"I couldn't have imagined a better start to my career: a great employer, fun colleagues and the chance to develop yourself with tailor-made, personal guidance!" In February '23, Lisa started as a Junior Management Consultant. Together with Bart, she joined Harmony Business Consultancy's first Young Graduate Programme. Today we look back together on the past 6 months and how she experienced them.
What should people know about you, Lisa?
I'm Lisa, I'm 25 and I live in Genk. I recently graduated in Business Engineering from KU Leuven, after an Erasmus exchange in Strasbourg.
I like to keep busy. In my free time I like to meet up with friends to go out for a nice dinner and a night out. I also do a lot of sport, and I give swimming lessons to people with an intellectual disability.
How and when did you end up at Harmony?
My first contact with Harmony was actually at the Ekonomika job fair. 2 people from Harmony came up to me there, and it was immediately a fun, jovial chat. The following week, Cleo from HR contacted me, and that's how the ball started rolling.
And then came the application process. How did that go?
I'd describe my application process in one word: 'relaxed'! After the first phone call, we scheduled an online introductory meeting with Cleo and an experienced consultant. It felt like a nice conversation with genuine interest in me as a person.
At Harmony, it's very important that there's a click with new colleagues and a fit with the culture. Thanks to that conversation, I got a better idea of a consultant's life and could picture very well what the job involves. After that exploratory conversation, I was soon invited to an interview at the office with one of the managers. It was combined with a business case, and it immediately gave a good impression of the horizontal structure within Harmony. The managers were, and are, very approachable and involved.
After that interview and the case, it was clear: the click was there and I could start.
Looking back now, I'm very happy and grateful that everything went so quickly. Because of my Erasmus, there was quite a long time between signing my contract and my actual start date, but in the meantime I was already treated as a full colleague and invited to the various team events. Meeting my colleagues for the first time in an informal setting was a huge plus for me!
And then that first day finally came and the real work began. What did the onboarding look like?
On my first day at Harmony, the tone was set straight away. My fellow Young Graduate, Bart, and I got to meet lots of colleagues right away, who had all come to co-work at our office in Hasselt. We had lunch together and got to know each other better in an informal way.
We also got an introduction to Harmony and how it works internally. All the practical things were sorted out immediately too, such as the mobile phone subscription, setting up the laptop, collecting the new car and so on. After that, I sat down with my coach. Johan is an experienced colleague who helps me put my professional goals into words and achieve them. He's there to help me grow as a person, both at work and personally. At the end of our first day, Bart and I went for a drink with our buddies. The buddies are consultants within Harmony who have a bit less experience than a coach, but are closer to our world as Young Graduates. The contact is even more informal and accessible.
The rest of the onboarding week was packed with training and introductions to various colleagues within Harmony, to get a better view of the different roles a consultant can take on. It was a nice mix of the head office in Hasselt and the co-working spaces in Diegem and Antwerp. We even went for lunch once at a client's office with the colleagues who work there. After the first weeks of training, I was already invited to an interview for a first project. My colleagues prepared me well for it, so it went well and I could start at ING the following week!
Can you tell us a bit more about the first project you're working on?
I started at ING as the point of contact for everything to do with an external software supplier. By now I'm fully up to speed, and people from all over the organisation come to me with questions, change requests, incidents and so on relating to this external supplier. I have weekly status meetings with this supplier and do everything from the daily run to changes, resolving incidents, invoicing and centralisation. I really appreciate that ING has trusted me to take on this responsibility independently.
When I said I was open to an extra challenge, that was received very enthusiastically. From then on, I was also involved in analysing new features for the internal tool our team developed, and I improved the way of working within our team, for example by bringing more structure to testing.
To sum up: my first project is super interesting and varied, and my learning curve is still going steeply upwards. I can develop well thanks to Harmony's support. Even though I'm the only Harmonian in my team at ING, the other Harmony colleagues at ING are always there for me, and I can always turn to them when I'm unsure about something.
How would you describe the culture at Harmony?
The culture is the main reason I chose Harmony. I get on really well with my colleagues, and Harmony also puts a lot of weight on connection and belonging. Lots of team buildings are organised, and there are regular in-person team meetings where the latest news and developments are shared.
Harmony has a very transparent company culture, and you can see that in those team meetings. Harmony really cares about you as a person; they want you to feel good and grow into the best version of yourself. Thanks to Harmony, I even got to fulfil my big dream of jumping out of a plane, for an employer branding campaign!
How do you see your future at Harmony?
I want to keep learning as much as possible, develop myself and get a taste of different things. I love the trust you're given to work independently. I'd like to carry that on in the future. Being given responsibility helps me bring out the best version of myself.
Finally, any message for future Young Graduates?
I couldn't have imagined a better start to my career: a great employer, fun colleagues and the chance to develop yourself with tailor-made, personal guidance!
