Report On PwC For Graduate Role Edinburgh Assurance April 2016

Company Background

There are four separate parts to this refer assignment, all of which must be completed to pass.

1. Access Times Top 100 graduate employers website www.top100graduateemployers.com and find an advertised graduate role that you would be interested in applying for when you graduate. Research the company and the role and write a brief report that outlines the following:

• The organisation’s sector – market, competitors, current financial situation, current trading situation
• The role – main responsibilities and requirements, how the role fits within the organisation

2. Review your current competencies against the roles requirements and produce a personal SWOT to illustrate your areas of strength and areas where you have development requirements; where you see opportunities and where there may be threats to you achieving this role.

3. Construct a personal development plan (PDP) (making use of an appropriate table format) that details how you will develop the skill and competence in areas where you are weak or require further development. This should cover the time until you graduate and beyond.

4. Develop a one-minute written ‘elevator’ pitch, which you would present to recruiters for this organisation outlining how you meet their requirements and why they should recruit you for this role.

Employability is the quality or the ultimate goal of every individual professional and it is never easy to develop or enhance employability skills. A professional must have both education and experience for acquiring employability. According to the USEM model, the employability is consisted with four different components and they are understanding, skillful practices, efficacy beliefs and meta-cognition (Avramenko, 2012). In the current circumstances, most of the leading companies are only looking for the professionals that are either highly educated or well-experienced. In addition, the competition for recruiting by the top employers is massive. Therefore, it becomes very important for the professionals to enhance their employability. The current assignment analyses the market, competitors, current financial situation, and current trading situation of the company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to justify whether the qualification and talent of the learner is competent enough for the requirements of the role ‘Graduate, Edinburgh, Assurance, April 2016’.

In the current assignment, the learner is interested and would like to join PwC for the role of ‘Graduate, Edinburgh, Assurance, April 2016’ after completing graduation. PwC is one of the leading auditors and professional services network. The core services of the company PwC include assurance, deals, tax, and consulting. The dream of every individual professional is to join PwC. Service and audit based industries are growing rapidly and many leading companies such as Deloitte, KPMG and EY are dominating the market. However, the company PwC has transforms their business and organization to a whole new level and is still offering the services that are superior to their competitors. Not only the creativity and profitability but also PwC is famous for helping their employees enhance their employability. The company is giving top priority to the value of their employees and this is why their employees are capable of delivering the best outcome. The group revenue of PwC increased 5% and reached to £2,814 Million, among which they earn £1,025 Million as revenue for their assurance services (PwC, 2015). Additionally, the company achieved £722,000 as distributable profit per partner. According to various resources, the current trading situation of PwC is profitable and lucrative for the investors. This year almost 1300 graduates have joined PwC throughout the UK. The company is dealing with well over 25,000 clients from also 53 different offices across the UK. According to The Times, the company is among the top 100 graduate employers and the employer of the year 2014 in the UK (Ukcareers.pwc.com, 2015).

The Role – Responsibilities and Requirements

The very first responsibility is to develop stronger relationships with the stakeholders using relationship management and functional leadership skills. According to the graduate website of PwC, almost all the jobs available for the graduates in PwC has only one responsibility that is to contribute towards the profitability and growth of the company. The role suggests developing long lasting relationship with new people. The company will provide various rewards including personality benefits correspondences and competitive salary. The next responsibility is to develop close partnership for resolving any problem as one of the joint owner. The rest of the responsibilities include effective engagement towards training and development campaigns and improvement opportunities (Ukcareers.pwc.com, 2015).

By joining the leading practices of PwC, the graduate will be a part of the wining team, which is efficient and capable enough to deal with every aspect of the client activities of PwC. As per the role and responsibilities, it is very important for the graduate to understand the businesses of the clients of PwC for identifying the high-quality Assurance can enhance perception and value.

The job is critical work and enhances the aspects of corporate governance and has an important role for confirming the trustworthiness and significance of the business information. The graduate will get an opportunity to work with many prestigious clients of PwC. As a result, the graduate will be able to develop business skills, relationships and knowledge that are essential for doing well throughout the career that is even more important than the salary (Ukcareers.pwc.com, 2015).

The job role will transform the capability of the graduate to think independently and confidently regarding their viewpoint. The graduate will have to work with a dynamic team with various clients that are working with FTSE 100 companies and thousands of small to mid-sized companies. As the clients of PwC belong to wider range of industries, the graduate employee will get various industry exposure and experience. The Assurance responsibilities are entirely client focused and graduate may have to work in the sites of the clients and also for longer durations in case of shorter deadlines.

The job duration depend upon the requirements of the business. The key motive is to derive the passion and commitment of the graduate employees for meeting with the needs of the business and the clients (Ukcareers.pwc.com, 2015).

The role is tailored to tackle wider range of challenges for the clients of PwC, focusing on the financial Audit and operating across various different roles including Public Services, Risk Assurance and Pensions Audit.

Any individual holding a graduate degree with a 2.1 degree or above in any subject and who is ready to work as a team member within a dynamic environment, is eligible for the role. In addition, various other requirements of the role include exceptional oral and written communicational skill, strong analytical skills (Ukcareers.pwc.com, 2015).

• Adaptability: The main strength is adaptability, which involves seeking information, testing assumptions, scanning the surrounding environment for anticipating changes. In addition, it also involves changing the work approach based upon the changing scenario of the demand (McCarthy et al. 2010).
• Collaboration: Another very important strength of the learner is the capability of collaboration and communication with individuals and groups effectively and the responsibility of the role seeks effective collaboration and communication skills (Bergin and Rhodes, 2010).

