EMPLOYEE TESTIMONIAL

ARTUS BRAEKEVELDT

What has brought you to zeb?

I first heard of zeb when I moved from my home country Belgium to Vienna for my CEMS master program. Due to the many events zeb organized at my university, I quickly found out that zeb was the largest management consultancy for financial services in Europe. Being business fluent in Dutch, French, English, Spanish and German, I wanted to go into international consulting after graduation. A friend of mine working at zeb called me one day and suggested: why not zeb? He explained that zeb was a large player, that it had a fun and open culture and that it was rapidly expanding into new countries, where my background and languages would come into play. I applied immediately, had my phone interview after one week, was invited for an assessment center the week thereafter and the rest is history.

What makes zeb the ultimate jump start in your career?                      

zeb is the largest consultancy covering only financial services. Every year new markets and clients are being on-boarded. The fast pace of growth allows zeb to assign responsibility to juniorsvery quickly. Furthermore, zeb has a flat hierarchy, one which is very palpable on projects or when working on pitches. This is what my friends at zeb had told me before I joined and it was something which I experienced first-hand upon joining. You may be a young consultant, but senior managers and partners will listen to your suggestions and ideas. This flat hierarchy means you are in contact with and can learn from smart people early in your career.

What are your current responsibilities?

I am currently on a greenfield bank project, where I previously worked on setting up the Finance department from scratch and have transitioned to developing all of the bank’s Operations. I am also working closely as a part of the Open Banking team and have attended conferences and written articles on that topic (check the BankingHub website). On the side, I am also a part of “Team Oranje”. This is a team of zeb employees who are focusing their efforts on penetrating the Dutch market. Additionally, I enjoy taking an active part in recruiting activities and as such am responsible for CEMS recruiting events at RSM as well as WU.

First experiences…                  

After a week of orienting myself and getting my feet on the ground, I received a phone call. “Project in Berlin. When? Next week.” This was my first project and it was held entirely in German. It was a real learning experience as a non-native speaker and new consultant. My colleagues in the Vienna office also quickly took me on board to work on several of their pitches whilst I participated in and worked on my first recruiting events.

At zeb fun matters, so I shouldn’t forget to mention our Practice Group (PG) meetings which are held all over Europe and involve both topic discussions as well as parties. Other examples are the annual zeb Christmas parties where every employee is invited to a grand Christmas feast and the zeb start I and start II weeks where you learn all the ins and outs of strategy consulting during the day whilst meeting the other young zeb consultants in Münster’s thriving city center at night.