My Biggest PwC Mistakes (avoid making the same mistakes I did...)

okay so most people get a job at pwc or any other big four firms only to waste it and have nothing to show at the end of their experience it's great to have a job at these firms but how do you make the most out of it i get many of your messages telling me you just landed a job at the big four and if i had any advice for you guys so i decided in this video i wanted to share the five mistakes i have made during my almost two years at pwc so whether you're just starting your job at a big4 firm or you have the ambition to get there hopefully you will learn from them be aware of them and make the most out of your time without too many newbie hurdles i had to go through personally so let's start with number one missed meetings alright so i'm not too proud about this one but let me explain i hate meetings yes all right i said it i said it so if you're my future employer watching this well be aware but know this i have not always hated meetings i think i started hating meetings when i joined pwc and don't get me wrong it's not because of pwc but because of the corporate world i think you have witnessed this if you worked in any job but i think too many people put importance on meeting others when they can simply send an email and let us actually do the work my days would be filled with meetings where one i learned nothing that would add to my job and two helped me do my job better and because of that i would sometimes not have enough time to do real work so after almost a year of getting on these calls with like 20 people i decided to filter my meetings by myself so that i have time to do more important work so here's what i did i started not showing up to meetings where i was 95 sure i will not say or learn anything but um after some time my manager who is also my coach at pwc noticed and asked me why i was not showing up and after i explained to him he agreed partially but still asked me to attend every meeting so it wasn't a very fun conversation and if you don't want negative feedback for something that is so silly just go to any meetings you are invited to especially when you are an entry-level consultant like i was when you get more experience then you have more rights to say no and not show up and this is what really happened to me after a couple of years of experience i started to say no and i started to question meetings just because i think and i'm pretty sure that 80 of meetings are useless uh in in jobs so this is my trick nowadays when i have to attend a meeting that i know that i will not learn anything you just open the meeting lower the volume and keep on working on your most urgent task but still it doesn't work every time right hey maddie what do you think uh yeah well i think i need more time to think about it um yeah number two took work from home too far so i got my job back in 2017 when there was no pandemic and working from home was still one of the biggest perks in the market when they told me i could work from home i was so happy i stayed home the second day of my first week okay to tell you everything my first week was just watching videos about pwc security and values and i didn't want to commute 45 minutes to do just that but later i noticed something young people would still go to the office three four sometimes five times a week versus older people like like manager and directors with family and kids would stay home and come maybe once a week or once every two weeks i even had one of the managers coming to the office once every three months because she lived in the suburbs so the untold expectation was if you're a young graduate you should come to the office and that wasn't clear to me and in my defense most young graduates lived downtown like aka 10 minutes from the office which wasn't my case so i kept my habit of coming once a week sometimes too especially since i had no projects assigned in the first few months so the lesson learned here you have to understand by yourself the untold expectations from you because they will not tell you everything word by word you need to understand them by yourself anyway because of that because of me not going to the office as often as they wanted me to i think i missed many opportunities to get to know pwc even better and led to my mistake number three didn't network enough with people from other departments so one thing you need to understand at the big4 firm is that departments work in silos it's very rare to collaborate on the same project with other departments so if you wanted to meet other people you have to be intentional and do it on purpose and because i was not coming to the office that often well i had less visibility to meet other consultants at the coffee machine or at events and i think this is the mistake i regret the most personally because i like meeting people doing different things than me i always end up learning so much from them and it helps me open my mind but anyway if you're at the big4 firm take advantage of this not all firms will have as many departments as the big four you could be an i.t consultant networking with management consultants lawyers corporate finance people hr managers etc mistake number four not proactive enough okay so if you were slightly exposed to consultants you know proactive is a buzzword everyone says it okay and yes i will confess i could have been more proactive it's just that at that time i didn't want to and you know when you start a new job you always have this excitement and energy to show off how much you deserve to be there and what to go the extra mile but after a couple of months this feeling fades out as i said i had no projects during my first few months of my job at pwc but in the beginning i was emailing everyone for work almost every day but then i stopped and started doing it every other week and i think it was a normal reaction because after getting a few no's you don't want to bother people anymore and this is a mistake because you are the only responsible for your career no one's going to save you not your manager not your director and not your firm if growing and being visible and getting promoted meant emailing a bunch of people every single week to ask for work then you need to do it basically to succeed you always need to ask yourself how can i go the extra mile and for some people this is natural for others like me you need to always be thinking about it so sometimes i would just give up and not email people and not go the extra mile so if i had to do it again i would have put a system in place to always remind myself to over deliver and find work even when it seemed like there wasn't any and this would have played a long way in promotion salary increases in reputation and i think i got that right when i moved to dxe anyway my mistake number five and biggest one is playing the corporate game so sometimes you need to fake it until you make it and i realized impressions are more powerful than reality especially in the big4 firm if you're working in another firm please tell me in the comments section if uh that was a reality as well but if you look like you're busy and working on big projects you will be more rewarded than if you're actually busy and working on big projects that's why usually people will tell you stay visible in the team ask questions during meetings participate come to events because the more people see you the more they will tell themselves you're a good employee even if in reality you're just normal it's a game i noticed everyone is playing when working office jobs but this game can go a bit too far in my opinion i'm talking about people not only faking or exaggerating actions but faking emotions and feelings as well well to tell you the truth i'm not good at doing it nor seeing it i am a very naive person in my day-to-day life and yes i said it so please don't take advantage of me so behave as behaving a certain way with people in another way with others for the sake of keeping a good image at the firm didn't seem right to me so i was not very good at it and i believe there is a healthy balance of showing off your work without faking it too much and that i was not able to do back then so yes when you can be visible don't be afraid to talk about yourself and about the work you do and keep constant communication with your team so that they form a mental image of yourself doing a good job so pwc was my very first job out of university so looking back i think i had to make these mistakes to develop my professional self and i'm quite happy to have had this experience which made me aware of how the world works around me and ultimately helped me become the person that i am today so i hope this was valuable to you you now have five mistakes not to make when you first get a job at the big4 firm tell me if you worked at pwc kpmg deloitte or ey or any other firm tell me in the comments have you made any of these mistakes do you agree with me did you have any other experience tell me in the comments i always like to have other perspectives because we all have our unique experience there if you enjoyed the video like usual hit the like button subscribe for more consulting and career content and i'll talk to you soon ciao [Music] you

Channel: The Independent Consultant

Views: 32,704

Keywords: pwc, pwc consulting, pricewaterhousecoopers, pwc graduate scheme, pwc graduate, deloitte, kpmg, top 4 accountancy, top 4 professional firm, experience at pwc, mistakes at pwc

Id: axG5QrmTiCw

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021