• Client Focus: As the learner does not have any prior work experience and is yet to complete his/her graduation, the learner does not have efficient knowledge regarding the process of handling and managing clients. It is important for the learner to understand the perspective, future requirements and feedback of the clients as per the responsibilities of the role. Therefore, the inability of focusing upon the clients is a weakness for the learner (Brown et al. 2011).

• Proficiency in Audit: The main service of PwC are based around audit and services, which has to be promoted as per the responsibility of the job role. Therefore, this is considered as the weakness for the learner (Gravells, 2010).

• Drive for outcomes: The learner has learnt about various necessary elements of successful management skills and driving for results is one of them. The learner has understand the importance of setting realistic goals for the performance, understanding the consequences of limitations and issues, soliciting and performing upon the feedbacks or reviews for improving performances, which are the opportunities for the learner to go positive towards the role (Byrd and Megginson, 2013).

• Judgmental ability: As the learner is inexperience and do not have any clear idea about the job role, the learner does not have any idea regarding the issues, outputs and inputs, which are essential for the role and the employee to identify in order to solve the issues and to obtain knowledge that is relevant to the job. Making business decisions and convincing others to adapt to such decisions are another competency that the learner does not possess and for the reason, it is a serious threat for the learner (Diamond and Diamond, 2010).
• Organizing, planning and executing: Planning, executing and organizing are three key aspects of a successful professional, especially considered for the particular job role in order to submit or complete a project on time. The learner does not have clear and concise idea regarding the aims and objectives of the business, business value and risks, which is threatening for the learner as he may experience various issues in the future that he might not be able to resolve on time (Gill, Biger and Bhutani, 2010).

Personal Development Plan (PDP)
Goal	Action-Plan	Evidence	Time-Frame
Client Focus	·Understanding the requirements of the clients. ·Comparing the services that PwC is providing with the requirements of the clients (Schneider et al. 2010). ·Evaluating the normal issues that the clients are facing with the services of PwC.	·Internet and the official website and client support forum of PwC. ·Obtaining comments and feedbacks of the users, who are using the services of PwC.	May 2015 to June 2015
Proficiency in Assurance and Audit Activities	·Gaining required and overall insight of the audit and assurance that are trending and PwC is offering. ·Taking short and professional courses based on Assurance and Audit.	·Internet websites, forums, blogs. ·Various institutes that are offering Assurance and Audit based courses.	July 2015 to September 2015
Judgmental ability	·Gathering knowledge and information regarding the issues, inputs and outputs of the business and services. .Developing decision-making skills and convincing power by reviewing the case histories of PwC.	·Various informational resources including both offline and online.	October 2015 to November 2015
Organizing, planning and executing	·Understanding the resources involved in the business of PwC and understanding the business aims and objectives of PwC.	·Going through the informational brochures and website of PwC. .Going through various case studies that explain the importance of organizing, planning and executing in the context of various leading companies.	December 2015 to January 2016

Table 2: Personal Development Plan (PDP)

(Source: Created By Author)

I am …………….. and I have completed my graduation in management this year. I have completed my summer internship program in XYZ Ltd, which is a small-sized Audit company and during the internship I have learnt all the roles and responsibilities of an Assurance executive that involve maintaining the Audit activities and developing relationship with the clients with effective interactions. I am interested for the role ‘Graduate, Edinburgh, Assurance, April 2016’ in your company as I have understood the responsibilities of the role, which I have learnt from my graduate education and organizational experience.

Conclusion

The current assignment concludes that it is equally important for the students and the professionals to analyze their strengths and educational achievements for comparing them with the businesses of the organizations and the roles and responsibilities of the designations that they would like to join. That means, choosing an appropriate organization is evenly important for enhancing employability as they can use their talent, education and experience more effectively.

Reference List

Bergin, K. and Rhodes, C. (2010). Skills & values. New Providence, NJ: LexisNexis

Byrd, M. and Megginson, L. (2013). Small business management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill

Diamond, H. and Diamond, L. (2010). Perfect phrases for motivating and rewarding employees. New York: McGraw-Hill

Gravells, A. (2010). Delivering Employability Skills in the Lifelong Learning Sector. Exeter: Learning Matters Ltd

Avramenko, A. (2012). Enhancing students’ employability through business simulation. Education + Training, 54(5), pp.355-367

Brown, R., Owens, M. and Bradley, C. (2011). Employee to employer communication skills: balancing cancer treatment and employment. Psycho-Oncology, p.n/a-n/a

Gill, A., Biger, N. and Bhutani, S. (2010). Factors that mitigate employee job stress in the service industry. International Journal of Services, Economics and Management, 2(1), p.30

McCarthy, D., Reeves, E. and Turner, T. (2010). Can employee shareâ€Ã‚Âownership improve employee attitudes and behaviour?. Employee Relations, 32(4), pp.382-395

Schneider, L., Gnther, J. and Brandenburg, B. (2010). Innovation and skills from a sectoral perspective: a linked employer“employee analysis. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 19(2), pp.185-202

PwC, (2015). PwC UK Annual Report 2014. [online] Available at: https://www.pwc.co.uk/en_uk/uk/annualreport/index.html [Accessed 12 Jun. 2015]

Ukcareers.pwc.com, (2015). Vacancy Details. [online] Available at: https://www.ukcareers.pwc.com/PwCGradWeb/Searches/VacancyDetails.aspx?VacancyId=f8404090b4954e3b8449ebaaba771214&LoggedOut=True&Site=Graduate&EntryRoute=572F857BD7C5492787E57AA4269C5D16&BUArea=A63B1089177245CEA707E107739A745C&IntakeYear=AAB7D4695BB64B6D9E20039CC4882AC4&PageNo=1&StartPage=1&OrderBy=loc [Accessed 12 Jun. 2015]