What do you like about PA?
I’ve been pretty lucky in terms of the broad range of environments and people I’ve experienced while at PA, and hopefully my sharing some of these will help show what’s possible if you join PA as a consultant.
It all started back in the summer of 1997 when I joined PA as a consultant from my previous career as a civil engineer. Day two with PA had me starting work at the BBC - working as a member of the core programme team planning and managing the launch of the BBC’s digital TV proposition. At the time I remember being confronted by a very steep learning curve and thinking to myself “why the heck did I decide to be become a consultant?” The irony is, confronting such learning curves is now one of the things I love most about my job – the rush you get once you’ve reached the top of the curve is pretty amazing.
What about working abroad?
After a couple of years being based in London and peaking in various learning curves, I had the chance to transfer to the Auckland office in New Zealand. Living and working in a foreign land is definitely something I can recommend. It allowed me to see a different part of consultancy – working in a small inter-disciplinary team in a country where our market presence definitely provided excellent career opportunities. A definite PA strength is the way individuals are encouraged to take control of their own destinies, to push their capabilities to the limits in order to develop personally. New Zealand provided such opportunities for me. I got to work with some pretty amazing, sometimes crazy, people and that helped me develop professionally and as a person, as well as equipping me with skills and capability I would probably have struggled to gain in the UK in such compressed timescales.
Being flexible in terms of assignment locations was a key part of consulting life in New Zealand: many of my colleagues and I spent long periods away from home. The difference in Australasia is that ‘away from home’ usually meant a few weeks living out of a hotel room in some remote part of eastern Australia! The way I look at it, I would never have had the chance to try such delicacies as crocodile, Moreton Bay Bugs and kangaroo steak without working on such exotically located assignments. I spent three-and-a-half years working in New Zealand and genuinely cherish the memories from that time.
What do you do now?
Since returning to the UK, two years ago, I’ve worked for the Department of Health, a major oil company, a global tobacco company, a major telecoms company and a retail bank – on HR, transformation and change programmes. All have involved different learning curves and I have relished the challenges associated with all of them.
I can thoroughly recommend a career in PA if you’re looking for challenge and development, to meet interesting people and, of course, to have the potential for travel.
