#GradStories Kate Morgan, Consulting Analyst, Deloitte

What are your main tasks in a normal week?

In a normal week on our project, we would add features and functionality to a website and we would improve the core architecture. I would do the user story. For every piece of work we would get, I would create the user's story, how the user would go through the website, the requirements that we need to meet and then the acceptance criteria that ultimately need to be signed off for the piece of work. This means I do front-end testing and back-end testing to make sure that it's all okay and if not then I would log the bugs in with the developers on the team and we would try and fix the bugs before we go live with that piece of work.

What skills do you need to be successful in your role?

I think the most important skills is definitely communication. On a technical team you'd have developers, testers, business analysts, project stakeholders and the client organization.

We'd have a certain amount of user stories that we'd have to get ready in the two-week sprint so you need to make sure that you have those planned, executed, tested and triaged before the two week sprint is over so I think being organised is important as well.

What do you love about your job?

I think what I love about consulting is that you're not just in one box so at the moment my role is that of a business analyst and a tester so I get to keep the business side of the business analysts and the project management but I get to still keep the technology with the testing. There are so many different projects so if you wanted to work on UI or if you want to do design or testing you're not just stuck in the one box you get to try new things.

How did you get into your job?

I started with Deloitte because I did business management at CIT and then I did a master's in information systems for business performance at UCC. I have that mix of business and technology and I think consulting. That's a good mix so for Deloitte, I applied on the Deloitte website undergraduate section and went through their recruitment process.

What skill should students develop if they are interested in this career?

I think the main skill to develop is problem solving. In consulting you're given various projects but you also have a project deadline. We work in sprint so you have a certain amount of work that you need to get done but with development and with testing there's going to be bumps in the road so I think just being able to do critical thinking problem solving would be a really good skill to work upon.