As I dove into the consulting world, I couldn’t help but question so many aspects: Will I like it? Will it be too complicated? Will it be boring? However, yearning for something new I took the leap!
I studied psychology in my undergrad and completed a masters in clinical mental health. Since I was a young girl, I was fascinated with human emotions and empathizing with others in order to offer a better perspective on life. Let’s say I was quite the transcendental child.
As I grew up, I stumbled upon various obstacles in this clinical psychology world, leaving me dissatisfied and frustrated with my career options. I truly wanted to help others; however, to do so, there we’re SO many obstacles (economic, academic, bureaucratic, etc).
So, after trying different paths, in a confusing period of my professional life, I was lucky enough to bump into Paladino. Let’s be honest, I just saw a door of opportunity open up, but I had no idea what Paladino, consulting or human resources was truly about. I sort of knew of the big consulting giants, but what did consulting really have to do with my aspirations for helping others?
Despite the ambiguity, I decided to participate in Paladino’s hiring process. After a month of rigorous interviews, there were several things that surprised me. First, I was surprised that Paladino cultivated one of the most amazing work environments I had ever encountered; second, that it was pretty amazing that I could decipher this from just the interview process due to their continuous authenticity; and, third, that through consulting I could definitely continue my professional goal by helping others nurture and structure their organizations. Not to mention, I couldn’t agree more with Paladino’s slogan, “It’s not work satisfaction, it’s life satisfaction.” Something they aimed to inculcate in all their clients and, to be fair, I had been looking to inculcate in MY life!
After what has been the best hiring process I’ve experienced, I concluded that Paladino way, and I was ready and eager to accept that challenge! I knew that with them I would not only learn to improve the performance of different organizations, but I would also help employees find true satisfaction within their organizations! Embarking on this new journey with Paladino meant that I could continue supporting others and, therefore, continue my career goals.
It’s been five months since I began this adventure and although learning about consulting from scratch has not been easy, it, certainly, has been worth it! I’m not going to lie, once in a while, I’ll have one of those, “What on earth are they talking about?!” kinda moments. Particularly when configuring Workday, a lot of it looks like a foreign language. However, I’m lucky enough to have amazing mentors, who not only teach me how to configure, but they also teach me the reasons and importance of each configuration and how it will affect each client and user. This definitely makes the whole “caring for others” more applicable!
But perhaps one of the coolest parts of this journey has been understanding what consulting truly is about. Let’s say I had a rather negative perspective on the job of consultors. It all seemed sort of boring– working really tough schedules and not really empathizing with clients. Yet, this isn’t what Paladino has shown me. Instead, Paladino has demonstrated that consulting is about understanding the fundamental aspects of each organization in order to offer plausible and effective solutions to their problems. Very similar to psychology! In fact, this all made me realize that my background in psychology made me a great fit for this consulting world! Surely, this has offered me a greater motivation to continue learning about consulting and although it all might seem foreign to me at first glance, I hope to continue to learn new and fascinating things!