Interview with Cecilia de Brun, a graduate of the Bachelor’s program in Economics at Universidad ORT Uruguay the Master’s program in Business Analytics and Big Data at IE Business School. De Brun is a data translator at McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s leading consulting firms.
Why did you decide to pursue a Bachelor's degree in Economics at ORT?
If you’ve decided what interests you, one of the great things about ORT’s Bachelor’s Degree in Economics is that it doesn’t have a core curriculum shared with other programs—you go straight to what interests you. I also really liked ORT because there are no filler courses. They’re all relevant to the degree. Plus, the flexible course schedules are super helpful. There are different class schedules, which makes it possible to work.
Economics fosters comprehensive and analytical thinking. It also helps you connect the quantitative with the qualitative and take the micro to the macro: understanding everything from a single company to a country’s economy.
Why did you decide to pursue a master's degree in Business Analytics and Big Data?
Before finishing my degree, I started working at CPA Ferrere as a consultant. When I graduated, I began thinking about what I wanted to do next. Economics provided a wealth of tools for specializing in any field.
CPA was opening an Analytics department. Since I had experience in the financial system, I started building Analytics models for banks, credit unions, and credit management firms. I taught myself to code and got more and more involved in Analytics. After a year of doing that, I felt I lacked a solid foundation.
I’d always wanted to pursue a master’s degree. It made sense to me to do one in Analytics to get the theoretical foundation I needed. I started researching the programs. They all offered quite different courses, and I had a hard time figuring out which one was right for what I wanted to do next. With a little help, I narrowed down the options.
Once I had narrowed it down to the universities I liked best, I searched LinkedIn for graduates of those programs to see what they were doing now. I asked my boss at the time, reached out to students who had completed the master’s program, and sought advice from ORT regarding the focus I wanted to pursue.
The curriculum for the Bachelor’s Degree in Economics has new specialization in Business Analytics. Given your background, how useful do you think these skills are in the job market?
ORT always offers what the job market demands. The Economics program was created with that in mind. It seems to me that what they’re doing now is continuing along those lines. Business Analytics is a necessity. Today there’s a shortage of professionals in this field, which can be applied to very concrete and tangible situations. We’re not talking about statistics for the sake of probability. It’s a model that gets straight to the point.
I think it’s a good introduction to the basics of Business Analytics. ORT’s new curriculum aims to cover the entire theoretical foundation and how to apply all these concepts to business.
Just as companies use Excel today, tomorrow they’ll use databases, explore them, and make decisions based on them.
What does a data translator do?
A data translator is someone who has data and knows how to translate it into business insights. The role of a data translator varies from project to project, but it always involves bridging the gap between the science or model and the client’s needs.
At McKinsey & Company, my role is to build the best proposal based on an understanding of the client’s database. I work with a group of data scientists. We gather the information, adjust the parameters, and then interpret the variables in their economic context: what opportunities for exploitation exist with a given set of data.
At this company, we work by setting goals and achieving them. At the end of the day, everyone presents the progress they made during the day. You’re out of your comfort zone all day long. I like how demanding it is; I really enjoy it.
McKinsey & Company is known for being one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, and because it’s not easy to get a job offer there. What was the selection process like?
It took forever. I applied in late January or early February, and they made me an offer in late May. During that time, I had training sessions for interviews with managers and partners. I went through 13 rounds of evaluation.
At McKinsey & Company, interviews are based on case studies from different industries. You have to solve each case in half an hour. They also place a lot of value on your work experience in leadership roles. The interviews are 50% case study and 50% questions about your career path. You have to prepare for them, but with enough flexibility not to recite a script, because they notice that and penalize it heavily. Due to my specific role, I had more technical interviews where they asked me about different machine learning models and how I would use them.
The selection process is long, demanding, and requires a lot of work. In my case, it was complicated because I was also pursuing my master’s degree at the same time. Universities like IE Business School offer workshops to help you prepare. So, when you have the job interview, it feels like you’re not doing it for the first time.