My Experience Working at PwC

hey guys so in today's video I'm going to talk about my experiences at PwC which is one of the top four professional firms so I worked there I came to travel University and as a graduate I worked there for four years I think this video might be useful for anyone who's thinking about joining one of these professional firms and wants to understand what are the benefits what are the the negative effects and then just someone's general experience throughout and what their prospects were after they left and I think the reason I want to make this is I had a very mixed experience going into PwC and you know it wasn't all positive there are a lot of positives to come out from working at a professional firm so right off the bat you start with a group of individuals as well usually they're just stray of university because it's normal I started as part of the Graduate scheme and then I qualified as an accountant so you after I went on to do the ACA when I started at PwC I was able to go through that process with about 14 other people and for through going through a process of something that's quite strenuous and difficult because you have to work quite long hours whilst it seems like you're studying for the ACA and you want to try and pass that and obviously you you then build better relationships with these people because you're all going through something that's quite tough experience so normally with most jobs you go for one of the positives that always come out of them of the different jobs is the fact you meet all these people and at PwC that was the experience I had overall specifically the people in my year were was probably the best experience to come out of it from a networking standpoint and just from that you know that these people that I still see they're people that I invited to my wedding they're people who can really have an impact because even from the point of view that now I've left PwC have to be in there for years it's they're still good reference points to understand sort of where they are in their career you can sort of use them as a benchmark that drivers to try and push you forward and that's that's what it is when you go to say you go to a really good university or so you go to a professional one of the top firms what you really want to be doing is putting yourself in a position where you have to compare yourself to people who are talented and have a lot of experience and that's what this sort of going into these firms really good for is you work with really clever people who have Drive and experience and it makes you want to keep up with that experience now the side effect to that is it's a very competitive environment when you're in the job and the result of that is it can be quite a stressful experience and I think which is real negative about this is cause of all the people at this firm have a significant Drive the side effect of that is what everyone starts building up this culture of working ridiculous hours like 11 hour days particularly in busy periods I'm not somebody who wants to just be watching the clock and just feeling like I need to be clocking certain hours I'm so many wants to know what my job is you say some like the 80/20 principle and focus on the core jobs getting them done and knowing that if I get them done I can leave or if I get them I can move on to something else that's productive I don't want to be spreading my work out or feeling like if I get something done I'm just gonna have to take on some others slack from people who are just building their work up over the period of time so there's definitely a culture in these companies where it's just very long hours and and it's unfortunate that you can work long hours really put in the work and at the end of it you get told because all your other peers are doing that what else are you doing it's like what you mean what else I'm gonna have you work in three three months at 11 hours every day what do you mean what else am i doing so that bit of it I really didn't like also you know there's certain elements that I think are quite stressful in a job if you get something that's challenging work these are the factors I think are stressful challenging work something that actually takes a lot of mental strain to work out what's going on if there's very limited time to do the work if you're getting a poor manager or someone who's putting undue stress on you another factor is if if you feel like you're not getting the recognition for Thought effort you're putting in so it feels and and also I feel like it's quite stressful if you're doing work that you don't feel is very meaningful but the three main ones for me a difficult work time and management and my experience at PwC was very limited time this is a positive thing in some regards but in terms of it being difficult work well as soon as you've learned how to do something it's now you take on more responsibility which is a good thing in terms of putting you in the frame of mind that you always want to challenge yourself and move forward and these are all vital skills afterwards and and but at the same time it's like you're always working under a time pressure you're always doing work that you kind of don't fully have a grasp on yet you're that's your sort of learning as you go along and at the same time I've had managers at PwC were just dreadful now there's always a positive the command of these if a manager is dreadful well when you're a manager you will know how to treat people and how you think a manager should behave if there's time pressure well any me all these factors if it's if it's stressful then it's something that you can learn to deal with and know how to manage your time more effectively and focus on the core tasks or know how to manage your managers or know how to delay certain things and how to frame certain things in terms of how I'm going to deliver and then it works challenging then I mean you just learn to enjoy the process of actually gaining this information and thinking that's going to help you unfortunately I knew I wasn't going to be in audit so I literally now I've left I'm now I work as a financial analyst and like a business partner now I have that experience I never use the actual call learning of audit but at the same time there's a core understanding there yeah so so that is giving you a bit of framework so I think from a relationship standpoint