Jordan Ramirez
Elgin Community College
Chicago (41.8° N, 87.6° W)

featuring Allison Hardy, Manager, Deloitte Digital, Denver (39.7° N, 104.9° W)

Allison Hardy is a manager of advertising, marketing, and commerce at Deloitte Consulting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Southern Methodist University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

When I first heard that I would be interviewing someone from one of the big four consulting firms, I will admit that I was both excited and nervous. As a manager at Deloitte Digital, Allison Hardy has an exciting role. Deloitte Digital is a relatively new branch of Deloitte that offers more digital and consumer-based consulting than its parent company. As a part of Deloitte Digital, Hardy helps to oversee the use of advanced and innovative marketing technology that greatly improves the outreach of clients.

Every year, thousands of college students apply for jobs and internships to be a part of Deloitte and the other big four consulting firms. Every applicant tries to make themselves sound perfect, but as Hardy can attest, nobody’s perfect. Hardy helped me to understand how important it is for every professional to market themselves.

Hardy insisted that perfection is not crucial to success and that there are many different avenues to a successful career. When I asked about her first job, she chuckled. Her first job wasn’t at a big corporation like Google or Amazon. Instead, she started as a Marketing Research Analyst for a plastic bag manufacturer. When Hardy graduated in 2001 the economy was in a downward spiral. She wisely understood that she could not let her ego get in the way of securing a job while millions of other Americans were struggling to do the same.

Given that the current job market is catastrophic with the COVID-19 pandemic, I asked Hardy if she had any advice for the thousands of college graduates of 2020. She humbly pointed out that she does not have all the answers; however, it is important to have perspective and flexibility. Hardy has always been flexible with her career choices. Initially starting as an analyst, she later took on the role of account manager. As an account manager, Hardy coordinated creatives and clients. It was during this time that Hardy described how excited she was to have a role in supervising the entire production of advertising campaigns. Personally, my interests have always hovered on the line between being an analyst or a creative. However, my interactions with Hardy helped me to realize that I do not have to pick just one direction. There are plenty of opportunities to fail, start-over, and succeed.

When Hardy decided that she had topped out with managing the creative development process, she decided to invest in herself by attending Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Hardy described how her career had what seemed like a ceiling before receiving her MBA. This investment into her education allowed her to break through that ceiling. After graduation, Hardy returned to managing accounts for many large firms but came to the grim realization that she did not feel fulfilled by her role as an Account Manager. She described how frightening this was at first, given that she just recently made a large investment into her MBA. Fortunately, Hardy took her own advice and decided to be flexible. Not knowing where to go with her career, she called her friends and family. Before too long, she received some advice from a friend to pursue consulting. I believe that in times of doubt it is always important to have a circle of people that we can trust to help.

Hardy had never fully considered consulting before. Her decision to enter this field paid off as she proved to herself that she was a great match for the job. Hardy’s flexibility paid dividends when she was tasked to manage a 75-person team that migrated 350 websites on to a cloud platform. This was a monstrous task; however, it was an insightful experience for her. She realized that she was not hired because of her superior knowledge of cloud-based technology. Instead, Hardy was the right person for the job because she is flexible enough to tackle any problem. Consultants are not expected to have a complete understanding of what needs to be done, but rather, to have the skills and experience to figure it out.

Not every problem that a consultant faces is one that they know how to handle alone. This is why Hardy was so insistent on the importance of teamwork at Deloitte Digital. Those at Deloitte Digital and other technology consulting firms have to be able to tackle the tough problems they face together.

Unfortunately, this pandemic has been harmful to many marketers because of the need for many companies to cut expenses. Often, the first expense to be cut at smaller companies is to defund marketing. Hardy heartily agreed that it is a tragedy that many companies fail to recognize the importance of marketing. This is probably the final takeaway I got from my conversation with Hardy, as it will always be a burden of those in the marketing sector to convince clients of how important marketing is for their company.

This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.