The experience story Christel Holgado at AccentureI worked at Accenture for 8 months. Accenture Prague provides HR Services for clients all over the world. Our team was responsible for contract production for a big international company in the Netherlands. I think my experience in Prague was the best my study career; this is my story:
16 July 2010: my flight to Prague and I had never been to this city before. My purpose was finding a job in HR and I preferred a job somewhere in Asia and then it turned out to be a city in Eastern Europe. I arrived at Prague Airport and my buddies from AIESEC took me to the AIESEC flat. That was the beginning of 8 wonderful months.. We dropped my suitcase and moved on to a party where I would meet other AIESEC’ers. Everybody was waiting for “the new trainee”.
My first week at Accenture was hard, in my induction week I was overloaded with information. Of course everything was new to me, I had to get used to my new place, getting up early everyday and travelling to the office was something I had to get used to. Luckily there was one girl who started at the same day in the same project. I was lucky that in my first week a big teambuilding weekend had been organized. It was great, even though I started my first week of working completely exhausted. But this was just a perfect opportunity to get to know your colleagues (also in a different way). I will never forget this first week in Prague..
First I started workshadowing to get to know the computersystems. My main tasks would be composing employment contracts for new hires and employment changes (promotion, salary increase, change of working days). After the required trainings I had to start working on my own. I had to ask a lot of questions since the whole process of composing contracts is quite complex. All requests have to be validated; they have to be in line with the policies of the client.
After two months my lead asked me if I would like to train two new colleagues within our team. I was surprised that I would be asked for this opportunity after such a short period. Of course I was enthusiastic and when I left the Accenture I realized that the colleagues I left behind were trained by me. This was a nice experience, sometimes it was hard. Every new colleague needed a different way of training. I think patience is the best way of training. Our team consisted of different personalities, which is in my opinion a good thing. You learn how to deal with them and you can learn how you can act on their behaviour.
Before I came to Prague I expected a job with more responsibilities. But I must say I learned a lot, in every way. I found out how I am within a team, my strengths came up by receiving feedback from my lead and colleagues. This whole experience with working in a very dynamic environment showed me all the things I have only heard in lectures at university. HR Outsourcing had always been an interesting topic for me but it was just theory. I can honestly say: Now it makes sense.
AIESEC Praha is well organized. I was so happy that I could live in an AIESEC flat, even though it was such a mess sometimes. The flat is located in a perfect area, in a shopping area and all the public transport facilities around the corner. The city centre is not far from the flat. In our flat all the parties were held (welcome/goodbye parties, Christmas) every Wednesday was movie night and we celebrated New Years Eve with 30 trainees. I went to an AIESEC conference once, because I wanted to get to know the other trainees and AIESEC in general. After my arrival in Prague a bunch of AIESEC trainees came to Accenture, that was really nice. In the end we were living with 5 Accenture Trainees in the flat.
As many tourists experience, Czech people are not always in a good mood. This was the first thing I had to get used to. Service of the waiters is sometimes rude, they just don’t care about it. Also colleagues keep distance. A lot of Czech people do not speak English so they just walk away from you once you start talking. When you are living abroad you just realize how great things are arranged in your own country, like healthcare. One day I got crazy because I felt so bad, only because I had to cough a lot. All my flatmates were saying that I had to go to the doctor or hospital. Even my Czech colleague sitting across me complained that I should go to a doctor. I was thinking: we don’t go to the doctor for a cough, I was so annoyed..
During my internship I met amazing people. My colleagues were also my close friends. We travelled a lot together, we celebrated weekends and went to the gym etc. I felt so sad when I left. I will meet them soon, we will have a reunion with the five of us.
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