Boulder to London

Several months ago I looked over at Melisse and announced “don’t make any plans for the summer, we might be in Europe”.  While I was serious, she looked at me, laughed out loud, and teased me for several minutes.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for the summer, but I was hoping that GE might hire me back for a 4 month assignment to work at one of their new acquisitions headquartered in the UK.   It became clear early that this was not going to work out, but for some reason I continued the joke with Melisse while searching for summer employment.  The days, weeks and months passed as I followed up on leads, responded to postings and continued to network throughout the Boulder/Denver business community.

On April 8th, I woke up and went through my usual routine.  I checked my e-mail and scrolled through the list of jobs that my web searches had found overnight.  I then went to LinkedIn to see if any new jobs had appeared in the job section of my homepage.  To my surprise, there was a job posted for a Senior M&A Operations Consultant.  The job had been posted by a headhunter and the location was specified as London.  As I read through the posting, I couldn’t help but notice the very strong correlation between my experience and their needs.  I didn’t get too excited though…I have responded to a number of postings that I thought I was perfect for with nothing to show for it.  I typed up a quick cover letter, attached my resume and continued on with my morning.  I packed my bag, hopped on my bike, and pedaled up to campus.  By the time I arrived and got set up at the coffee shop, I already had a response from Katy, the recruiter, asking about my ability to obtain a work permit in London and the status of my degree.  I responded to Katy’s e-mail and we set up a time to speak a few days later.  By the end of the week she had passed on my information to the company for further review. 

The next week I was scheduled to speak with Mona, a Director from KPMG, for their initial interview.  If that discussion went well, I was told that I would speak to a Partner for the final phone interview.  The initial discussion with Mona went well and a week later I spoke with Martin via video conference from KPMG’s office in Denver.  I was a bit nervous going into the second interview, but it all turned out fine.  We seemed to get along well and I liked what he had to say.  He must have liked what I had to say as well because he called me a few days later to let me know that they were preparing an offer for me.  The offer came in the following week and after a few days of negotiation I signed on May 9th…one month and one day from initial contact to signed offer.  The only remaining item is getting my work permit which is in process and will hopefully be approved by my start date of July 1st.

While my time at Leeds has been incredible, the chance to move into my desired field, work for a great company and live internationally is simply too good to pass up.  I hope that I will figure out a way to become a Leeds’ graduate some day.  For the time being, I’m going to take a detour from the path I was on to pursue a tremendous opportunity.  Thank you for reading throughout the year and hopefully I’ll get a new blog set up soon to share my adventures in London!

-Tom