I worked as a helpdesk support analyst role in another company for several years and when there was a position going for a consultancy job, so I decided to take the plunge as I wanted a new challenge.

I love that there is a big support community out there, from webpage blogs to YouTube videos – everybody seems to want to support each other and enable the growth in tech to grow new heights! I love finding out how customers work and seeing how I can help improve their processes to make their lives easier and also make their business more successful.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions! No question is a stupid question if you don’t know the answer. Even if you think everybody else in the room knows what you need to ask them, they only know it by finding it out, the same as you.

There is flexibility in the working day. As long as your daily hours are completed and no customer meetings have been interrupted, its okay if you need to take a longer lunch or finish a little earlier/start a little later. Columbus also promotes self-learning, which helps you grow in your career. There are really useful internal academy courses as well as having the ability to use the online Microsoft Learning centre.

I worked in retail whilst I did IT at college, and then managed to go straight into an IT job at a computer repair centre. I then worked for an IT supply company and I was headhunted for a helpdesk support analyst role as they wanted someone with a variety of experience in the industry.

Being a helpdesk support analyst, everyday was different from new questions and issues to solve. I really enjoy problem solving but wanted to be able to see more of what happened of the customer journey before the customer went live and how they managed to come to the decisions they did for their new custom processes – that’s when I knew consultancy was a good route for me.

Being able to ask all the questions that the customer has not thought of. Almost like being the 3^rd eye and seeing things from an outside perspective to help them make decisions on how they want the system to work and how they want their business to process.

Many consultancy roles are fully remote working and I had a specific requirement when moving jobs – I wanted a local office so I could work hybrid, a diverse company, and a team that I would see face to face every so often as I feel connecting in person is important. Fortunately for me Columbus offered this as well as being a top software provider to many large companies that I’ve heard of.

In software, things move very quickly, there are always new things to learn – so I would advise to try and keep on top of understanding what features the product can offer where possible as this will really help you!

Flexibility of working, the paths it can take you – I feel like because there is so much to constantly learn, you would never stagnate so there are so many routes you can take in your career because of this.