The Journey of A Dialectican Associate — Client Service Team

Article Update: January 2022

In January 2021, Pelin Aluf joined our office in Montréal to take the first step in her career journey and become a Dialectica Associate — Client Service Team. A year later, having been promoted to Associate Manager, she shares her experience with us, gives us more information about the Client Service team in Montreal and talks about her future career goals from the vibrant Canadian city.

Before joining the team, Dialectica wasn’t in my plans per se. I first moved to Montreal from Istanbul in 2017, with the aim to study abroad in a youthful and vibrant international city. I chose McGill University in Montreal and a double major in Economics and International Development Studies over another school in Toronto, because I’m not a French speaker and I like to be able to communicate with people from around the world in a multicultural environment. Montreal is exactly the place to be as a student or a young professional and this is why three years later, I chose to stay and started applying to graduate positions in the city. And this is exactly when the Dialectica job opportunity came along.

At first I didn’t have a clue about the company, I was only looking for great job positions for graduates and young professionals. At the very beginning, I even thought that Dialectica was a consultancy. Thankfully, as I was looking into the job description on LinkedIn I noticed that Burcu, an old friend of mine from primary school, was working at Dialectica in Montreal, so I contacted her to find out all about the role. She was the one that explained to me that Dialectica is not a consultancy, but an information services company that connects clients, such as consultancies, private equities and coorporations, with subject matter experts that have deep knowledge in specific markets, industries and geographies and who can help our clients make informed decisions about their businesses. My job would be to source and identify those experts for each specific project, to interview them to ensure that they are a perfect match and then connect them to our clients. Even from that point the job sounded intriguing, but the key element that made me apply was that — according to Burcu — Dialectica had a great culture and amazing people to work with. This is something that I witnessed myself from my very first interviews with Katerina, a member of our Talent Acquisition team here in Montreal.

Before Dialectica I had taken a couple of internships and I was also an active volunteer in Turkey, but this was my first “official” job. I didn’t have specific expectations or a benchmark. Still, there were a couple of things that caught me by surprise. First of all, the people — my colleagues and the office vibe stood out in the most wonderful way. There’s a unique team spirit here. I also never imagined that I would grow professionally and develop so many soft skills as well as hard skills in my very first job experience. I’m just seven months in and with the help and guidance of my manager, I’m already training some of the new joiners in my team.

One might wonder how that is even possible, but Dialectica’s learning curve is really straightforward. In order to grow within the company you have to train and develop important leadership and people management skills, as well as achieve business-related targets. Personally, I believe that the soft skills you are developing here at Dialectica are crucial to anyone’s journey to growth. Sometimes external factors might influence your performance — for example, a project might be cancelled, this is not something that you can control — but the way you handle different situations, the way you learn to interact and grow together with your team, the time management and communications skills are key to your success.

My manager, Sam, was one of the first people at Dialectica that made me realize this. He’s both a manager and a friend to me, I really look up to him and not just from a business perspective. One of my key goals within Dialectica is to help people develop their skills, in the way that Sam helps me grow on a daily basis. Of course, there are always things that each person does differently, so at the moment and as I’m experiencing different situations and scenarios with my team, and I create a do/don’t list in my mind of the things that I want and don’t want to do now that I am an Associate Manager. Becoming an Associate Manager was the first milestone for me here at Dialectica and now my goal is to keep growing my team and become a Manager. And then you never know, I’m learning so much here that in some years, I might be able to start my own company.

Of course, as it happens, a great job has its challenges — especially at the very beginning. In the first weeks, I felt that the business was really complex and I wasn’t able to fully follow what was going on. It took me about a month to say “this is it, now I got this”. And then after the first months passed by and I felt in place, I realized that I had already worked on so many different projects for different companies and geographies that I started wondering if this is getting too repetitive. However, thankfully this feeling has also worn off, because the company is growing so fast that your job and responsibilities are also evolving. Currently I mostly work on projects for consultancy clients with a focus on North America, but I have also been involved in European tasks.

For someone ambitious, someone eager to learn and develop and someone who enjoys working in companies with a global outlook and an amazing friendly and open culture, both Dialectica and Montreal are top. Multicultural, international and diverse and open to people from various career backgrounds. You don’t need to have tons of work experience in a specific field beforehand, you can learn so much here. From my perspective it only takes three things to “make it” at Dialectica: be open to learning and willing to grow, have a positive attitude towards work and especially teamwork and feel the excitement of achieving goals individually and together with your team. If I could briefly describe my Dialectica experience in just a few words, I would use: ENGAGING and REWARDING.

To start a new career adventure within Dialectica visit our Careers page, and apply for our Client Service Associate programs in Montreal, Vancouver or Athens.