What Does a Workday Payroll Consultant Do? A Realistic Look at the Job, Pay, and Career Path
If you’ve ever wondered what a Workday payroll consultant actually does all day, you’re not alone. It’s one of those roles that can sound highly specialized until someone explains what the work looks like in practice.
In this post, Katie shares what she has learned through eight years working in Workday payroll implementations. She explains how she found the role, what the work involves, which skills matter, how her career and compensation have grown, and what someone considering this path should know.
How Katie Got Into Workday Payroll Consulting
Katie didn’t grow up dreaming about Workday payroll implementations. Like many people, she found the role through a college career fair and chose it because the company stood out to her.
She considered graduate school, but didn’t have a particular career goal that made grad school feel necessary. Instead, she took the job, moved from Florida to Atlanta, and started learning. That decision became the beginning of an eight-year career.
Katie’s path is a reminder that you don’t have to know exactly what you want to do before you graduate. Sometimes you find a promising opportunity, take a first step, and discover where it leads.
What a Workday Payroll Consultant Actually Does
Katie works on software implementations, helping customers move onto Workday from another system. The work is project-based, and each customer may be at a different stage of the process.
That means there isn’t one predictable day. Katie might spend most of the day on calls with one customer, or move between many calls with several customers. One project could be just getting started while another is already live and in post-production.
The job involves more than explaining software. Consultants also help customers navigate the implementation process, keep track of project needs, solve problems, and understand how the system will work for their organization. Katie also coaches colleagues, which she describes as one of the most rewarding parts of her role.
The Most Rewarding Parts of the Job
For Katie, seeing a customer understand a process after months of preparation is rewarding. She also enjoys helping people who are new to the work learn and grow.
That mix of customer-facing work and teaching gives the role variety. There’s satisfaction in helping an organization reach go-live, but also in watching someone else develop the skills to contribute confidently.
The Hardest Parts: Deadlines, Testing, and Go-Lives
Some of the most demanding periods happen during parallel testing, when the team compares Workday’s payroll output with the customer’s legacy system. The goal is to make sure the system is working correctly before employees rely on it to get paid.Because payroll is so important, a problem close to a deadline can feel intense. A consultant may need to join a call, investigate an issue, and help find a solution quickly.
Katie’s approach is to stay calm, prioritize the issue, and focus on solutions rather than letting stress take over. She says urgent problems are not an everyday occurrence, but they can happen, particularly around go-live or support work.
The workload can also vary. Some weeks are manageable; others bring overlapping deadlines and longer days. Katie says late nights or weekend work can happen occasionally, but aren’t constant. Still, the project-based nature of consulting means busy periods can arrive all at once.
Why the Work Gets Easier With Experience
Katie began without prior experience in payroll or Workday. At first, parts of the job felt overwhelming. Over time, the concepts started to click, and tasks that once took an hour could take around 15 minutes.
Her experience offers an encouraging lesson for anyone starting a new career: struggling with unfamiliar work at the beginning doesn’t mean you’re not capable. It may simply mean you’re still learning how the pieces fit together.
Breaking work into smaller steps, taking good notes, and practicing regularly can make a steep learning curve feel more manageable. As experience builds, you start to recognize patterns and solve familiar problems more quickly.
Skills That Help Candidates Succeed
Katie says organization, problem-solving, and effort are among the most important qualities for success. She appreciates when someone tries to investigate an issue before asking for help—and can explain what they’ve already tried.
A strong candidate benefits from:
Resourcefulness: looking for answers and making use of available information.
Organization: tracking project details, tasks, and customer needs.
Problem-solving: working through an issue instead of stopping at the first obstacle.
Good note-taking: capturing details that may matter later.
Excel skills: useful in the role, though Katie values problem-solving even more than being an Excel expert.
Communication: speaking clearly with customers and colleagues.
Katie also emphasizes the importance of keeping perfectionism in perspective. High-quality work matters, especially when payroll is involved. But if the pressure to make everything perfect keeps you anxious, the job may become unnecessarily difficult. Testing can uncover issues; part of the work is being prepared to fix them.
