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Life at Alpha. To clients, we’re a trusted partner for change programmes that improve links between people and processes. But to our employees, we’re so much more. Alpha is a rewarding place to work. A meritocratic environment perfect for building a career. And an exciting place to meet some great people.
Alpha has been 3 times winner of the Funds Europe consultant of the year awards and 6 times UK’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Everyone at Alpha has extra skills. We give you the opportunity to develop your interests and talents by helping us run the business. If you’ve got skills in anything from web design to events management, we’ll put them to use.
You’ll get a competitive base salary. In fact, we literally check it against our competitors. And it increases every year. If that’s not incentive enough, how about commuting allowance, phone expenses, and a high-end laptop?
Our employees are the heart and soul of the company. So you’ll get a pay out of profit share. It even goes up as you do – the more senior your role, the more you’ll receive.
Generous holiday allowance is a good start. We add to it with flexible working, working from home, sabbaticals, secondments, and the option to buy additional holiday. We know “work-life balance” means different things to our employees, and whether you have dreams of backpacking across South America, or completing your Masters in Creative Writing, we will do our best to help you achieve them.
Our welcoming and friendly culture is open to everyone. Our Diversity and Inclusion programme is driven by our employees and is continuously evolving, to ensure we meet your individual needs and that there are no barriers to a happy career at Alpha.
We committed to supporting all of our employees in their learning and development. All our employees receive five days a year training allowance to use on their choice of programme, from professional qualifications to data visualisation courses.
We look for people who have potential for greatness, regardless of background. That’s why we have such a unique culture with opportunities for lifelong friendships.
We want to deliver the best possible results. We need you to have the drive to do great work, whatever the deadline.
The areas we deal with are complicated. So you need the skills to explain things to our clients in a simple way.
We’re a team of doers. If you want to take the initiative, and be supported in turning your ideas into reality, Alpha is the place for you.
We help clients solve problems. If you want to be a success at Alpha, you’ll love a challenge.
I have consistently valued how many opportunities there are to develop and learn at Alpha. From working with the smartest people, to answering some of the most "make-your-brain-hurt" client problems, to the opportunity to work across our different locations, Alpha pushes you to keep evolving in a hugely supportive environment
I love having the opportunity to influence how we evolve as an organisation, while developing personally and professionally - if you have the passion and drive, you are encouraged and supported to pursue your ambitions at all levels of the organisation
The phrase ‘work hard play hard’ is a cliché used by many firms, but I’ve really found it to be true at Alpha; we work hard on projects and are expected to contribute to the development of the business, but we’re encouraged to have fun along the way through a packed social calendar and the pursuit of our own personal interests
I am regularly surprised by the amount of support and empowerment that the organisation provides to all its staff, and as a result the amount that we achieve as a team. My life since joining Alpha has been challenging, varied and exciting, exactly as I hoped it would be
What have you been involved in outside of project work? Probably the most exciting thing I’ve done was my four-month sabbatical: I raised over £9,000 for the Hands Up Foundation (who support work in and around Syria) by cycling 3,000km in 30 days through Patagonia. During that time, I also did ice hiking up Huanya Potosi – a 6,088m high mountain in Bolivia, which is higher than Everest basecamp. Going to a surf camp in Chile and Uruguay was also great fun!
More recently, I have seconded to the US, where I am based in San Francisco, and have worked with clients in New York, Boston, Chicago and Toronto. This has been a fantastic opportunity to work abroad while Alpha continues to grow its presence across the continent!
How has Alpha supported you in these initiatives? My sabbatical was fully supported internally; the director team and HR were incredibly understanding and helpful in making it happen. Meanwhile, the wider Alpha team helped contribute to the total amount raised for charity by sponsoring my cycling trip.
The US secondment is part of an incentivised scheme proposed and managed by the Alpha director team. They are very aware of the challenges to move abroad, and try to make the initial transition as smooth as possible. Beyond that, my US colleagues and peers have been tremendously supportive over the course of my secondment, helping me to quickly become part of the team.
