AIC Hosts Second “AIC Career Lab: Consulting” Event

The second AIC Career Lab for AY 2025 was held on Monday, June 9. This event continued the theme from the previous AIC Career Lab on the consulting industry. In light of the previous iteration’s success, this event was held to provide more students with the opportunity to learn about the industry. Four companies were invited to speak, and through their presentations and roundtable discussions, the students were given a valuable opportunity to learn what consulting is at its core.

Introduction (Visiting Professor Shigeru Shiina)

As with the previous Career Lab, this event kicked off with a talk by Visiting Professor Shigeru Shiina, who gave an overview of the consulting industry, recent market growth trends, types of working styles, and the differences in career paths for shin-sotsu (new hires to a company who join immediately upon graduating school) and chuto (those joining a company mid-career). His presentation began by introducing the etymology of the word “consulting.” By combining “con” (with) and “sedre” (to sit), one can arrive at the essence of consulting, which is to “think together with one’s client and work toward a solution together.” Through this, Professor Shiina explored in depth the role and appeal of the consultant position. Framing his point with keywords such as “problem-solving ability” and “co-creation of value,” he gave a compelling argument on the consulting industry’s continuing growth in the future and the background behind that projection.

Company Introductions Session

INTLOOP Inc. (Takashi Tojo)

INTLOOP explained that although they are a strategy consulting firm, they are advancing flexible initiatives not bound by existing frameworks. This includes utilizing a network of over 50,000 freelance workers and creating new projects in the field of AI agents. The company highlighted how they view consulting from a broad perspective which includes supporting small and medium-sized companies.

KPMG Consulting Co., Ltd. (Naoki Ikegami)

KPMG’s philosophy is to “contribute to the client’s sound development and place importance in people,” emphasizing a corporate culture of respecting others rather than focusing on sales figures. As a Keio alumnus, the company’s speaker also shared stories from his days as a student, while giving a detailed explanation of KPMG’s global operations and, given its workforce of over 270,000 employees, how it conducts its selection process.

ABeam Consulting Ltd. (Megumi Uno and Takashi Kuwabara)
Along with its slogan “Build Beyond As One,” ABeam Consulting’s presentation showed the company’s commitment to thoroughly creating new experiences together with their clients as partners. Participants were particularly interested in the breadth of their work and the projects being undertaken that aim to contribute to society through both technology and innovation in the AI Leap sector.

Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting LLC (May Fukuda and Su Fukuoka)

Taking into consideration the practical discussions surrounding supporting public agencies and local governments, Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting conveyed the core messages that “AI is not an end but a means” and “strategy and problem-solving are at the heart of consulting,” and further elaborated on the importance of consultants. Given that consulting is an industry that presupposes change, the company summarized the industry at its essence by saying, “As times change, issues evolve, and the skills required for them also vary.” Their words left a strong impression on the student participants.

Roundtable Discussions

The latter half of the event brought in roundtable discussions to allow students to have in-depth conversations with the representatives from each company. This session was longer than its previous iteration, conducted in a rotation format with 20 minutes allocated for each table. In addition to learning about the characteristics and realities of each company, many participants expressed that they were able to hear genuine stories that cannot be heard at ordinary information sessions, and that the company representatives were very helpful in answering their questions.

Some of the students commented that they could feel the speakers’ passion and engagement with the group during their discussions. Many also felt that consultants highly value the clients that they work with. The participants also greatly appreciated the chance to compare the different ways of working with AI as well as the diverse values each company showcased. Altogether this made this session extremely fulfilling.

This event was the second AIC Career Lab focused on the consulting industry. Because the industry is such a highly popular one among students, many tend to view it as a simple aspiration, or may just have a vague image of it in their heads, but by talking directly with people who actually work in those companies, they were able to clearly perceive the core values in the industry.

AIC Career Lab will continue to create opportunities for students to hear the actual voices from the field and expand their options. We would like to express our sincere thanks to all the companies that participated in the event.