By Continuing to Challenge Herself, Ntasha Sharma Grows Her Career at Perficient / Blogs / Perficient

Meet Ntasha Sharma, Senior Business Consultant

During her time at Perficient, Ntasha Sharma has grown her career and achieved many professional milestones. Perficient’s Growth for Everyone initiative encourages our 7,500 global colleagues to pursue their career goals and forge their own path. We believe it’s important to recognize and celebrate the unique accomplishments of our colleagues.

READ MORE: How Perficient’s Award-Winning Culture Prioritizes Growth for Everyone

Ntasha is a colleague who chases her passions and continuously looks for ways to grow, learn, and take on new challenges. We recently had the chance to speak with her to learn more about how she has grown her career at Perficient and what drives her to continue seeking professional growth.

Ntasha’s Career Journey

Ntasha has been with Perficient full-time for more than three years. She started as a business consultant intern while attending college in 2019. After graduating, she returned to Perficient in January 2020 as an associate business consultant. For her first project, she was handpicked by her manager to take over his role with a client in financial services.

“I’m based out of Atlanta, Georgia, but this project involved a lot of travel. I was traveling out to Irvine, California, for two weeks at a time by myself. This was exciting as a new colleague and recent college graduate. I was able to travel out to California a few times before the pandemic hit, so it was fun for the time being.”

As an associate business consultant, Ntasha worked with a client to improve the user experience for various business communication tools. This required interviewing business owners to discover their pain points and creating processes to alleviate them.

When she was ready for a change, Ntasha worked with her career counselor to transition to a new project. She became the business analyst on Microsoft site migrations and app modernizations. For this project, she worked closely with business owners to communicate changes, gathered requirements, wrote documentation, and demonstrated the solution once it was live.

“As a consultant, I really enjoy the flexibility this role affords me to move to new projects, and it’s reassuring to know that Perficient will support me and my career goals.”

READ MORE: Perficient Enables Colleague Professional Development Through Growth for Everyone

In her next project, Ntasha worked on her first Sitecore project where she managed site releases for a client. She analyzed the new site designs, created user stories, and supported the localized site releases for various European markets.

“In that project, I also took on some project manager tasks such as doing team velocity analysis to make sure our team was only committing to the work we could successfully complete. This was new to me, and I had to have some difficult conversations with the client at times. It really helped me in the long run because I grew from it and developed new skills.”

Earlier this year, Ntasha worked on a Sitecore Headless project, leading sprint ceremonies and managing the backlog working with the new Sitecore Headless framework. Currently, she is on an Optimizely project.

Ntasha’s career journey has included an array of projects and client experience. She has demonstrated her skills to clients and leadership, allowing her to rise from associate business consultant to business consultant, and now, senior business consultant.

“When it comes to getting promoted, I’ve gone about it by asking when I thought I was performing above and beyond based on the feedback I receive during performance reviews and from my team, clients, and directors. I always try to take on roles that will challenge me, and it feels great when it’s recognized.”

Ntasha’s Enthusiasm for Growth, Change, and Learning

Ntasha has advanced her career by taking on new, challenging projects that require her to learn and adapt. Seeking growth opportunities has led her to achieve many amazing career milestones. Her passion and drive can be seen in her desire to constantly learn.

“I don’t like to get too comfortable on projects because then I stop learning. Consulting is a good fit for me because there’s always a new technology, client, and opportunity to learn and grow from. I like to take the lessons I learned from previous projects with me into future endeavors and develop as a professional.”

Another way Ntasha continues to learn and grow at Perficient is by working with our global teams. Perficient is a global company with onshore, nearshore, and offshore teams. This provides a unique experience for our colleagues to collaborate and work with people around the world with different cultures, languages, and time zones.

“I’ve worked with a lot of offshore developers in India and some in Latin America on almost all of the projects I’ve been involved with. The time zone difference can be challenging, but getting different perspectives is super beneficial.”

While Ntasha continues to learn on the job, she also hopes to pursue certifications and training courses to further her professional development.

“Earning certifications and completing trainings is on my ‘to do’ list for this year. I want to earn a product owner certification, a business analyst certification, and even a Scrum mater certification.”

Ntasha’s attitude toward continuous learning has helped her maintain a strong momentum. It has also garnered her attention from her leaders and clients. She finds that her major milestones are often accompanied by smaller moments of pride.

“Receiving shoutouts and recognition goes a long way. When a client or project manager reaches out to tell my director how satisfied they are with my work on a project, that always makes me proud. It’s a great feeling to know that someone is pleased with our team’s hard work, and it makes me want to work that much harder to please them the next time as well. Happy clients inspire me to give my best each day.”

Ntasha’s Advice for Career Growth

1. Advocate For Yourself

Ntasha often finds herself stepping up to take on difficult tasks or projects, and she is met with appreciation from her leaders and peers at Perficient. She takes the initiative to advocate for herself and create the career trajectory she aspires to achieve. Perficient empowers colleagues to have this mindset.

“What’s unique about Perficient is that it doesn’t feel as big as it is. I don’t feel like just a number, and I’m respected and acknowledged for my work. Perficient really cares about their employees and supports them in growing their skillsets rather than limiting them to a role that no longer serves their interests.”

Ntasha found that vocalizing and demonstrating her hard work was well received by leadership.

“Whenever there’s an opportunity to put yourself in front of leaders or directors, take it. I would recommend vocalizing and showing your managers all of your day-to-day tasks to give them a better understanding of the full scope of your responsibilities.”

2. Create a “Thank You” Folder

Ntasha believes that the best career advice she ever received was to create a ‘thank you’ folder containing emails, messages, and screenshots of encouraging and positive feedback.

“When I’m struggling with a demanding project, I can look back at nice messages I’ve received from my team and clients. This is really helpful when times get tough because I can look at this folder and feel appreciated. I’ve even attached screenshots of these messages in yearly performance reviews because they can serve as extra proof of the great things I’ve accomplished.”

3. Get Involved in the Office Culture

Aside from role-specific tasks, Ntasha also finds that it’s important to get involved in her office’s culture events. She supports the Atlanta team in fostering a sense of community and Perficient pride. This has helped her stay connected to her colleagues, while also showing commitment to fostering an engaging environment where everyone feels welcome.

“I order supplies for the office every month and make sure the office is stocked on snacks, drinks, and coffee. When the Atlanta office host events, I usually do the catering as well. This gives me great experience working with budgeting and expenses, while also making a positive impact on the office environment to bring people together.”

READ MORE: Life at Perficient

4. Stay True to Yourself

Ultimately, Ntasha’s advice related to career growth is to stay true to yourself.

“My advice to anyone just starting their career is to stay true to yourself and learn what you like to do. Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask your career counselor or your manager to switch projects or technologies if you’re unhappy.”

Key Takeaways

Perficient embraces that each colleague’s career path is unique. Upward mobility and growth from within are built into the culture at Perficient. In fact, Growth for Everyone is purposefully stated in Perficient’s People Promise to reflect the value Perficient and our colleagues place on professional development.

Ntasha’s story showcases just some of the ways that colleagues can get involved, seek learning opportunities, and take ownership of their professional development. Ntasha continues to find projects that excite her and seeks hands-on learning opportunities. She is making a difference at Perficient for our clients by exhibiting both a client- and team-driven mentality that has earned her the respect and admiration of those who work with her.

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MORE ON GROWTH FOR EVERYONE

Perficient continually looks for ways to champion and challenge our workforce, encourage personal and professional growth, and celebrate the unique culture created by the ambitious, brilliant, people-oriented team we have cultivated. These are their stories.

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