First months at Papilium as a fresh graduate

After receiving a Master’s degree in Applied Economics from the University of Antwerp, Wout joined Papilium in August 2019 as a fresh graduate. Three months as a Papilium Business Consultant later, he provides an insight in his experiences so far.

Now that I have been working at Papilium for a couple of months, it’s a great time to look back and reflect on my experience at Papilium and why I chose consulting. During my studies in Applied Economics, I had no clear idea of what the beginning of my career would look like. I always had an interest in management and solving problems. This idea had me looking at consultancy and so I joined student organization 180 Degrees Consulting in Antwerp, where Papilium is one of the main partners, to get an introduction into consulting.

This experience convinced me that consulting was the way to go. I joined Papilium because I immediately felt a personal fit that no other company brought out. Being a small company means that you get many responsibilities in the beginning of your career, but you can have an immediate and substantial impact on the project as a junior employee.

I was very lucky to be able to join a new project on my first day. This was very challenging at first, because I had little experience, not much training and the project was complex and fast moving. This creates a bigger challenge but that makes this job is so interesting from my perspective. Luckily, I received great support from my colleagues during the project. Being a smaller enterprise means that you immediately have many responsibilities and you also have close contact with your managers every day. I got to soak up their experience and learn form the best, it accelerates the learning process.

At Papilium I get the opportunity to work on complex business transformations where you have to analyse business problems and create a transformation strategy based on facts. The next step is to develop a roadmap that helps the client at implementing this strategy by creating a pragmatic roadmap. This focus on implementation is something that differentiates Papilium from other management consulting firms and it is what convinced me to choose for Papilium. You develop and grow into an analytical expert to solve complex problems, but you also learn to think pragmatically in order to implement the strategy created in the first part of the project.

Looking back, it is incredible to see what I have learned in only a couple of months, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I still have a long way to go to become a business transformation leader and am looking forward to the journey ahead.