Is there anything else you’d love to do during your time at Alpha? Since joining the US team, I’ve helped formalise our CSR business management area. As a result of this, we’ve planned pro-bono projects for some US charities, which can be an incredibly rewarding experience. We’ve had record numbers of US employees volunteer their time to support these initiatives, despite their other client and work commitments, and it had been great to see such levels of engagement across the team.
How would you describe the culture at Alpha? Alpha has an incredibly positive environment – there are many ways to contribute to our growth, and new ideas are always welcomed by the director team. Anyone at any level in Alpha can find an ear to discuss a potential new initiative, which could relate to social activities, to charity work, to our marketing, or to our infrastructure, the list goes on…
There is also a great understanding that people have interests outside of their everyday work, and these are actively encouraged, as shown by our prolific social calendar!
The policy of ‘keeping good people’ resonates in every decision here, which is why there is a great number of employee benefits, including a laptop, phone, and corporate health insurance, as well as the flexibility to cater for employee sabbaticals. The resulting high employee retention rate speaks for itself!
What have you been involved in outside of project work? What do you enjoy most and find rewarding? I’m fairly active outside of Alpha – I run a small charity called the National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK, which I founded during my time at university. It is the largest forum in the UK for young people of Indian origin, who are either studying or have studied at a UK educational institution. I lead a team of 30 people who are spread across the UK and in India and primarily look after the organisational strategy and stakeholder relationships. We work with governments, NGOs and commercial organisations alike and regularly provide advisory services and thought leadership. Last year the Mayor of London commissioned us a research piece as well. Fun fact: I recently won the UK-India Thought Leadership award for my work with the charity. The other winners included the Deputy Mayor of London! This was a pretty humbling and special moment!
How has Alpha supported you in these initiatives? Alpha is incredible! The best thing about working in a truly entrepreneurial environment is that you are trusted to firstly be entrepreneurial and creative, and quite importantly, manage your time as you deem fit. Needless to say, our client work comes first but other than that, the amount of support we get, both for our business management pieces and our activities outside of work is tremendous. I know that I can speak to anyone at Alpha and get their thoughts and advice on anything I need, and that I will get their unbiased and honest opinions.
What has been your personal highlight of your time at Alpha? There have been many! But delivering a very complex strategy review in an extremely tight timeframe with an incredibly happy client has to be at the top of the list. I also had the best ever time at the Alpha annual social and was so overwhelmed with just how awesome our trip to Tuscany was! Can’t wait for the next one!
Is there anything else you’d love to do during your time at Alpha (non-project)? I am very inclined towards business development activities and would love to contribute to these more formally. There is an incredible amount of satisfaction in the sales and marketing process for any product or service, and this relies on a holistic understanding of a myriad of factors, including our industry, our clients, and their dynamic requirements. What advice would you have for a new joiner at Alpha? When we tell you we are an entrepreneurial company with responsibility from day 1, we’re not just saying it, we truly mean it. What that translates into for any new joiner is a wealth of opportunities for development – the sky is truly the limit at Alpha. Creativity is welcomed, both in project and outside of project work, so don’t be afraid of volunteering – it will be appreciated and you will learn so much from the amazing team. And don’t be afraid to ask any type of question – everyone is incredibly nice and understanding. You will be surprised at the amount of time everyone at Alpha is willing to invest in you.
Can you provide a quick overview of your role? I manage Alpha’s UK recruitment function covering all Asset & Wealth Management and Insurance roles across the London and Edinburgh offices. As part of this, I work very closely with the senior leadership team in order to establish and ultimately achieve our ambitious recruitment targets whilst also driving our direct recruitment efforts and managing our suppliers. Aside from managing the actual recruitment process itself, a lot of my time is also spent on any number of recruitment based projects that are ongoing at any point in time in an effort to continually improve upon our existing processes and systems to ensure the best possible experience for any applicants looking to join Alpha.
What do you enjoy most and find rewarding? The best part about my role here at Alpha and the piece that I enjoy the most is the ability to effect real change across the business. The senior leadership team ‘gets’ recruitment which means there’s massive scope to move the dial on a day to day basis. It’s a fantastic place to continually develop your skills in an environment that truly promotes excellence – not to mention the amazing culture that’s been instilled into the business since it was established over 20 years ago!
