apply for PWC
Wagie
Jacob Brooks
Luke Morgan
Volunteer. Pack your CV with all kinds of different voluntary work.
>be me
>studied Microbiology
>attained absolutely no work experience whatsoever whilst being a student
>graduated
>took a year off because why not
>worked voluntarily as an art gallery steward, library publicity officer, homeless charity admin role and a few others
>each one only took up 2-3 hours a week
>Get into grad programme at a major bank on £36,500 starting salary as my first paid job despite only scraping a 2.1 and having no finance experience at all.
>2 years later move onto private bank on £45,000
The experience you can pick up from voluntary work looks far more impressive than entry-level paid jobs, takes up far less time and gives the impression that you aren't in it for the money and actually care about your job. Work a few voluntary jobs for a few months in your spare time and boost up your CV
Jackson Moore
You must've had something else going for you surely. £36.5k off the bat? in a field you never worked in... wow.
Jace Brown
not really. I applied for about 30 different graduate programmes and it was the only offer I got. I applied to everything from Scottish Water to Barclays. Plus I'm a massive autist who didn't make any connections in uni.
Made it through all the competency questions and logical tests but I kept fucking up the telephone interviews. Finally got through one interview and then smashed the assessment centre.
Most Graduate Programmes will consider any graduate with a 2.1 regardless of whether they studied a relevant subject. Diversity of thought and all that. There were people in my intake who studied Sports Science. The odds are low but if you apply to enough of them and do enough interview research you should get at least one offer
Easton Stewart
fair enough, thanks. I'll take a look.
Daniel Evans
I dropped out of highschool in 9th grade and got a job doing IT and then got into programming, making $28 an hour with zero training. Clearly you do not know how to produce value.
Mason Sullivan
It was the voluntary work that got my foot in the door. Being able to talk about working as a publicity officer for a city library was a lot more impressive than talking about stacking shelves or some group uni project. It's real high level work
A few hours a week and you'll have all the examples you need at interview.
Bentley Ward
Are you sure it's because of the volunteering?
You may as well just get a couple of part-time jobs, put some stuff down on your CV, whatever it may be and you're good to go. I never got this "just volunteer" idea. As you say, you had no experience in finance prior to going to the bank, and they must've known it. I see their logic of taking you on based on interviews and assessment centres. I don't see where the volunteering figures there.
Gabriel Moore
1. What are you going to talk about in competency-based interviews? That group project in second year? Serving drunk students cheap drinks?
2. You don't get to interview or assessment centre without jumping through several hoops. You have to have something on your CV to get to that stage and voluntary work provides you with real high level experience that you can't get working unskilled part time jobs. It also gives the impression that you care about more than just your pay slip, this is obviously a relatively minor point but being a team player is very important to recruiters.
Elijah Butler
>competency based interviews
Well, they are more of a test of how well you can communicate. I don't believe they truly judge the value of your skills there. They got the stuff down on your CV, that's it. They're not stupid and they're not going to buy into me telling them such and such position allowed me to demonstrate my whatever skills.
On the second point, I still believe this is more about luck and how they take your words. Sure, they may give you some credit for working in multiple places, and being okay with, dare I say, working for free.
I'm not from the UK myself, but I studied there. Your attitude to work is insane to me, since my experience here in Eastern Europe is very different. Never have I heard here that you should volunteer to get something on your CV. You wanna show you can work? Sure, get a multiple part-time jobs, and yeah there are some that are more relevant than others, that's just the way it is.