Pay, Career Growth, and Work-Life Balance
Katie describes a clear progression at her company, with promotions roughly every two years. She started at around $60,000 and says her current compensation is roughly in the $190,000–$240,000 range. She notes that compensation and advancement vary by company and role.
Over time, her growing income helped her build savings and buy a home. She says she appreciates being able to travel and spend without thinking constantly about money, while still living within her means.
Work-life balance depends on the project and season. Katie says a 45-hour workweek is not unusual for her role, but not every week is like that. Travel can be another factor: she once flew to Boston every week and found the pace exhausting. In her current situation, she travels on site only a few times a year and appreciates the flexibility to work remotely.
Her experience shows both sides of the role: it can offer career growth and flexibility, while still bringing occasional intense workloads and travel demands. Those details are worth asking about when evaluating a specific employer.
How to Get Into Workday Consulting
There are several possible entry points. Some people first work on the customer side as a payroll, benefits, HR, or finance administrator at an organization that uses Workday. That experience can help them transition into consulting.
Others start directly in consulting, often at an entry-level position, and build experience from there. Katie says a specific college major may matter less than having a degree and being ready to learn, though expectations vary by employer.
For someone preparing to apply, she suggests:
Learn about the software or field you want to work in.
Build confidence using Excel.
Practice explaining how you solve problems.
Get comfortable speaking in interviews and customer conversations.
Develop good research, note-taking, and organization habits.
Katie also says familiarity with AI tools can be useful, but it’s important to understand how you reached an answer—not just rely on a tool to produce it. In more technical Workday roles, programming or other technical skills may be relevant; a functional role like hers may not require them.
What the Career Can Open Up
Consulting helped Katie become more confident speaking with customers and senior leaders. She has worked with CFOs and CEOs, and says those interactions helped make interviews and professional conversations feel less intimidating.
The experience can also build skills that transfer into other roles. Katie mentions opportunities in areas such as sales, other technical specialties, and different Workday-related positions. Some people move to another Workday consulting firm, become contractors, or start their own company.
The exact next step varies, but consulting can provide exposure to customers, projects, and business processes that may be useful across many career paths.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need payroll experience to start?
Not necessarily. Katie entered the role after college without previous payroll or Workday experience. Requirements differ by employer, but her experience shows that it’s possible to learn on the job.
What does a typical day look like?
There may not be a typical day. Work depends on the customers and the stages of their projects. A consultant might spend the day on calls, switch between projects, troubleshoot an issue, or coach a colleague.
Is Workday consulting remote?
It can be. Katie’s current role involves only occasional on-site travel, but expectations vary among companies. It’s a good idea to ask about travel frequency and remote-work policies during the hiring process.
Is the work stressful?
It can be, especially when an issue arises near a payroll deadline or during go-live. Katie says staying calm, prioritizing, and looking for solutions helps. Workload also tends to vary by project phase.
Which skills matter most?
Katie highlights organization, problem-solving, resourcefulness, communication, and Excel. She especially values candidates who make an effort to investigate a problem before asking for help.
Final Thoughts
Workday payroll consulting combines customer communication, software implementation, troubleshooting, and teaching. The work can be demanding, especially during testing and go-live, but Katie’s experience also shows how skills and confidence can grow over time.
You don’t need to have your entire career mapped out before you begin. Katie started without payroll or Workday experience, learned on the job, and built a career that has brought new responsibilities, financial growth, and transferable skills. For someone who is organized, resourceful, and willing to learn, consulting may be a path worth exploring.
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Katie (00:05)
Hello, so this is a special episode. I wanted to start off by giving background about myself as I will be hosting the show. So my name is Katie. I work in specifically workday payroll implementations. What I find interesting and kind of why I wanted to start the show is there was never a point in my life where my dream was, hey, I want to work with workday payroll implementations. found this job at a company that I really like and it kind of just I've been with them since 2018, so it's been a while.
