Olivia Springate, Senior Consultant

The great thing about Wavestone and being a consultant is that no two days are ever the same. My day can consist of anything from performing an ISO 27001 based security assessment to helping to construct a global logging standard for a major financial organisation. If client work isn’t enough for you – Wavestone also has a big culture of getting involved in projects around the office, and so I currently head up planning and orchestration for the monthly UK team meeting and am currently running an initiative to develop a Knowledge Management function within the UK office.

Another plus is that the ‘where’ can change too. I may work from the Wavestone office one day, work from home the next and then travel to Canary Wharf or pop down the road (a lot of our clients are based at Bank) to visit a client.

It has to be the people. Wavestone has consultants from all over the world and it contributes to a really unique and fun workplace culture. We’re a very sociable company and have events after all of our monthly team meetings, lots of games nights with pizza and beer, an annual ski-trip, summer and winter parties, and I’m sure there’s more that I’ve forgotten. These events wouldn’t be half as fun without the consultants that I’ve met during my two years here!

I also get to meet a diverse range of clients too. I’ve worked with CISOs for major financial firms, to the IT manager of a tiny, family run business that was recently absorbed by a global company. Each one offers a different perspective and a different set of skills that I can learn something from.

There have been many fun moments during my time at Wavestone but my favourite has to be the summer boat party in 2021. We had just left another long and tedious lockdown, it was 22c, the sun was setting, and we sailed up and down the Thames, drinking champagne, and partying the night away to a live band.

There is unlimited good food right on Wavestone’s doorstep in the city. Some of my favourites include Birley’s; a salad bar nearby where you can make the most delicious salad, Indochine for Vietnamese Bahn Mi, or Burrito Joe’s where the burrito is worth queuing outside in the wet and cold.

I really liked computers growing up and taught myself how to front-end code when I was in my teen years. I was actually very close to studying art at university but switched to Business Computing and IT at the last minute as it felt like a more natural fit for me. At university I managed to secure an internship with IBM and was invited back to be part of their graduate scheme once I’d finished my final year. There I was placed in their managed outsourcing arm and worked on projects within the Operational Resiliency space before transitioning to Wavestone in February 2020.

I wanted to be a photographer for most of my teenage years, which is what fed my desire to do an art degree. I like to think that if I hadn’t stumbled into cyber security consulting, I would have been a fashion photographer, running around Paris and trying to work for Vogue or another fancy magazine.

Wavestone is a fantastic company to start your career off at and so to new graduates, I’d advise them to take the assessment day seriously. Preparation is key, so prepare the classic interview questions and learn a bit about Wavestone in advance of the day. It also never hurts to prepare a couple of questions for the interviewers as well, so that candidates can get a good understanding of Wavestone as a company too.