PwC conquest

I am so brain dead. I have an exam on Wednesday, yet my brain is unable to absorb any more information even if it were to save my life!

Today was the PwC conquest.. a full blown day of activities and tests to land a $37 000 graduate position with the world's number 1 accounting and business advisory firm.

As I went to the movies with Kon last night, I didn't get home, showered, to bed etc til after midnight - not a great start is it silly me! Anyway, woke up this morning at 6am, couldn't get up, so snoozed until 6.30.. eekk

I was a bit nervous so I couldn't really eat breakfast, but did force myself to have half an english muffin. I knew what to expect, but I was still nervous/excited.

I managed to get the bus on time, a great achievement, considering I am ALWAYS late to EVERYTHING!!

So here is my day

8.30am - got to the office and was shown into a room.. everyone was pretty much already there... so early and so eager.. I'm good with people thankfully so I got chatting with everyone quick smart...found out a lot of others had interviews with a lot of other firms.. but I was still the best with 4 our of 4 Big 4.. not to mention modest HAHA

9am - we were allocated groups.. i got 3 people with poor English skills and another weird smarty nerdy guy who says he has a passion for maths.. go figure... the assessors all introduced themselves to us.. all over achievers.

9:10 - ice breaker. this was pointless. instead of telling people about ourselves, we had to practice doing parachuting formations.. like straight line.. spider things or what not. and then we had to do as many in order as possible in 50 seconds. i have no idea how this helped us learn about each other, but each to their own!

9.30 - muffins and coffee for morning tea! yay

10am - first group activity. we were all given the same case study.. on which we had to do a SWOT, debt to asset ratios etc, and split it up and present to the assessors who were the board of directors. the accents etc were a barrier in my team, but i guess maybe that was good for me as i got to clarify points to the assessors and they could mark me up for my communication skills. yes pwc process is very dog eat dog. we all went over time which was typical. we all talked too much. the best advise here is to just be confident and comfortable with your answers, they will ask questions at the end based on your case study... for eg.. our company was based in china so they asked.. how would be overcome the differing accounting standards, the differing culture, how could we raise money to acquire this firm etc. they didn't care about what you said, but about how you said it. so don't stress whether your answer is right or wrong.

1130 - we then moved onto rotations. my first rotation was to be paired with a partner and we are given a task.. the task is that one of the assessors will come and "meet" with us in a board room as a potential client.. our job was to talk to the assessor as though they were a potential client

2nd rotation was a written task, we had to wrote an email to the employees encouraging them to volunteer and give back to the community. easy. i wrote about volunteering when i was in miss australia and when i spoke at events for the starlight foundation, so i just ripped off those speeches lol

3rd, a numeracy test, which was crap hard and crap not enough time to do it. apparently they take off marks for wrong answers so i didnt take any guesses.. nobody got past 15/20 questions, i had just started q 17. was so abstract, it wasn't difficult, just time consuming as each question had multiple parts to calculate to get to the answer. no biggy

4th, interview with a manager, what do i know about pwc, what is high performance culture, what problems do accounting firms face in today's world, give me an example of when you've stuffed up and how have you fixed it, yadda yadda.. i told them how at DHL i shipped someone's wedding dress to Brazil instead of London by mistake LOL

5th, just a tour of the office. us poor tax people have a shit floor.

Overall tips - be yourself, after 7 hours you won't be able to be fake, and you wouldn't want someone to hire you based on a fake you as neither you nor them will enjoy it a single bit. Tell them why you really want to work there, what you want out of a career etc. Be honest! It is their priviledge to have you, a highly desirable asset on their team, so let them sell themselves to you and win you over. Be confident, even if you don't know the answer, be creative.

If I think of more, I will add it and I will also update the other things I have been to.

Cheerio.