The action that the consultant should take when loading a large volume of alumni Contact records into a new Salesforce environment is B. Set the Account and Contact's sharing to Private before the data load1. This is because setting the sharing to Private can improve the performance and speed of the data load, as it reduces the number of sharing calculations and recalculations that Salesforce has to perform during the process. Setting the sharing to Private can also prevent unauthorized access and visibility of the data by other users until the data load is complete and verified2.
A) Set the Account and Contact's sharing to Public Read/Write before the data load and C. Load record owners after the Account and Contact data load is complete are not valid actions for this scenario. Setting the sharing to Public Read/Write can degrade the performance and speed of the data load, as it increases the number of sharing calculations and recalculations that Salesforce has to perform during the process. Setting the sharing to Public Read/Write can also expose the data to other users who may not have the appropriate permissions or roles to view or edit the data2. Loading record owners after the Account and Contact data load is complete can cause errors and inconsistencies in the data, as the record owners are required fields for the Account and Contact objects. Loading record owners after the data load can also trigger unnecessary workflows and validations that can affect the data quality and integrity3.