I think it's just so interesting as you enter the job force or the workforce, you don't really know what you're getting yourself into. And so I think it's helpful to kind of hear from other perspectives and people who've been doing it. And that's what inspired me to start this podcast. So as of now, my title is senior manager. I'm an architect on projects. I primarily work with payroll, but I also work with other functional areas within workday as well. It's most of the time
what we're doing is we're actually implementing software, so working with customers to actually start them on workday from another system is what we do primarily. The background of this was whenever I was in college, I went to the career fair as many of us do, and I was between going to gradu grad school and getting this job. I did interview at a few other places, but none of them stuck out as much and I didn't have a
dream role necessarily when I was graduating. So this one definitely made sense in the company I really liked. So when I originally applied it was because I knew they were coming to the career fair and I wanted to hear more and be a part of this firm. Over others, there really wasn't a lot of other options. Grad school, like I mentioned before, I considered for a while. I just thought it might make sense to make money and not go to grad school and there wasn't a clear, like I said, dream job that graduate school would really help me get to.
If I had to start over completely.
That's hard. I think I got a lot of practice interviews when I was going through the career fair. I talked to a lot of companies that I didn't really even want to work with, which I thought was smart to kinda have low really low pressure interviews as I was going into an interview that I cared about more. If I had to start over though, I don't know. I don't have a great answer to what I would have done differently.
When I was deciding for this job, I did uproot from Florida and I did move to Atlanta. So when I was thinking about that move, I was really excited and I was something I was looking forward to with a new job.
So that's kind of the background of how I got this role. To kind of walk more into what the job looks like, I can walk through a day start to finish. And I'm sorry this episode's not as exciting as it's not an interview. I just wanted to talk through this for myself. So typically what it looks like is I'm on a lot of calls as a consultant and as a person who works with implementations, you talk with different customers. So I've had multiple customers at once and I've had few customers. It really just depends on the season, how many customers I would have at a time.
But I have definitely had calls where I'm on one call for eight hours a day. And I've had calls or I've had days, sorry, where I've had maybe ten calls and I've been on calls for eight hours, but it's with different customers or different people throughout the day. Every customer, it's really project based, so customers will be at different stages of a project as we go through each project. And so every day is a little different with different customers. They're at different phases of the project. I think it's a fun test for your brain to see if you can keep up.
and how to best organize yourself to really be able to meet every customer's needs as they are in different phases of the project. And you might have to jump from one call where they're just kicking off the project to another call where they're already live and they're actually post-production in that case. So really there isn't a typical day. There's typical seasons of projects as projects follow the same format, but every day does change. There's also some work I get to do internally as well as coaching other people, which is really what I really do love about the job as well.
The most rewarding part of the job is probably teaching others. I think while it's really exciting to bring customers live, and I think it's really awesome to see them really click and them understand the processes that we've explained and outlined for months leading up to their go live. I think that's really rewarding as well as teaching people who maybe just started and are starting this as a career path.
In terms of a busy week versus a non-busy week, I definitely have times that are much busier. This is when we have there's a stage called parallel where you actually work and compare the workday's output to any legacy system. That is typically long days with customers making sure that everything works correctly and that their system is actually paying their employees correctly. So that would be the busiest time. A normal week is maybe on calls for eighty percent of my time.
Lately it's been sometimes it's less, but typically eighty percent is normal to be on calls for in my particular role.
So when people think so I have a question that's says what do people think your job is versus what is it actually? This one I find particularly funny because whenever I was starting in this job, I went home with a handful of my coworkers and we were working for my family's house and my sister genuinely asked if we were working at a call center because she just saw us on the phone the whole time and thought that we worked for a call center. So I don't actually work for a call center. I work for I work for a lot of c customers and different projects.
The biggest thing that surprised me once I started was how things that f felt really hard at the beginning just got easier along with with time. So I started and certain things were overwhelming to me or made me nervous or made me stressed. And as I continued in this role, it just got easier and things just clicked and made more sense. And it was really less overwhelming, I would say, to have the step up when it felt like it was a huge step.
If you took it in bite sized pieces, it actually got easier. And then looking back, I remember a moment where I just realized, hey, I actually get this and this all makes sense to me. And it's something that I had no experience in payroll or work day prior to this role. I started right out of college. So it was exciting to have that actually click and for me to understand what was going on.
