I have offers from Google and Oliver Wyman for summer internships (graduating college in December). Prestige seems to favor Google, but the work experience seems better at OW. What's a better starting point? They both have very different pros and cons, so the best decision is not easy to identify. Any thoughts? What the general feel of OW here in this forum? Note: Im 27 years old (Joined Marines out of high school).

OW...may not have the same high street recognition as Google, but make no mistake, OW is as rigorous and elitist as MBB. So it all depends on what your degree is in, and what you intend to do after college graduation. But as its an internship you need to balance out the quality of experience you'll gain, rather than the brand as frankly the brand of an internship carries a limited amount of weight. Still counts though. My choice would be OW simply for the fact you can guarantee you'll be doing something meaningful (at least in terms of being able to learn something useful) and entry to OW is incredibly difficult - Google is a rapid growth business which (could argue) is less concerned about the quality of people the further they are away from development. Google also have a notoriously statistical view of recruitment and people, and their offer (to me at least) seems less a cohesive view of your capability and more passing through an algorithm successfully.Ultimately, if I was interviewing you post internship what I would want to know..1. what did you do there which added to your experience/skills?2. what choose x? (give me a strong, reasoned answer)

Absolute no-brainer. 10 years on from now and there may well be something better than google, it will be seen like "excite!" or "AltaVista" is these days. I expect microsoft and apple are already on the case. I think the google glory days are over now, there won't be any hanging out in hot tubs with larry and sergy, or hacking together your own mainframe from a garage in sunny cali, I'm sure. Plus the job sounds a bit like you'll just be selling AdWords, sort of like a yellow pages salesman but with the heavyweight google brand behind you. OW on the other hand gives you a stepping stone into the finance and banking professions $$$.

Hi Nick, a couple thoughts around how you could shape your thinking.If your sole focus is consulting and your ambition is to have a career in consulting, then OW is your choice because:- OW is a solid brand, has a great industry reputation and will expose you to work higher on the consulting food chain.- You'll be working with high caliber consultants and will quickly exposed to solid consulting thinking and toolkit.- With this experience, consulting firms, up and down should open their doors to you or at least offer interviews (as you're a safe option). OW is a solid start to your consulting career.If you're still 'finding' yourself, then I think Google is the better option because:- Google still has a great reputation and despite being far from the start up days, companies still recognize the quality of Google hires and therefore will still open up doors to consulting (at least an interview), especially at entry level. Keep in mind if you do decide to move into consulting, everything you would have learned at Google would not gaurantee you the ability to fly through the consutling recruiting process (e.g. you would still have to refine your case skills, problem solving skills, etc.).- It will be easier to explore other tech companies or startups in addition to consulting firms. Yes, the glory is in the engineering side of Google, but make no mistake, Google still has great people on the business side and that experience is in demand. - There could be exposure to the other Google teams which could open up doors to other areas of the company post internship. Google is really good at allowing its people to move to different teams (as per a friend who works at Google).

I'd say this is a balanced assessment.I for one would rather work at google I think, mainly because I hate wearing suits, but I'd be a bit worried about having to live, breathe, eat and drink the google lifestyle (I may be wrong but I would check out whether it's like being assimilated by the Borg). On the other hand, I'd be worried about long hours at OW. But then again, from what I hear, Google doesn't exactly have short hours either (I guess that's why you read stuff like they have a hairdressers, showers, gyms, breakfast bars and everything on-site... assuming that's true). I think google would be more fun, mainly because of less travel and less formal atmosphere, but then when you eventually leave, saying you spent most of your time on the phone cold-calling people to sell them AdWords (assuming that's what a sales associate does) doesn't sound quite as good as saying you worked with a team that did some sort of high-impact financial review of a well-known blue-chip organisation. I'd also check out the extent to which your performance would be micro-managed with heavy analytics and stuff... constantly being under the microscope, having every little bit of your work assessed in extensive detail and having to comply with the requirements of a HR-heavy culture is no fun in my experienceEither way, well done on getting both offers. You'll be just fine with whichever of them you choose.

Why not get the best of both worlds and join GOWgle. I believe they have an office in Birmingham..