Prior to working for Accenture I worked for a large international food retailer in Category Marketing and Head of Foods for an international franchise. I wanted a career change to build my skills. broaden my experience and I was keen to work across a broad range of different retailers. Consulting presented these new opportunities along with variety and new and exciting challenges. I chose Accenture as they are the best. They are consistently rated No. 1 consultancy to work for. They have great clients, offer global opportunities and I liked the people. Upon joining Accenture I was given core training for developing my skills, classroom training for a week in Chicago, plus I am part of an ongoing training programme. We were all provided with a mentor and career counsellor for coaching and support. My retailing skills are also valued by the firm and I have therefore been able to coach consultants here and increase their knowledge of the retail industry in relation to consulting. The main challenges, for me, in making this career change has been learning about Information Technology, its impacts and how it can be exploited. I realised the benefits of IT from a consulting/business background, as my previous experience had been in the retail industry - this was a steep learning curve, which meant I was pushed and stretched – but that is why I joined Accenture; for the challenges. Accenture is everything I expected it to be. The calibre of people at Accenture is high which means you are constantly learning from others and being challenged to perform at your best everyday. It can be very busy at times, keeping commitments – it is rarely an option to push a deadline date back therefore it can get quite intense – especially as you are working with the clients money. My advice to anyone who is thinking about changing careers and joining consultancy is: be prepared to be flexible. Accenture really values people with business skills. Clients appreciate you keeping business language simple and remaining focussed on delivering results. I want to continue doing interesting work, build my industry skills and progress to Senior Executive in the next 3 years. Meet more Accenture people