I wanna talk through next a time when many things went wrong at work. So that is something that I will say it can be stressful about this role. When you're working for customers, sometimes there's high priority items, especially payroll. We don't want people to get paid wrong. So there's times where something might be wrong and payroll is due and you have to hop on the phone with a customer and fix something or test something. And sometimes you're working on a really tight timeline. So that is common for go lives, or if you do any support work as well.
Definitely happens. I think that you just work on prioritizing if you have to drop your existing call, getting coverage and getting another call. Really just staying calm and handling those situations. It's not common. It's not something that happens day to day by any means, but it has happened probably once or twice in my eight years of doing this, to where I can stay calm and really fix things. I think it's helpful to keep your voice down and not be super stressed and really just come with solutions rather than.
stress. So usually go lives are more stressful. Sometimes even little things get customers freaked out, which totally makes sense. Everything is new. And so that's when things go wrong and you just have to stay calm and then try to solution as quick as you can.
I think the hardest part of this role can be those timelines. It's because it's so project based, you have times where you're busier and times where you're less busy. And sometimes when things are busy, it feels like it's when it rains it pours and there's a lot happening at once. So there are times where you have to maybe work late nights or really put in the extra time to get the job done. That's maybe the less glamorous part of the job, but it's not like it's like that all the time. It just happens occasionally where
Like I said, when it rains it pours and you have to do some late nights or work on a weekend, but it's not entirely common.
In terms of remote work, this industry, even before COVID, was a pretty remote industry. Consulting in general, I feel like a lot of folks are pretty remote. I used to be on site a lot more prior to COVID. Now I go on site maybe two to three times a year. So it's definitely changed in that sense where you I there was a while where I was on site back to back weeks, and while I made the most of it, that's not really something I was looking for. So for my specific company, we do go on site less. I know some other firms do every other week.
Or even Monday through Thursday every week, we're not on that same exact schedule, which definitely I appreciate.
Now I want to kind of talk through some of the balance, the work-life balance that I've been able to maintain. So realistically, each week, it depends on the week, like I was saying. I feel like it's fair to work maybe nine hours in a day. I'm now at a level where if I work nine hours a day, I get one day off every other week. So that makes it really worth it. I do think working a 45-hour week is not uncommon, but it's not always that. And then there's definitely weeks where you work more.
I don't think I've ever worked more than fifty hours in a week. I've definitely had weeks where I've built I've not even billed, but logged that time because of travel. So the travel time would just be additional time added onto the work week. So where I maybe had sixty hours in the books, but I wasn't actually working the whole time and they were just being logged to travel in some cases. I think as I've also grown in my career, I have had a lot better balance. I
like I mentioned earlier, I can pick up things quicker and nothing is as big as it used to seem. So fixing problems that used to take me an hour can take me up to fifteen minutes now. And it's really helpful for me to jump in and it really makes it less stressful and allows me to have better work life balance. After work, in terms of unplugging, I definitely go play tennis or I go on a walk or go to the gym or hang out with friends and go on a hike. There's so much to do. but I definitely unplugged. There are times where
I dream about work or I'm going to bed and I'm thinking about solving something. And there's definitely been times where I've solved it when I'm about to go to bed. So it's something that your brain keeps thinking about, but it's not exactly stressful as much as just lingering there.
So the next items I want to get into is kind of what makes a good candidate. So, in terms of what separates people who succeed versus people who simply plateau, a lot of this comes down to organization and problem-solving capabilities as well as effort. I think that if you try to solve a problem, it goes a really long way. I always give the people that I work with advice to say, hey, if you come to me with a question, I want to know what you've tried before you came to me. I don't want to be the first line of defense.
I wanna see if you searched this, if you tried to build it in the system or what you did prior to coming to me. There's a lot of resources out there to make this job easier. It's even getting easier with AI being involved, and I just don't think it's a fair assumption to if you the second you hit a roadblock, you go to someone. So I think as a candidate, it's really helpful to be resourceful, be organized so you know where answers might live, and you take good notes on calls.
