April 2, 2012, by bbasb

A student taking part had this to say…

Earlier on in the academic year, taking part in the Inside Employment: Investigation into Finance Careers module run by the Careers and Employability Service, allowed a group of students to explore and learn more about the Financial Services industry. The module was hugely collaborative in its nature and provided the students with great opportunities to network and gain more experience of working in teams, giving them yet another example to use in their competency-based interviews of “a time when they worked productively in teams”!

The module had an added dimension with PwC sponsoring it and co-chairing a competition rewarding the team that delivered the best presentation on a particular role, of their choosing, within the Financial Services industry, with “Creativity” and “the ability to inform” being the assessment criteria.

One of the reasons why the module was so valuable was because PwC were regularly involved in the teaching of it, with employees coming in and giving tailored presentations on “presentational” skills. Their presence also provided students with the opportunity to network and informally learn more about the Firm and gain advice and guidance on its application process.

The group that won the competition would get to go to a dinner hosted by a partner from PwC’s local office with a line manager and one of its “Early Talent Identification” graduate recruiters attending. So it’s no surprise that competition was fierce and saw passionate presentations being delivered on topics ranging from ‘Front Office – M&As’ to ‘Hedge Funds’ to ‘Forensic Accountancy’. For someone interested in finding out more about a career in Financial Services, the presentations were really interesting and informative to watch.

Although there could only be one winning team out of (about) six, we were told that everyone was invited to attend a tour of PwC’s local office. Personally, this was the highlight of the whole experience. The tour was like one of their “Insight Days” and we were really encouraged to ask any questions we had whatsoever about PwC and its application process – “thanks, Claire”!

The dinner was finally held in ‘Sinatra’ in the city-centre on the 28^th of March. This was very significant as we got to enjoy the short-spell of summer weather that came early this year, with PwC staff warmly greeting us outside to a drinks-reception. The dinner, and banter, that followed was wonderful and talking to the partner really gave us a chance to see the firm from a different perspective.

I would strongly recommend this module to anyone looking to learn more about the Financial Services industry or wanting to develop their employability and would like to thank the PwC team for their role in making it more enjoyable and beneficial.

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