August 2016 – Undergraduate Blog

Part-time work alongside studying

By Saad Khawaja, BA Business Management

Part-time jobs are a great way to earn some extra money, gain work experience and make new friends while you are at University. They offer another social element to life, where you’re not only building up your transferable interpersonal skills, but also meeting other students who are working in a similar capacity. Plus, there’s the financial independence!

It is possible to do a part time job whilst studying. However, we all need to remember that our studies are our first and foremost priority, so part-time work comes second.

For international students, our visa states that we can work no more than 20 hours per week. However, the university recommends that students work no more than 16 hours a week in order to be able to prioritise their academics and strike a balance between studying and working. For over seas students, the first thing to the route of finding a part-time job includes applying for, and obtaining a National Insurance Number, which every employer requires before you can start working for them.

The university runs a Careers Service, where experienced career advisors help you with refining your CV, and any other documents that you may need in order to apply for part-time jobs.

Working on part-time jobs provides you something to put on paper-worth for your CV, and provides evidence to employers when applying for graduate jobs and summer internships so that you really stand out from the crowd and have done more than just studying whilst at university. It provides you with an edge and gives you something to speak about in an interview and expand upon how it led up to building your interpersonal skills.

In addition, the Careers Service runs a Skills for Work programme whereby students are encouraged to complete 50 hours’ worth of work experience, upon which the Careers Service provides a student with a Skills for Work Certificate which is endorsed by leading companies and brands such as PwC, BT, The RBS Group, etc.

All in all, it is a great opportunity to be able to work on part-time jobs as they provide you with extra money to fill your pockets for the month. However, care must be taken that you prioritise your academics first over such part-time jobs and don’t let them get in the way of you reaching greater academic heights!

PwC Internship: My first week

By Ash Davies, BA Accounting and Financial Management and Mathematics

Upon joining PwC, I was invited to London for 3 days, where I took part in some induction training with 180 interns from across the UK. The induction was an amazing opportunity to network with other interns and to understand a bit more about PwC and what your internship would involve. The induction also gave me an insight into how much PwC invest into their employees, where all expenses were paid for and every night they would put on different events, including a Partner dinner and there was even a Pimms’s tent!

Apart from the exciting night time events, the induction involved a series of classwork study where all interns are given a laptop and all the software needed to complete an audit for example. After the 3-day induction, I headed back to the office where I was introduced to my team for the next 6 weeks and also I was given more support on how to use the audit systems and more simple tasks such as using the emails system. The exciting part of the day was being shown who my clients were for the next 6 weeks and I have been lucky enough to have been placed on an away client in Birmingham.

I would say something that attracted me to apply to PwC, was the opportunities available to grow in the firm. The opportunities available to you to take part in different areas of the firm are endless and when you join as a graduate you can easily ask to be placed on a client of your choice. Even though I was lucky enough to have an away client in Birmingham, a technology consultancy is flying to South Africa next week for 3 weeks. Only experiencing one week at PwC, it is clear that the opportunities are there and they will let you experience as much as possible with them.

How I became a PwC Intern: The Application Process

By Ash Davies, BA Accounting and Financial Management and Mathematics

Almost a year ago I decided that I wanted to gain some experience in the financial services industry. I recognised that competition for graduate places in the ‘Big Four’ and other financial firms is highly competitive and having that extra edge on other graduates is definitely something I wanted. In early September, I started to research many firms which specialised in finance and accountancy. My research led me to understand a lot more about PwC and the several different routes you can take in their firm.

Around November, I began my application process for the PwC Assurance Internship where the process takes around 3 months as there are 5 steps which are: application, logical & numerical tests, a telephone interview, an assessment centre and a final partner interview.

I fully researched PwC, looking into their values, services, clients and more simple things such as how long the internship is (which some people forget). Another important thing I would definitely recommend is to research into recent financial news on the FT, as one of the questions could be related to recent financial news and how PwC could help the situation. After the telephone interview you are invited to an assessment centre for a series of different exercises, where you have to pass all of them. The day can be quite tiring but PwC do support you throughout the day and if you have any questions, just ask! After the assessment centre, I went through a final partner interview in your chosen office, where it was more a casual chat than an interview. The final interview is a short discussion about why you would like to join PwC and a little bit more about yourself outside of your degree.

After such a lengthy process, I am proud to say I have been successful in securing a place on the internship and I will give you an update how my first week is going soon.

Top Tips – Things to do before applying:

Research PwC and the professional services they provide
Practise the numerical and logical tests and use websites such as Assessment Day to help you get through.
Research financial markets and current financial affairs.
Get involved in as much as possible at University – it allows you talk about a lot in your interviews!
Be patient as they have over 8000 applications for around 300 places!

A Student in the Summer: Finance Internship at Santander UK

Robbie Bailey

Reflections on my Internship

I am a few weeks into my internship so I thought now would be a good time to reflect on why I chose to apply for the scheme and what my time here has been like so far!

I am doing a Finance Internship at Santander UK and I am based in Santander House in Milton Keynes.

Whilst working as a Student Ambassador at the Management School, I heard many of the older ambassadors emphasising the benefits of getting real world work experience alongside my degree. I decided that I wanted to do a summer internship as it allowed me to get this vital experience without having to take a full year out of my studies. I then applied to a number of banks and financial institutions and worked my way through a lot of online applications and assessments. This is a long-winded process that can be very disheartening when your application is rejected but if you persevere and learn from your feedback then it is possible to get the opportunities that are out there. After multiple online tests and a telephone interview, I was invited to an assessment centre in Santander’s Milton Keynes office. This was the first assessment centre I had done and it was very tough but my hard work paid off and I got the job!

My programme runs for 10 weeks and I am working in the Provisions team. The easiest way to describe what my team does would be that we decide how much money to set aside every year to cover the losses that occur when people can’t pay their loans or mortgages. This area requires a lot of analysis and we use a number of sophisticated models on a daily basis to get the best estimates of how much money the bank are going to lose. Currently, I am focussing mainly on mortgage provisioning and I am doing a lot of analytical work, which means a lot of Microsoft Excel!

I knew that the work would be very Excel focussed so, prior to starting my internship, I completed a free online Excel training course provided by Lynda.com via the University of Sheffield website. I strongly recommend this as it has really helped me to quickly get to grips with the advanced Excel techniques used by my team every day.

During the induction process in the first week of the programme, I was told that interns also had to take part in a Charity Challenge. This involves working alongside other interns to raise as much money as possible for Santander UK’s charity partners: Age UK and Barnardo’s. I am the team leader of my team and we are currently in the process of organising our fundraising activities. We plan to have regular food sales in the office including cakes, samosas and sweets. Our main fundraiser will be a Quiz Night later in the programme and we hope to raise around £600-£700 which will then be matched by Santander UK.

Last week, I was invited by another Finance department to join them on their annual community day. Each Santander UK employee must do at least one community day a year. Santander support worthy causes in the local area by donating money and providing staff to undertake any major tasks. Last week we painted a fence at a local primary school which was a great experience as I got to meet new people from the Finance team and it was also very rewarding to see how happy the teachers were with our work!

I have really enjoyed the start of my internship as it has allowed me to experience life in real world finance. The charitable elements of the programme have also been fantastic! I will be writing another blog post towards the end of my internship to reflect on the programme in more detail. Thank you for reading!