Everyone can profit from working with more or less experienced colleagues. All you have to do is let it happen.

Hello everyone, you are all part of Deloitte’s cyber team and are at different stages of your career. What is your current position and how many years of experience do you bring with you?
Matthias: I’m a senior manager within the service area “cyber application security” with an overall professional working experience of 16 years.

Selik: I joined Deloitte’s cyber team as a consultant in September 2022. Prior to my time at Deloitte, I gathered multiple experiences within the field of consulting and other industries.

Lucie: I am a senior consultant and have been a part of our cyber team since the end of 2020. This is also my first “real” job. Before joining Deloitte full-time, I worked as working student at Deloitte and a few other companies.

Peter: I joined Deloitte in 2003 and became a partner in 2012. I started my business career in 1990 – back then at a bank in Vienna.

Different career levels mean a wide range of knowledge and expertise and increase the team’s diversity. Can you name a few examples in which different levels of experience have impacted the way you work?
Matthias: As in the famous proverb "All roads lead to Rome”, I personally think it is the broad variety of perspectives, backgrounds and thoughts that enable all of us to reach the planned goal in the best way possible. Regardless of one’s level of work experience, it is refreshing how team members look at seemingly same problems or targets in various ways. Looking at my own team, I can proudly mention that we create an atmosphere in which everyone – regardless of their experience – is welcomed to highlight their opinion.  

Selik: A successful team should be able to solve all kinds of problems, no matter how difficult these problems seem to be. This requires different levels of experience. Thanks to the different perspectives the team can provide on one issue, we can break complex challenges into small tasks to make sure everyone can contribute to the solution.

Lucie: As a young professional, it is most important for me to learn from my colleagues regardless of whether they’ve worked at the company for multiple years or joined after me. I believe it’s necessary to have different angles on one subject and create different approaches in order to achieve our goal. It is helpful to receive guidance from people who have done a similar task before and can show you how it can be done efficiently. On the other hand, it is often also beneficial to include ideas of people who are new to the job, as they might choose an approach that hasn’t been considered before.
In my opinion, there are no negative effects of collaborating in a team filled with individuals that bring different levels of experience to the table. Everyone, no matter what level of experience they have, can profit from working with more or less experienced colleagues if they only let it happen.

Peter, different career levels mean different stages of professional as well as personal experiences. Which experiences are most important and why?
Peter: As a partner, I am able to support and influence the team with both my professional and personal experiences. I think with the combination of both and sharing my experience proves to be beneficial for the entire team. An often-neglected factor in professional development are activities that you most likely wouldn't post on LinkedIn: sports, cultural activities, travel, and things that inspire you.

Lucie, what are the most important aspects you’ve learned from more experienced colleagues?
Lucie: On a professional level, I’ve learned the basics on how to approach a task, how to organize myself and the project and how to interact with the client. I learned the most by watching others doing it which is very helpful because you can decide which approaches or techniques to adapt and don’t need to figure out everything by yourself. I think the most important thing I’ve learned in that regard is how to behave in challenging client situations and also how to steer difficult conversations. As soon as you feel confident, you can master every call! Furthermore, some sayings from my colleagues will forever be stuck in my head and also guide my thoughts and approaches.
It’s difficult for me to say if the things I’ve learned were rather professional or personal – I guess most of the things I took over from my colleagues were techniques mixed with personal experience from them.

Peter & Matthias, you’re both very experienced and great teachers and mentors for younger colleagues. Nevertheless, are there things you can still learn from your young stars?
Peter: I can definitely learn a lot from our younger colleagues! According to recent studies, we renew our knowledge every 4 to 7 years. By interacting with younger colleagues, I can refresh my own knowledge with their input on new trends and new ways of thinking. All this helps me to recalibrate my view on the world, to stay up-to-speed and to break new ground.

Matthias: Absolutely! You never stop learning and gaining experience – regardless of how long you already have worked within a specific environment. For example, I often get precise and very valuable opinions and feedback from the young stars as well as totally different and interesting approaches and ideas on how to find a solution. This definitely helps to broaden my own view on various topics.

Selik, you are new at Deloitte. What are your first impressions when looking at the cyber team works, supports each other and shares skills and knowledge?
Selik: I strongly believe in the German proverb “Wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm” (in English: “If you don’t ask, you stay dumb”). Especially during the times of joining a new team this proverb became very important for me. To gather information, learn new things and integrate into a circle of new people you need to be curious and ask questions. You need to communicate with all members and make connections. Therefore, it’s crucial that the new team offers you the needed environment and culture to do so. In our Deloitte cyber team, I am happy to be able to say that this is absolutely given!

Despite or even because of your different career levels, there is one thing that unites you all: your passion for cyber topics! In what way does this passion express itself in you?
Matthias: In my case, it is my constant interest in cyber related news and technological developments as well as connecting the dots to a bigger picture on how these things impact our daily personal and business life on multiple layers.

Selik: The idea that our today’s work has a direct impact on the future of connected technologies motivates me to strive in cyber related topics every day.

Lucie: My interest in cyber security was set off by one lecture in university where we tackled security within vehicles. One example was about cyber security and how hackers could affect our vehicles in the future which I really liked. Without having a clear understanding on what awaits me, I started in Deloitte’s cyber team – coincidently in the field of vehicle security with the same question: how to prevent our vehicles from cyber-attacks day by day. As diving deeper into the topic, I realized how broad the field of cyber security is and that there are so many interesting aspects I want to learn more about. Therefore, my passion shows itself in being eager to learn and explore more and more facets of cyber security, to discover more interconnections and just being curious about all the things I don’t know yet.

Peter: Most of my career has been devoted to cyber, which initially was called “IT security” and then “information security” (what a long word – no wonder that management didn’t want to talk about it 😉). Regardless of the name and some career setbacks, I’ve remained faithful to the topic because I believe in the importance and especially in the impact of cyber regarding development opportunities of companies and our society.

We are happy to share a lot more inspiring stories of our colleagues about the diversity in Deloitte’s cyber team with you – check it out!

Furthermore, you’re very welcome to get to know more about your career opportunities in the cyber team and to learn more about our cyber services.