The Power of 4

Your gap year program

The phase between your Bachelor's and your Master's is ideal to gather valuable experience and work on your personal development. With Bain, you don't have to choose between internships in different industries: Our gap year program gives you the chance to go through several of them.

  • As a leading global consultancy, Bain offers you exciting tasks and early responsibility working on a broad range of client projects. Would you like to gather first-hand experience with private equity, help shape ESG transformation, or develop advanced-analytics strategies? Then Bain is the place for you!
  • At Deutsche Telekom's in-house consulting unit, you'll help shape the transformation of Europe's leading telecoms provider, driving digitization at the global level.
  • Working with Procter & Gamble, you'll find out how you can align the range of consumer goods even more closely with the needs of tomorrow’s consumers.
  • Does your heart beat for FC Bayern? The world's largest soccer club offers you an opportunity to gain deeper insights into its sustainability and digital strategies.

about the gap year program

Four strong organizations offering a chance to serve four internships within 12 months. All it takes is one application! 

In addition to your work as an intern, you'll benefit from a range of training and mentoring opportunities, as well as from various joint events for program participants and members of all organizations. In other words, this is an opportunity for you to build a valuable network to guide and support you on your individual career path.

Target group

We are looking for outstanding German-speaking university students of all fields who will finish their Bachelor's by mid-2024 and plan to take up a Master's course in the year to follow.

APPLICATION

The application deadline for the program has already passed. You can expect to hear back about your application from mid-January.

your contact

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them personally.

Karolin Bednorz
Associate, Recruiting
E-mail: thepowerof4@bain.com

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Stages of your gap year program

Our gap year program holds a series of highlights for you. An exclusive kick-off in September 2024 will mark the beginning of the program. Each of the four internship then lasts 10 weeks, with small breaks in between to spend as you please.

December 10, 2023
Application deadline
December 10, 2023
mid-January 2024
Feedback on your application
mid-January 2024
February 16 & 23, 2024
Online interview training
February 16 & 23, 2024
March 14 &15, 2024
selection days
March 14 &15, 2024
March 18, 2024
Feedback on selection days
March 18, 2024
September 2024
Start of gap year program
September 2024
September 2024
Kick-off event
September 2024
September 2024
Start of 1st internship
September 2024
November 2024
Start of 2nd internship
November 2024
February 2025
Start of 3rd internship
February 2025
May 2025
Start of 4th internship
May 2025
August 2025
Closing event
August 2025

A SERIES OF BENEFITS FOR YOU

  • An ideal program to prepare you for your Master's course and career start
  • Just one application and one recruiting process
  • Steep learning curve: four internships, internationally renowned employers of different industries, working at your preferred location in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland
  • Opportunities to grow your network through personal exchange with managers and employees from partner companies and with other program participants
  • Various group events, including a visit to an FC Bayern soccer game 
  • Opportunities for mentoring and coaching by people from all partner companies
  • Last but not least: lots of fun!

 

And that is still not all: of all our gap year program participants, more than 50 percent managed to secure a permanent position with one of the companies involved.

Your internship at Bain

Joining Bain marks the start of an extraordinary career. We are always on the look-out for outstanding university students and graduates from all fields – people who share our passion for entrepreneurial thinking and action and for tangible results.

During your gap year internship at Bain, you'll be a full-fledged projekt team member from day one, independently working on a defined project part on the client's premises. This can be anything from a benchmark analysis, the design and evaluation of scorings and mathematical models, involvement in expert interviews, or the preparation of client meetings.

So, not only will you gain first-hand insights into the work of a strategy consultancy – you'll also be involved in a lively exchange across academic disciplines, working side by side with colleagues and people from the client organization.

OUR Program Partners

Your internship at
Deutsche Telekom

Shape the future and get started at a leading global tech corporation, the world's largest telecoms provider. Deutsche Telekom's mission is to bring people together across thousands of miles. In the company's in-house consulting unit, you'll be involved in those transformation projects most relevant to the management board. To bring about change, Deutsche Telekom is looking for great ideas, convincing concepts, and people with a passion for shaping change.