it's great the people you meet there are fantastic from a work perspective of your actual core job well I did order as I said I didn't enjoy it and then there's obviously the stress which I think it is a highly stressful environment and it's long hours and poor recognition at a lot of times now that's not to say other people don't get the recognition I mean there's plenty of partners at PwC who have managed to make partner of 32 because they've built this reputation up and they've really killed it for about 10 years and now they're probably on 1 million a year as a partner in London now that can be it can be done but I think the most most people had this feeling of not getting recognition or the work not being meaningful enough or just there's just a daily grind and it was like everyone is dealing with it so you are not gonna get much of a look in that why you're not gonna be looked at as saying you're working really well because everyone else is doing and that's a very frustrating thing and it could create an environment of that kind of small cog in a big chain which is another reason I wanted to leave PwC and that's why there's a normally a huge turnover of staff in these roles but other positive things so with all stresses comes dealing with it and becoming a better employee and individual and having that experience going on obviously if you're working in the top for professional firms if there's a certain reputation to that which you can then take on to other roles I know I wouldn't have been where I am today how I'm not qualified as an accountant I mean obviously paying for you to become a qualified accountant doing the ACA that's something that I'll always have that's something I can take on to further roles being able to have that core understanding I've worked at different finance teams now it's it's evident that things that you have become accustomed to because it was like you had to know it straightaway at PwC or you had to go and talk to clay it's external clients and it was a client facing role you now take things for granted in terms of your accounting understanding or just your business understanding that you go into other companies you realize they don't have that grounding so that's another factor so overall it's very positive looking back but at the time it was a daily grind I feel like I could have got to where I am now had I not gone to PwC but it would have been a lot harder and order taking me a lot longer so from that perspective it's definitely experience that I think is worth doing it has its drawbacks but there are a significant amount of benefits from working at these companies you know I think I often think about with these roles as well what would I tell myself now if I went into that experience knowing what I know so having worked there for years leaving I've now pretty much worked outside of PwC as long as I worked inside really the experience I'd be telling myself is valuable to PwC as much as Pete PwC is valuable to you and it's a two-way street and if you're working stupid hours you're working 11 hour days just take a step back and go is this making me happy do I need to be working this long can I actually just leave and you know I had at I at the moment where I was working eleven hour days I'd get up from my desk at 10:00 p.m. having worked like a long shift and the manager says where do you think you're going it's like where do you think I'm going I'm going here because and I wish I had more of an attitude of I probably in that situation sat back there and plugged away from the other half an hour until everyone left but I wish I had more of a stubborn attitude of being like you know what gates I'm working hard if you really think that if you think of complaining to someone more senior because I'm leaving at 10 o'clock at night then go ahead and having an almost realizing that it's maybe different if you have this idea that it's going to be long term you want to stay there for 15 years and try and make partner as difficult as that isn't improbable as that is but if you know you're gonna leave like I did after three four years I wish I just had that attitude and enjoyed the process more instead of just slogging away trying to get people's respect the whole time in this and I could have just enjoyed the fact that I knew I was going on to bed better and positive things and really seen the process as I was going along whereas it was more just stress as I was going along and now I look back at all I was awful but there was a lot of positive things to come out from it I mean overall do I think it was worth doing yes would I want to do it again no anyway those are just some of my thoughts I could probably keep talking for ages going over different topics but that's just some of them I think you know go apply if you want to work in finance getting an ACA qualifications a really good grounding it really looks good on a CV having that experience from those professional firms even going through difficult times and having to deal with stress and deal with difficult people and clients who don't want to work with you are all valuable experiences you just have to appreciate their valuable experiences as you're going along and not get soot overwhelmed by at all he's it difficult yes to a large extent a lot of people drop out a lot of people get fired because they don't pass the exams but it is good development and like I said I wouldn't be where I am today if I had done that if I hadn't have done that you know I go into actual industry and see people who were like sort of studying on the side of their jobs well it takes them about 6 7 years to actually pass all their accounting exams whereas you do it in three at PwC so I think you should do it but be wary those are some of the thoughts it's going to be long hours it's gonna you're gonna deal with difficult people you may not get recognition it's a long slog but you're gonna meet some really nice people there and it's going to set you up for life so hopefully this video is useful to some extent that's just my experience Cheers

Channel: Paul Harris

Views: 121,175

Keywords: PwC, pricewaterhousecoopers, graduate scheme, pwc graduate scheme, pwc graduate, graduate experience, work experience, deloitte, kpmg, aca, aca graduate scheme, accounting, accounting graduate scheme, icaew, icaew graduate

Id: Qb-6AXQOiA0

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2019