Hi Alex, As a Strategy and Transactions - Operations Research Graduate 2023 what technical skills should I develop now?

Hi Srinivasan,

Thanks for getting in touch, and congrats on getting onto the graduate scheme! I've gone through a few technical skills below which I think are important to me in my role and that I think apply to Strategy and Transactions (SaT) more broadly, but I am not familiar with the operational research graduate programme so I can't give you any advice on any specific technical skills they require or programmes they use (I have tried but I am guessing largely based on the application page & my own knowledge of operational research). I also think its important to mention that in any graduate programme at EY, in any service line, they will teach you the technical skills you need to know and there is no expectation for you to already be able to produce the analysis they produce or use the tools they use in their day to day - so I wouldn't recommend you spend your summer taking courses or "revising" so to speak for the job role (of course, there will be an expectation you have a basic level of understanding of certain concepts which would have been in the application / discussed at your interview, and common programmes such as excel). So rather than saying these are the skills you should develop now, I've put the skills below that I think will be useful to you in SaT, which you will develop during the graduate programme.

Firstly I'd say that being proficient in Excel is key in SaT. I spend the majority of my time producing analysis in Excel, and whilst I assume in operational research there will be some more advanced programmes used for analysis, the vast majority of client data we receive is in Excel format, so being able to cleanse and transform data in excel is key. For example, clients typically produce financial models in Excel, which can be quite complicated, so being able to understand the various formulas used (sumifs, vlookups, index & match) would be a key skill to understanding a client's model and being able to ask questions about it.

Another technical skill is the use of analytics tools. As I have progressed in my graduate scheme I have increasingly used Alteryx and PowerBI to process data and to produce & present analysis. Alteryx is used for cleansing and preparing raw client data, as well as preparing some parts of our analysis. This is fed into PowerBI where we produce additional analysis using measures (like Excel formulas, but using a language called DAX) and then visually present this. I knew nothing about either of these tools before starting at EY and have learned everything I know from my team or on-the-job training, so I would not worry if you do not have an idea of what they are. Additionally, I don't know if these tools are used as much in operational research. If you are curious, it might be worth looking on the website or reaching out to the team you are joining to find out what the specific programmes are - again, I would not worry about being proficient in them before joining, the point of the graduate scheme is to teach you how to use them.

More generally, having an analytical mindset and being able to understand and transform data is an important skill. This is something you probably already have considering you are going to be doing the graduate scheme already, so your basic understanding of standard concepts like growth rates for example. Additionally, having some business understanding is quite useful which you may not have studied at university if you did maths or statistics or something similar. Obviously, technical understanding is important, but you need to understand the business context to be able to apply it. So this would be knowledge of what management information contains, what the typical key performance indicators are and so on. Again not sure how relevant this is to operational research but it's useful in SaT more broadly being a client-focused service line.

I've looked at the Operational Analytics & Research page on the website and it mentions using simulation, modelling & machine learning. I would assume therefore you likely need to be familiar with programming and statistics. Statistics will definitely be key for understanding and modelling data, especially in research, and I assume some sort of statistical modelling tool will be used for this. I used Stata at university to produce statistical models, I would guess that something similar is used in this graduate scheme, but you'd be taught how to use any specific programmes on the scheme so I wouldn't be concerned if you haven't used it before. But understanding concepts within statistics and how to produce a model would be important for you to know. I think that modelling software typically requires coding knowledge (I know Stata did) to use, so if you have previous experience with a programming language I assume that would be helpful to you.

Apologies if my answer is a bit general or if I have got some things wrong. When it comes to technical skills they tend to be quite specific to the role in question so I can't give as good an answer as say the soft skills required where there is generally more overlap. I'd conclude by saying that any specific, technical skills required for the role you are doing will be taught to you in your induction and then throughout your graduate scheme, so if there is a specific tool they use that you have not used before, do not worry. All that matters is that you are willing & able to learn. Please reply below if you want me to clarify anything or have any follow-up questions, otherwise best of luck with the graduate scheme :)