Author: Kathy Wu, Social Media Coordinator at Oracle Consulting Nordics
Follow my exploration of Oracle, where I attempt to understand the culture and people inside it. The diversity that’s comes along within a transnational IT-company is strange but amazing. Every day I meet new colleagues and learn new names. Each person has their own story of how they started in Oracle, but why they are staying, remains for the same reason. The organization culture and the people.
Today I had an interview with my colleague Monica Lantz, a HCM-consultant. She will share her career stories with us and advice for new graduates.
I am born and raised in Uppsala, a city that’s one hour away from Stockholm, Sweden. I still live there, on the countryside with my husband and our two children. Beside from work, I find it is entertaining to renovate and decorate my house and the garden. My plans for travelling is to visit a new capital for every year but also to explore more of Sweden.
I would like to comment that I have not studied anything within HR, IT or finance during my school time. My first job was in the kitchen at a pharmaceutical company and I was twenty years old. In that time the company offered us many different expertise courses to let us develop new skills. Taking value of that I started to study a course within IT and after my parental leave I came back to a financial position. Later, as an advantage with financial background I got introduced to start as a HR-administrator and after a few years I became HR-IT Manager with Nordic responsibility. In short terms, where I started didn’t define my later career path.
A friend of mine proposed me to go for an interview in Oracle. So in 2016 the 1st of November I started at Oracle Consulting. At first glance, I was a bit confused of how I could contribute but later I realized that my previous leadership experiences had been beneficial for me. As a HCM consultant my profession is to sell our consulting services. It is the skills and knowledge we have for helping our customers to adopt in the new way of working in a cloud environment. Customers usually get confident in me because of my competencies and understandings of them, therefore I also have a role as a senior adviser.
One thing we all need to know is that no matter if you are an expertise or new graduate, you are the one who sets your limits of learning, especially here in Oracle. To our new hires, I want to say this is an exciting workplace, as a consultant you have many chances to be involved in different challenges, working on diverse project and discover new skills. It is a very motivating place to be in, constantly surrounded by innovated and brilliant people. It provides a lot of positive energy to keep yourself driven and searching for new ideas on how to adapt the way consulting is working with customers.
As a women, I am delighted to state Oracle is a gender equal workplace. It is a friendly, respectful environment where we respect each other’s competencies by showing appreciations. Equally of how I want to care and help my clients, I am the same for my colleagues. Because by sharing and exchanging experiences, we are making progress both in personal and professional for the organization. In Oracle, there are a lot of freedom in terms of flexibility and ability to work remotely. It is a culture built on trust, that each employee will take care of their tasks and have strong sense of responsibility. The source of sustaining the trust within us is that we focus on efficiency and results, and not by counting the hours. I plan my hours and I am trusted, that is undeniably something cherished by me, as an employee.
As it is close to the #IWD2018, I would like to contribute this article for the theme #Pressforprogress and showcase how important it is with a gender equal workplace.
If you want to know more of how it is to work at Oracle, read my earlier interview "It is never boring to work at Oracle"