What do you get involved in outside of work? Outside of Alpha I like to keep active so I tend to spend a lot of my spare time either at the gym, riding (or more often than not -falling off) my motorbikes or going for adventures with my dog Spike! Travel is also a huge passion of mine so I try to get away to at least a few new places each year to appreciate the local cuisine and culture
Can you provide a quick overview of your role? I am an Associate Director at Alpha aligned to our Distribution practice. In this role, I typically work with Heads of Distribution, Marketing, Ops and Tech to find ways for their team to work smarter and to deliver an improved client experience across all interactions through the client lifecycle. The types of engagements I have worked on span the delivery spectrum: strategy through to systems implementation. The role of Associate Director is a slightly unusual one because we are considered to be the more experienced “heavy lifters”; as such Associate Directors can expect to be allocated 100% on a single client project for 6-18 months, leading a large and complex change programme. Accordingly, we are incentivised by the value of the project work we deliver in the year vs. Directors who are incentivised by the value of work they sell.
What do you enjoy most and find rewarding? There are two things that keep me at Alpha: the culture and the constant learning. From a cultural perspective, the Alpha team is full of energy and strongly encourages collaboration and new ideas for things to do inside and outside client work. Alpha has tools in place that help everyone feel connected and involved in Alpha’s growth e.g. through the avid use of Slack (Alpha’s internal collaboration tool), the monthly Company Meetings and our COO, Nina’s “Question Time” slot. From a learning perspective: the variety of work we do is tremendous: we work with clients across all aspects of their business. And we work with all of the top 20 Asset Managers by AUM.
What makes Alpha different to other firms? Alpha is a people place with a strong emphasis on quality… quality across everything the firm does whether that be in the production of deliverable for clients or social events. If you are going to do something you must to do it to your best possible ability. In this way, Alpha have formed excellent, long-standing relationships with clients and also partnerships with Fintechs, Software providers and TPAs. This keeps Alpha at the leading edge in terms of innovation and thought leadership. From a more personal perspective, I have been surprised and delighted by the level of importance Alpha puts on people’s family life and personal health and happiness. Alpha strives to create “A great place for great people to do great work”
What are you working on at the moment? I’m working on a couple of projects in the Distribution space. Both focus on helping the Asset Manager to improve sales and service effectiveness using Salesforce (a CRM platform). What’s exciting about both projects is that they are rapid – only 8 weeks and 12 weeks respectively – and at the end will deliver tangible benefits to employees and also their external clients.
With the help of their teams and dedicated managerial support, our analysts make sure everything runs smoothly and clients get great results.
Our consultants are experts in project delivery, working across large scale change programmes and at times, independently on smaller projects.
Managers are able to use their experience to know the most cost and time effective ways Alpha can meet clients’ needs.
Our senior managers are experts in one of Alpha’s key practice areas. They take the lead on complex projects and are vital to the running of the business.
Associate Directors really understand Alpha and our clients. They take responsibility for the biggest projects and provide oversight on a number of clients at once.
Directors are committed to seeing Alpha succeed. They provide oversight and play a key role in engaging clients and expanding the business.
If you would like to apply directly, send us an application and your CV to diana.tournemire@alphafmc.com. If we think you’ll be a good fit, we’ll get back to you to arrange an interview.
At the interview stage, you’ll have the opportunity to meet some of the team, where you’ll be able to talk about your motivations for joining Alpha, our industry and why the role is of interest to you. They will also be able to share with you their experience of working within the company.
If you’re successful at the interview, we’ll invite you to take part in a case study. You’ll assess a business case and present a solution. We want to find out how you work under pressure, deal with clients and solve real-life problems.
For the final round, we’ll invite you to meet with a Director within the company. This will be a great opportunity for you to ask questions and discuss anything with a senior team member within the company. Following this interview, there will be a fast turnaround time for us to confirm whether we will be extending an offer to you!
