With a good team, you can handle anything

Irina Stoianova has been working in Technology Consulting at PwC for five years. Along with her colleagues, she focuses on financial institutions, having also completed a challenging project that involved the merger of large banks. She enjoys her role because it involves creative problem-solving and also because of the team that inspires her in her career and personal life. 

How did your path lead you to PwC? 

I started out in the non-banking financial sector and then joined a pharmaceutical company. It was there that I realised I wanted to swap routine work for something more creative, and I started in consulting. 

The main difference for me at PwC was the culture. Some of the people there are not only great to work with, but also fun to spend my free time with. We have a similar mindset – approach to problems, optimism, proactivity – across all levels, from consultant to partner.

What do you most often do with your colleagues? 

We have a relatively large team consisting of both technically focused colleagues and those who are more involved in management consulting or strategy. Most of our tasks are long-term – the usual length of a project is about a year. Shorter ones, such as digital maturity assessments, tend to last a few months. 

I also had the opportunity to participate in large integration projects, which involved outsourcing a subsidiary to the parent company or data migration during a bank merger.

What was the most difficult part of such a challenge? 

Definitely the reversed schedule (laughs). I don’t consider myself a night owl; sleep is very important to me. But the migration took place over the weekend, and we only got eight hours of sleep over two days. In addition, it was challenging to coordinate a huge number of people – from IT to business to developers and analysts. 

Everything had to be planned precisely: what time the bank would shut down, how the data migration would take place, when the systems would restart. We tested everything several times in advance in a non-production environment to make sure we could do it without any hiccups. And we succeeded, because with a good team, you can handle anything.

What kind of person might you welcome in your team?

They don’t necessarily need to have a background in technology, but it’s an advantage. However, I value much more how they approach problem solving – if they don’t understand something, they should be able to just look up the information or ask questions proactively. We don’t have any specific procedures or instructions, so critical-thinking skills and a desire to get things done are very important. 

We also definitely value people who are willing to cooperate and who you can talk to normally. I can’t imagine having someone among us who is only interested in career advancement and avoids the team – we don’t have that kind of distance between us here; we’re more about humanity and openness.

What else do you enjoy about your work besides the people?

I guess the diversity. I solve problems that don’t have a clear-cut procedure, and that’s where the fun lies – figuring out how to approach it, what to learn. Along the way, new things often arise that you need to respond to and adapt to. When I see what has come out of things starting out as a simple assignment, it makes me feel good. 

At the same time, I realise that who you work with plays a big role in our company. Of course, the pyramid of needs is different at the beginning of your career, but over time, it’s mainly about people. And with a good team, even demanding work can be done. On the other hand, when we don’t enjoy something, even high pay doesn’t help (laughs).

How do you recharge your batteries outside the office?

I still don’t know whether I’m an introvert or an extrovert (laughs), so I combine activities from both worlds. I like reading fiction and watching anime, but thanks to my colleagues at PwC, I also do completely new things – for example, I started swimming and skiing. 

On my first ski trip with PwC to Austria, I paid for an instructor and practised with him on the children’s slope. Apparently, I was pretty good at it (laughs), so I want to continue. 

In general, I appreciate that PwC’s culture is very sports oriented. My colleagues do CrossFit, triathlons, running, and cycling. The energy that people radiate here is evident not only at work, but also outside of it – and I find that inspiring.