From student to consultant: “I help public organisations understand their finances.”

Busy, fun, informative.

The university offers plenty of opportunities for students who are willing to go the extra mile, and I wanted to challenge myself. That’s why, alongside my degree, I enrolled on the Honours programme. I also worked as a student assistant, and together with other students founded an internal student consultancy aimed at increasing student involvement in university decisions. We outlined the goals and vision, built a network, and organised a range of activities. I was certainly busy, but the experience was worth it because I learned a lot.

EY is one of the “Big Four”, that is, the four largest professional services and accounting firms in the world, including KPMG, Deloitte, and PwC. I work in the accountancy department and advise organisations in the public sector on financial matters. For example, in a recent project, I built a cost-price model for an organisation in order to provide a clear overview of all costs related to their products. Now they can make much more informed decisions about pricing, budgeting, and spending.

I have been at EY for almost a year, but I have already learned a lot and worked on a range of projects. What motivates me is that each project is different, so every time I need to solve a new problem. And to do that, I need to understand how the organisation that I am advising operates. Not two governmental organisations are the same, and I find it super interesting to learn about different organisational structures, decision-making, and funding models.

Working at one of the “Big Four” has long been my ambition, especially at this early stage of my career. A friend of mine already worked at EY and told me they were looking for someone with my background. I chose the job because it would allow me to gain insights into what it is to work at such a large company as well as into the public sector: both domains in which I wanted to gain experience.

The Master's programme taught me the fundamentals of consulting, but when I started working, I realised that every company do things in their own way. For example, at EY, they have developed their own internal processes and systems, and I had to become familiar with those.

It is a dynamic job, and I often juggle multiple projects, which means I am constantly learning, both about different governmental organisations and about how a multinational like EY operates: after all, it employs over 400,000 people worldwide.

I am at the start of my career path, so my focus is on learning as much as possible. EY offers a lot of opportunities, such as moving to another team that operates in a different market or even working abroad, and at this stage I keep an open mind about my career development.

Give yourself time to discover what you want to do. After I graduated, I started working at the municipality of Amsterdam because I needed time to figure out what I really wanted to do. Between your graduation and your first job lies a valuable opportunity to get a feel for what kind of job and work environment suits you. So don’t go too fast, do it at your own pace.