Business Insight Week Review

The Business Insight Week has given me the opportunity to shadow workers in audit over a 3 day period, whilst working with fellow participants of the scheme in order to collaboratively produce a presentation on one of two topics: Technology or Social Mobility. I also was able to talk to members of other parts of professional services in order to gauge whether or not I could see a future in their area of business.

I developed a lot of skills over the course of the week, including presentation and preparation skills, interview skills as well as a range of others that will be useful to me when applying for a position at any major firm or company in the future. Additionally, I was able to develop a clear understanding of how training within PwC functions, as well as the attitude towards professional examinations - one that was very positive.

I enjoyed a lot of aspects of the programme, and I still hold that it was a hugely beneficial experience for me, but I didn't overall enjoy the programme. This is in no way due to the programme, which definitely gave me a good understanding of PwC, I just ended up not particularly enjoying the type of work that was done there, as well as the lack of true teamwork, which was very sparse and often separated by geographical barriers such as distance as well as the inherent nature of the work.

PwC from the very start went above and beyond to make us feel valued just as much as any other newly joining full-time employee. I was incorporated into a "2nd Year" group of employees who were fantastic and tried really hard to make me feel as much one of them as possible. Even though it often felt that I was underprepared for the work, it didn't particularly matter as they were so supportive and friendly.

The programme was well structured if limited only by the availability of workers in different areas of the business to shadow. The induction day was helpful and relatively comprehensive, the training helped me up to speed within a day and all round the final day was also a massive benefit wherein other programmes it might not be. Unfortunately, due to limited availability of workers to shadow, I ended up shadowing audit for 3 days straight, with little work to do due to the work experience taking place within the down season.

A lot. Laptops were provided, webinars were given and received, lunch was provided on the induction and final days, help was provided when any sort of problem arose, everything was explained in as close to layman's terms as possible and all in all I wasn't just supported, I was kept afloat in an environment where it's easy to drown in the amount of information overload.

As stated above, the mentors at PwC did a fantastic job to get us up to speed on everything that we would need in order to continue with the week and further our knowledge through it. They were friendly, approachable and very knowledgeable about the company which allowed me and others to enjoy the week whether we enjoyed the work or not.

Very well. All travel costs were covered by expenses and we were paid a generous £8.75 per hour, a rather competitive hourly wage. Unfortunately the hours weren't the most sociable due to a lot of workers having their own work to do and thus wanting to do it. This is completely understandable and therefore I was perfectly happy to work in relative silence for a few hours each day.

From my brief encounter with the company, it seems like there is quite a thriving social life among its employees. Additionally to this PwC itself offers a number of different social events that its members may attend. For us on the work experience, however, these opportunities were obviously not very applicable to us, and therefore I would say there were not too many opportunities for any extracurricular activities per se.

Yes

PwC, whilst not for me, seems to be an absolutely fantastic company to work for. Many of my friends are currently unsure of what line of work they would currently like to pursue, and I can confidently say that PwC would offer them great opportunities going into the future. For that reason I would recommend anyone who is unsure of their future career path to strongly consider PwC.

Learn about the company. What do they do? What are their morals like? Learn about current affairs involving the business. Going into assessment centre days be confident, but allow for others to contribute and involve those who are finding it hard to do so. In interviews constantly reevaluate the situation, try to gauge the interviewer's reaction. Are they interested? Are they waiting for you to finish so they can move on? Apart from all this, however, the number one thing you must do is make sure you use the toilet breaks when you can, as there's nothing worse than having to lose time in a group activity or have to leave during an interview because you decided that you didn't need to go.