And then really just be a good problem solver and work on those skills. In the beginning I would say that Excel skills were really important 'cause we do use a lot of Excel. I still think that that makes someone better, but I would take someone who's a problem solver before I would take an Excel wizard if they weren't a good problem solver, if that makes sense.
In terms of people who might actually dislike this job, I think that that would be someone who is sometimes a perfectionist isn't the best fit, and sometimes it is. It just depends on how much pressure you put on yourself in that role. I think being a perfectionist and providing a good quality work to the customer is the best and is optimal. I think if that's going to make you stay up all night and drive you insane, it's not worth it. So I think that people who
are perfectionists and really that lets them impact their emotions. I think that that isn't ideal as this can be a stressful or demanding job. So you kinda have to be able to separate your life from the role while still doing a good job. Obviously, it just is hard if you're gonna be stressed all the time because you want everything to be perfect w in a place that's while you yes, I want everything to be perfect, I do understand that there's a level of testing that has to happen and things when you test can go wrong and that's okay because we can fix them.
And that mentality typically goes along.
I think sometimes people do enter this field and they don't know what they're getting into. I think some folks have used workday maybe to apply for a job and they're like, I get it. And workday is such a larger software than they're aware of. So I think some folks have a limited viewpoint and when they apply to roles within workday, they definitely are don't exactly know what they're getting themselves into is how broad it can be and how much it can really touch your specific functional area or how many functional areas you'd work on.
So I think a big mistake is people just thinking workday's one thing when it really can be a lot. So there's a lot of different jobs in it.
In terms of if there was a moment where I knew if this job was right or wrong for me, I don't think there was a clear moment or a clear time. I think that there just became a point where I like, I actually understand this and I'm pretty good at it, which is helpful, I guess. And it made it easier to be good at reporting and good at payroll. And it helped me just know that this is a good opportunity and I got to be involved with the organization as well, which helped.
Now I kinda wanna get into career progression and the pay involved. So in terms of progression, the company that I work for does cycles every year, but your promotion you wouldn't get until two or more years. So because I'm at eight years, I've actually gone through been promoted every two years at this company. So you start at an analyst level, now I'm at a senior manager level, but there's definitely a lot of steps in between that you get.
I've really liked and been grateful for that approach as I've seen other industries where their progression isn't as clear or is less is just not existent at all.
In terms of the actual pay, we started out in when I started it was around it was like in the sixties, sixty thousand range. And then now I make I think I hit over a hundred a few years into my career.
So it's helpful.
To kind of see the growth there. I've more than doubled. Have I more than tripled? Yeah, more than tripled what I started with, which is really big, I think, to see within eight years. So that was definitely a huge point to why I was staying in the role as well as enjoying the job. I think that the money has been nice. So I do think I'm paid fairly. I think there's obviously people who are making a lot more. And that's okay. I think that I really am I'm pretty grateful for what I have and I think that I
might make more one day, but right now it's been perfect and all that I really need. In terms of my lifestyle changing, I started this job out of college and I genuinely started with zero dollars in my bank account. I bought a car and I put down my security deposit and my first month's rent and I had I'm like a maybe less than a hundred, not a lot of money in my bank account. And so I started and my rent that back then was really cheap too. I think I was paying four hundred maybe
I was subleasing for the summer and it was just super cheap. And then I got an apartment after that. And still my rent was only around $700. So really nice. I was living in Atlanta then and I was sharing that rent. So that made it easier too. But since then I feel like I have a really good grasp of my personal finances. I think it's allowed me to have a budget in my head, but also be able to do what I want to do.
knowing that I have the savings to back back it up. And then when I was twenty five, I ended up purchasing my home. So that was an exciting accomplishment and I felt like this job has really given me the opportunity to have the savings and the net worth to be able to purchase a home. So I do credit a lot of that to this role as well. Like I said, you could make this money in other roles as well. But it worked out for me that I could buy my house about five, six years ago.
So I would say my lifestyle has changed to where now where I started and I really had zero dollars and now I can really travel and do what I want without really thinking a ton about it. I'm not also someone who buys anything designer or really expensive things. So I live within my means. I definitely get a lot of clothes from thrift stores and stuff. So it's not that I'm living extravagantly as much as I don't live thinking about money every day and that for that I'm definitely extremely grateful. And something that I really appreciate about this role.