Your internship at Procter & Gamble

Every day, around 5 billion people use market-leading P&G products such as Gilette, Always, and Oral-B. In the course of your P&G internship you'll be contributing to this impact by taking on responsibility for your own brand-focused project. For instance: How should our new YouTube ad for WICK be designed from a brand management perspective? How can we improve promotions for Oral-B? Using a range of analytical tools, you'll develop strategies to tailor the P&G product portfolio even better to customer preferences. As you can see, your P&G internship is all about impact – not about making coffee.

Your internship at FC Bayern

Based in Munich, FC Bayern München AG is known around the world as a top-notch German soccer club and organization and a global brand. During your gap year program, you'll be able to gain exclusive insights behind the scenes of the German record champion, supporting the Corporate Strategy & Business Development team in implementing the club's strategy. You’ll also find that our squad are not the only top performers at FC Bayern. Be a part of the team's success, working on exciting strategic projects with various organizational functions.

FAQ

For our gap year program, we are looking for outstanding German-speaking university students of all fields who will receive their Bachelor's degree by mid-2024 at the latest, and plan to take up a Master's course in the following year.

Please include an expressive cover letter, your CV, your high school diploma, your university certificates and any letters of reference you have from former jobs. Please understand we can only consider full applications in our selection process.

Documents can be in English or German.

Please address your application to Karolin Bednorz.

The deadline for submitting applications for the gap year program 2024 is Sunday, December 10, 2023.

You can expect to receive our response from around mid-January.

Selection days will be virtual events with two parts: On the evening before, all five companies will present themselves and provide special insights. On the day itself, there will be three individual interviews.

Our goal is to get an impression on what your motivation for the gap year program is, what you expect to get out of it, what relevant experience you have gathered so far, and also what drives you in your personal life. We'll also discuss case studies from our projects with you, which will help us assess your problem-structuring and solving skills as well as your creativity. To prepare for the interviews, click interview preparation to find helpful tips and case examples. Another valuable source is our case interview community PrepLounge, where you can solve case studies in an interactive process.

During the selection process, all partners in this cooperation – Bain & Company, FC Bayern München e.V., P&G, and Deutsche Telekom AG – will have access to your documents. By uploading your application, you expressly agree to allowing said partner companies and their associated companies to view your application file and store it for the purposes of the gap year candidate selection.

All the functions you'll get to know in the course of your internship will have a strategic focus.

  • At Bain , you’ll be a part of a consulting team, independently working on defined project parts. For instance, you may learn about identifying attractive merger targets in a due-diligence process, research relevant market information for a consumer goods supplier, analyze an automotive company's competition in Europe, conduct expert interviews at a pharmaceuticals group, or do comparative analysis of a utility company's competitive standing.
    Your focus will be defined individually, in terms of both content and industry, and we'll try to accommodate your personal preferences.
  • The Deutsche Telekom offers you an opportunity to get to know their in-house consulting team function. You'll be involved in developing exciting and multifaceted transformation project for the company's top management, Sustainability issues are particularly popular. Here, one past project dealt with developing a governance model for Deutsche Telekom's ESG activities.
  • At P&G, you'll be part of a team that works on strategic decisions for the sales division. This involves developing creative sales strategies to help expand the business on a sustainable basis. In your day-to-day work, you will be dealing with innovative products, strategic marketing, and consumer analyses.
  • Working at FC Bayern Munich's international strategy division, you'll be involved in implementing the company's broader corporate strategy, which goes far beyond the soccer club as such. Activities can range from a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of sustainability partnerships for international sports clubs and associations all the way to working on dedicated workshops on social sustainability at FC Bayern.

Are you passionate about the environment, social issues, and governance? Let us know, so we can guarantee at least one of your four internships will have your preferred focus.

Most partner companies to this program have various offices in Germany, Austria and Switzerland – specifically, the following cities:

  • Bain: Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, or Zurich
  • Audi: Ingolstadt
  • Deutsche Telekom: Bonn 
  • P&G: Frankfurt, Zurich or Vienna
  • FC Bayern: Munich


So, the choice of location(s) is all yours. Just let us know your preferences during the application process.

All internships will be paid, with the compensation depending on the individual partner company.

Absolutely. We look forward to receiving your application anytime.