. I did not notify me to do the project for two weeks. I called to ask and said, wait, there is a kind of reservation. I didn't need to be cheated (mainly because the time for internship was more urgent and I couldn't wait), I immediately changed to another house and told HR, the other party didn't seem to care about it, and the sense of belonging to other companies couldn't be compared. Of course, I also know that this is because the nature of PTA's work is similar to moving bricks, and you have one less, but I must say that the internship experience is very average.
(2) Threshold of PTA? This may also partially explain the above point. It can be said that the threshold for PTA (non-summer intern) and full-time employees are completely two levels. There are two general ways for consulting companies to recruit PTA. They are recruited through HR uniform recruitment or project managers themselves. When recruiting, usually open online recruitment, the project manager may have adopted alumni relationships (in some companies or small black workers). Due to the huge demand, the content of the job is not high, and the quality requirements for people naturally drop. Many Entering under the name of an internship of a consulting company is for you to do translation. If you often pay attention to various internship versions, you will find that the PTA of the consulting company has been flying all over the world. So even if there is any PTA experience, it is actually not a huge advantage. Originally, there were very few people recruiting formal employees, and no matter how high the requirements were, they have to recruit a bunch of people. After all, they are planning to consult the company's recruitment and other The industry is slightly different. Case interviews require a lot of energy. Some people have done internships in many consulting companies. This inferior to those of a "recruit only the North Qing resumption of diplomatic relations," the unspoken rules, but I have seen a lot of the "North-resumption of diplomatic relations," but never done consulting practice end up as regular employees.

To add something, it's aimed at strategic consulting.
How to do PTA, first of all, you need to be boring. Many times, you are asked to check the information on the Internet or do some repetitive work. Secondly, you need to have plenty of time, the consultation time is tight, you need a lot of time or even Overtime; Third, good attitude and good communication: Before working, explain to the consultant what he / she wants, what form he wants to present, and time requirements (such as one-time delivery or batch delivery on time). The details are important.
The experience of PTA can give you a better chance to find a job (for the consulting industry), and HR will have a higher pass rate when screening resumes, so many students will come to the consulting company for a while, and some do not care, just try to mix the experience, But in fact, it is difficult to understand the industry only through these tasks. I really want to learn more about consulting. I suggest that you do a good job of PTA. I know one or two nice consultants. I have the opportunity to ask questions or chat and see the industry from people. Instead of reading through work.