No wonder Bernadette Morley is bubbling over with enthusiasm. Her career has just taken off. She graduated from UL last year with a first-class honours degree in business studies. Today she's an analyst with Andersen Consulting in Dublin. She started in her new job just over four months ago and she's loving every minute of it. No one day is routine, she says.
Morley did one interview just over a year ago. This was followed by a job offer from Andersen Consulting a month later. "I had other interviews lined up but I didn't go for them. There was no point." She started working with this international company which specialises in management and information technology consulting in September.
It's been all go since then. In the first three weeks, she was trained in the C programming language. "I'd never done that before. It was a whole new experience, a lot of learning. It was interesting and challenging." She was then sent to Chicago for three weeks to learn about "building interfaces and programming" and the "client server environment." Then it was back to Dublin where she waited to be assigned her first client.
She was put to work on a plan to help a client with the conversion to the Euro.
"The job is very challenging," she says. "You could be interviewing people, the next minute you could be drawing up a plan, writing up documents or doing programmes.
"There are great travel opportunities in the company. It does its best to cater for your needs. It's very much into helping you to build your skills. It monitors your progress and gives you feedback."
An interest in IT is essential in her job. "You mightn't necessarily have worked a lot with computers but they train you from scratch. You have to know it - it's the way of the future."
Three years ago while still at college, says Morley, she had no real focus as to her future. Then she spent eight months of third year learning on-the-job in the United States. She was studying for a general business studies degree, having opted in her third year to specialise in marketing.
"Career-wise, I didn't have a clue until I did my internship in New York. I was with AIB in their trading room. I had a ball. It was the best eight months ever. They kept you up to date on decisions and you were given responsibility.
"They let you settle in and they involved you in everything. It really stood to me. Even at the beginning, unknown to yourself, just sitting in the environment you learned so much."
As an analyst, you need to be organised, analytical, capable of fast decision-making and show responsibility, professionalism, initiative and leadership. "This is what companies look for. I was lucky in college. My coop (work experience) really stood to me."
The UL course prepared her for the world of work. She gained experience in economics, personnel management, entrepreneurship, communications and history. And there were lots of projects and lots of deadlines.
