Alumni: Aleksandra Jaroszynska
26-year-old Aleksandra Jaroszynska from Poland graduated from La Salle in 2011 and is now working as a Finance and Enterprise Performance Consultant at Accenture. When I asked her where in the world shewas, she told me that it totally depended on the project she worked on, but that she payed her taxes in Spain.
When Aleksandra began studying at La Salle, she was not sure what exactly she wanted to do after finishing the degree. However, she always knew that she would need three things to be comfortable and satisfied at work: change, challenge and rapid growth. She did not want to spend her day behind a desk and carry out the same tasks repeatedly.
Before she graduated, it was very clear to Aleksandra that she wanted to work in consulting.
People often ask Aleksandra how she can sacrifice so much personal life for her work, but she explained that she didn't feel like it was a sacrifice at all. For her, management consulting is a lifestyle, and she makes no distinction between the “professional” and the “personal” life. She also told me that her drive for intense growth, her ambition to push her limits and her need for constant change would not allow her to do anything else. Also, she really enjoys living in hotels and waking up each week in a different city and she would not trade her high heels for any other work dress code.
Aleksandra loves her job as each day tends to be different. When I asked her to describe a normal working day, she decided to use a typical Monday as an example. She would get up around 6:00 AM and has Bloomberg news following her around her apartment in Barcelona while she gets ready. Then she'd jump into her high heels, grab her suitcase, and head for the airport. On the way there she would check her email and when she arrives she'd grab a quick breakfast in the lounge before departure. She travels wherever her client needs her to be, may it be Madrid, Venice, Amsterdam, London or Brussels. She would usually be at the client site before 11:00 AM, ready to go through the daily schedule. From there, it all depends on the day and the project she works on.
Currently, she leads a project aimed at redefining and enabling treasury processes and implementing financial management systems for a multinational hotel chain which for the past two years has been going through a global transformation of its financial functions. This covers an implementation of an outsourced Shared Service Center, an introduction of a new Treasury Management system and an implementation of a new ERP. The activities during the day may vary from meeting Process Leads and financial directors from the client to discuss and map the changes that need to be implemented, through working side-by-side with financial managers to set up systems and resolve incidents, up to training Business Unit financial teams in their new functions.
Aleksandra and her team would typically wrap up the day between 7:00 and 8:00 PM. Then she'd drop-off her luggage at the hotel where she'd stay for the following days, and meet up with her team for dinner. She would come back to the hotel between 10:00 and 11:00 PM, try to close up some items from the never ending “to-do” list, and, as long as nothing requires her immediate attention, go to bed to get some sleep before it’s time for yet another day.
I also asked Aleksandra how the knowledge from La Salle had helped her in her professional career. It is now over four years since Aleksandra began her professional career and since then she has realized that universities can only teach you a small portion of what you actually need when you start working.
However, through university studies one can develop what she calls a “business common sense” that will make you a part of the corporate world, and in her opinion that is one of the most complicated things one can learn. During her four years at La Salle, Aleksandra benefited from being given a platform for developing a skill-set that allowed her to find her way around at work and to learn quickly and efficiently.
As a management consultant, Aleksandra frequently finds herself going back to the concepts and theories taught at La Salle. However, what she believes has benefited her the most is how La Salle adapted her to the business environment through making her used to creating and delivering efficient presentations, analyzing problems and finding solutions in business cases, formulating her arguments in class discussions, and pulling out the key contributions from her fellow students.
Aleksandra also shared with me the opinion that being around people from so many different backgrounds and cultures made her open-minded, and gave her a much broader perspective. This is not only useful from a business point of view as the ability to handle teamwork challenges; it is also something that can benefit you in life generally. She also said that, as companies nowadays searched less for theory specialists and more for dynamic leaders that show flexibility and can adapt to rapid change and manage global teams, these takeouts from LaSalle would be specially valuable when entering today’s business world.
When I asked Aleksandra if she had any tips for the students currently studying at La Salle, she said that the most important thing was to make the best of all the learning opportunities you are given. She said that one could definitely benefit from knowing and understanding the theory, but to take full advantage of the experience you should also put a bit extra work into mastering the "selling" of your presentations and training your brain by really cracking down each case study rather than just getting it done.
She also recommends being active in class discussions as it allows you to challenge yourself and learn to form and put forward your arguments, while also developing an understanding for the point of view of others.
Aleksandra’s final tip is to use your university time to get to know yourself, find your strengths and weaknesses, define your goals and your ambitions, and figure out what you need in order to achieve them. She says that, while you are searching for a job, knowing where you want to work is not always the most important thing; what really matters is to know what you can offer your future employer, and to be confident about what you want in exchange. She also says that this is what the typical “tell me about yourself” question, favored by interviewers, is all about. The answer you give to this question is what will define you both as a person and as a professional in the eyes of the recruiter. It is therefore important to make sure that this is not only your introduction, but also your guideline for answering any question about you career and personal life, as well as a justification of all the decisions you make and the life turns you take.
Finally, Aleksandra recommends students to search and apply for internships, as they will give you a head start into the business world and smooth out the transition from student to work environment.
If you want to know more about Aleksandra, you can check out her LinkedIn profile here
A new addition to the blog this year is the alumni network. I have, and will continue to interview several professionals who graduated from La Salle. Here in the blog you can read summaries from the interviews and gain inspiration for where the degree obtained at La Salle can take you.