I do have a question about hidden costs of your career, if there's any time, stress, or location. I think what's nice is I get to work super flexible schedule. Well, sorry. It's nice because I get to work in a flexible environment. I can work remotely from my parents' house. I can work remotely from another state. I can work remotely from my own home as well as I do have an office I can go into. So that part is really nice that it is so flexible there. In terms of hidden costs, I think that
When I was traveling a lot, that was really demanding. I was flying to Boston every single week and I did not like it. And I it was really making me burnt out. So I do think that if you're in a role where you do have to travel that much, it's definitely exhausting.
In terms of what doors this has opened, I did start at a smaller company, which I think was a good fit for me. We've grown a ton, but because I was started when we were still small, I feel like I got to have more insight into how the company runs. I at this company we get to I get to be a part of sales. I'm a part of a lot of internal initiatives as well as doing customer work. So I feel like I for a while I knew everyone at the company. Now we're getting a little too big for that. But I it was really nice to connect make a lot of different connections.
And then also to have the chance to be a leader in my area, as even though I started out of college, there weren't that many people ahead of me. So I got to rise with the folks ahead of me and really be a leader in the area and in the company. So I think that that's opened a lot of doors for future jobs. I think it's been a lot easier now that I talk to customers all day. I feel a lot more confident in speaking, public speaking in general, as well as
I've talked to CFOs of tons of companies. I've talked to CEOs, people who are seemingly very important in a company. I think from my standpoint, they're just people, is what I've learned. So it's opened doors to make me a lot less scared of interviewing, for example. I work with recruiters and I they're great people. They're just people though. So it's not it makes everything a little bit less scary. I've also done interviews, which I think really made me less scared if I were to go interview somewhere.
The p other person interviewing me could be someone just like me who isn't a recruiter and who does conduct interviews at times. So I think there's a lot to be said there about the just different opportunities that working at a smaller company can get you. And I feel like there's a lot of marketable skills that you get out of consulting if you don't want to stay in consulting forever. There's a lot of different industries you can go in, like sales or that's just one I think about a lot, but there's tons of different ones I can go in, different technical areas because I do work day, I could be within an HR and a d
ton of different areas and as well. There's a lot of different opportunities.
In terms of where people go next, I am not a hundred percent sure at the moment. I think that a lot of people will go to another workday firm, maybe. I know that prior to work day there was other software that people used for HR. So I think that there might be a new HR software that people go to someday. Or like I mentioned, sales is something I've thought about a decent bit. I think you can pivot and use a lot of your the skills that I've gained in any area. So there's not a
direct path of what people do next. Some people become contractors or start their own company, which is pretty cool. There's a lot of different routes though that you can take. A lot of I've seen who have left definitely go to other workday partners.
In terms of the ceiling that this job has, I think it really depends on your company. I know some places it's almost like you have to get you get like partner or you get different levels, and that's not something that I would have at my organization. So there is a max, but I'm never probably gonna hit that max because there's always been people ahead of me and there'll definitely be people who stay ahead of me. In terms of pay, I have been thinking about this for a while. I actually don't know if there's a ceiling.
I don't even know how to guess it. I would love to know, but I don't have a clear answer. I've ta talked through my pay progression, but I don't have a clear answer of if there's a ceiling.
I do want to chat on the company benefits and the company policies around that. We do get employer paid benefits as well as ones that you can pay for yourself. You can pay for anything above certain benefit plans. So we definitely have benefits and have 401k match. It is funny because I get to implement workday and I implement payroll so I know what other companies get. I would say in our industry, the employer matches I would put in quotes for normal. It's not anything I've seen
really incredible employer matches for four hundred one K or pension or four three B's. I think ours is great. I don't think it's anything super, super special. So it's pretty normal and straightforward when it comes to that match piece. And I think that's pretty normal in consulting in general. Like I said, I've seen a lot of other companies policies and our benefits are pretty aligned to any salaried consultant.
