From focusing on accounting to becoming a strategic consultant
My most important career steps were several stays abroad (e.g. in USA, China, Australia, Spain) for internships and study visits to develop my personality, to deepen my professional skills and to broaden my horizon in terms of cultures and mindsets. Moreover, interning at Airbus in Europe (Hamburg and Toulouse) as well as in the USA has had a special impact to my business understanding of world leading corporations and to my industry skills. In particular, this long-term internship showed me that it is possible to gain experience in technical business environments without having an engineering degree. So do not be afraid of new things and simply try them. In addition, I worked closely with strategic consultants and got interested about this job so that I changed my study specialization for my Master's degree from accounting to management.
Junior Consultant
As a junior consultant I usually support senior consultants and project managers in a particular work stream at the clients site. It is also possible that I am responsible for my own topic within this work stream depending on the project size and set-up. But in general, our project teams are working closely together even in remote settings and every job level is heard in order to provide the best output for our client. Within my first nine months, I had the chance to be part of four different projects and I have to admit that my tasks varied from project to project which makes my role so interesting. It also gives me the opportunity to get to know different areas of expertise in order to determine my own focus for the future. Regular feedback from work stream leads, project partners and my mentor also helps me to develop quickly, both personally and professionally.
Participating in exciting projects with inspiring colleagues
What I like most about my job are the various opportunities and insights I get on a daily basis. Every day and every project are different and that makes my job so interesting. I am constantly challenged and get to know inspiring people along the way from whom I can learn a lot to develop myself further. Furthermore, the consultancy offers me much space to focus on my strengths and to work on various interesting topics so I am not limited in what I push forward.
Be yourself and be open minded
Since graduating from school I have broadened my horizon especially through my long-term stays abroad. I followed my passion and traveled to countries I was interested in and combined it with working activities so that I also focused on my career. Along the way I met people from all over the world with different backgrounds and attitudes. Being continuously myself has proved to be the right approach towards others. Also being open minded and questioning new things has helped me to open new opportunities, on the one hand personal opportunities on the other hand professional opportunities. I was not dogged in what I did, but I approached things with joy and that was a great approach for most of my career steps.
During my Master's degree I decided to step out of my comfort zone and spent several months in China/Shanghai. Looking back, this was a very valuable decision to try something completely different and new that was not on top of my agenda. Through this step, I have once again grown tremendously, because I was challenged in a certain way. In summary, I believe a mixture of being yourself and open minded are a key to success.
