You make your own career at Ascentium. You get to be whatever you want to be. You do what makes you happy. At other firms, it’s an up-or-out philosophy. Analysts are typically expected to become PMs.

We don’t care if you like being an analyst and don’t want to be a PM. We just care that you do what you do better than anyone else. We expect you to grow and learn and continue to build out your toolkit—whatever that means to you.

Some firms have more of a staff-augmentation model. We are a project-based company and we work as teams to meet client needs.

We are a company of relationships. Our best recruits are referrals from employees. Our best clients are referrals from other clients. We don’t depend on knowledge management systems to do our work. We get to know our people, and we find the best fit for projects based on knowing what they can do and what they want to do.

We were a finalist for Washington’s Best Workplaces (Large Companies, 2007) but none of our competitors were.

I don’t know that we can offer much else that’s truly different than what other firms offer. I work here because I like the people. I work here because all the people I would want to work with are already here. I work here because when I came in for my interview, it was like coming home.

I continue to work here because we are a company that listens to our people and our clients (Peer360, Net Promoter Score). We are a company that believes in self-organization and empowers its people to initiate change. We are a company of brutal honesty and integrity. We are a company of passionate people who are passionate about this company.

We can’t guarantee that kind of experience or feeling for others because we are looking for people who want to be here and can thrive in our environment; not everyone can. It’s in the intangibles, and the intangibles are difficult to convey and to measure.

Intangibles are the things that you cannot appreciate without ever having experienced them. It's like needing glasses your whole life and then finally putting on a pair of them and saying, "I never knew it could be like this." Well, it can. Here.

- Ann T. Ho
Senior Business Analyst