A Week at Newton

Alex is a Consultant at Newton Europe. She studied Law at Oxford, and has been working at Newton for a year and a half.

Waking up at ten past 6 on a Monday morning, I roll out of bed, grab my suitcase and head for a 7:30 train where, breakfast and coffee in hand I make my way up to my client site to start my week.

My job is made up of graphs, analytics, meetings and calculations, but at the heart of it are the conversations with people from a huge range of backgrounds and industries. At Newton I’ve worked closely with nurses and health care assistants, manufacturing professionals, and senior officers at the Ministry of Defence, to name just a few.

I’m currently working in the procurement team of a large business.

There’s no such thing as a typical day, but after arriving at site I’d likely check in with my senior clients, say hello to the buying team and catch up on any emails. After a morning session with the Newton team defining my goals for the week and making sure our plans align, I head to a two-hour workshop in which I take 5 buyers through the new tracker we’ve built and encourage challenge on its purpose and effectiveness. We want to build this product up together, and making sure the client team is involved is important. The session leaves me energized, but with lots to do!

After lunch with a couple of the client team, I sit down to edit the tracker- adopting many of the changes proposed in the morning session, adding in a couple of Macros and polishing the overall appearance. I set up a meeting with a senior client to take them through the work later in the week.

In the evening the Newton team tend to get together for dinner – someone will be cooking at the large Airbnb we’re all staying at 5 minutes from site, or we might all head out for a meal. But not before I spend an hour at the local gym, and find 20 minutes to call a friend.

As usual, my week focuses around data, meetings and exciting new finds. By Friday we’ve taken the new tracker to the senior leadership team and one of the company directors is impressed by the efforts of their team. I leave pretty early on Friday afternoon in order to be home by 6pm, a universal rule across Newton that protects your weekends, no matter where you’re based.

Before joining Newton I had no real idea of what I wanted to do. As an operational consultant I can pull together my passions for understanding and investigating the numbers and data behind a problem whilst also focusing on the people at the heart of a business. Every week is different, and one week I might be asked to travel to the Midlands to look at supermarket costings, whilst the next week I could be in the South-West assessing how we can help the health care system. It’s fast paced, challenging and technical but, at its core, it is a team based role that’s focused around processes and the people that interact with them.

Newton hires graduates into Operations, Digital and Head Office roles. For more information, please see https://www.newtoneurope.com/careers.