Finally, I want to talk about how you get in this role. So if someone wanted this job, the fastest path to get there. There's definitely a few paths. A lot of people work in workday on the customer side. If you're on the customer side, you are actually in workday for your organization and you might be a payroll admin, a benefits admin, an HR admin. There's so many options as well as finance options as well. So you might actually work for a company who has workday and be an admin for them. You can pivot pretty well from that to a consulting role.
If you are starting net new, you can definitely become a consultant. You just know you're starting at the bottom is how I would typically see it. So it's not a big deal at all. It just you would start as a consultant and work your way up from there. In terms of the best path, I think researching whatever software you want to be consultant for. So I know I've talked about workday, but there's so many consulting jobs that exist. So researching what they're consulting and becoming knowledgeable enough to conduct an interview and just knowing you might start at the bottom, but you can definitely climb the ladder there.
In terms of if you need a degree, experience, or connections, I don't have a great answer. You definitely need a college, I think you need a college degree, and I would imagine you do. A specific degree, though, doesn't typically matter in consulting. I think that sometimes people prefer engineering degrees and sometimes they don't. I've worked with people in pretty much every area of degree, so I don't know if the specific degree matter matters as much as just having a college degree that's pretty important. Experience helps you to start at
I would say at a higher level, if you have experience, you can just come in at a higher level. But if you don't have experience, you can definitely come in still and still get into a role like this. Connections help too. That's one that I've seen work and I feel like I've worked people who are like, hi, I'm start I'm new, but I know all these people. And I think that definitely helps you get the role really anywhere, but this is included in that.
And then finally, how we'll kind of wrap up here is are there any required skills, programs, or areas that you need prior to applying? So obviously, if you are consulting and you know the software that you're implementing or consulting for, that's awesome and a huge leg up. You're not necessarily expected, if you're coming brand new, to know that. So the other things that I would really refine if I was someone who was applying is anything in Excel. I think knowing Excel is hugely ad advantageous.
And it's okay if you use Copilot or any other AI tool for your Excel, but knowing and remembering how you solved Excel problems is gonna be huge. Other than Excel, I think that I mean Word and PowerPoint are good to know. It's not as in depth, I wouldn't say. And then I think knowing how to use different AI tools I've seen be beneficial for people. And then just knowing how to research and
Take good notes. So if you practice your organization or you think about your file structure, you just organize your life, it's good practice for organizing yourself in a job. In terms of programs, there's a lot of different opportunities that are within workday. My role is less technical, but there are technical roles that use Java or use XML or XSLT or other things that I che genuinely don't know the names of. And that could be beneficial, but it the for a more functional role, you wouldn't need any of that.
And then otherwise, I think practicing public speaking, I think it's good to talk in front of people, talk in front of the mirror, practice what when you're gonna interview, practice what you're gonna say, practice your elevator pitch, practice talking about things in questions kind of off the cuff. I think something that I practiced and refined really nicely was how much I have to prepare for things. I used to prepare a ton, have a script, memorize it, it going into every client call. I decided that's a lot of time. Let's see what I can do.
So I did a back and forth of how little I could prepare for a successful client call. I didn't have anything super terrible, so it wasn't super risky, but I kept the risk level low. And I have now have a really good level of how much I have to do before a call to make everything the most efficient. I'm not over preparing, I'm not under preparing, I'm just I've gotten into a good rhythm adequately preparing. So I think practicing that and it helps you, saves you time if you don't have to prepare quite as much. So all this to say, welcome to my show.
I wanted to give background about my role and I really wanted to open the floor, starting with myself, before I ask other people to talk about their jobs. So you'll hear from more exciting jobs, most likely. Well, definitely. And people who just do things in different areas. So the goal of the show is always just to get to hear from people and what they actually do. I think that starting out of college or pivoting your career can seem really scary or daunting. And so having this, my goal was just to kind of have people feel
supported and more knowledgeable in different areas and in different roles. So if you ever have someone, send them this podcast if you think that that this job would be great for them. And follow up next time. Can't wait to see you again.
Outro (25:03)
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