Management Consulting Apprentice
PwC
I first heard about PwC’s Consulting Practice in 2018 at a school and college leaver event at the old Birmingham office. It sounded like a fantastic opportunity to develop essential business skills by working full time but also gaining a qualification which was required as part of the apprenticeship. It was a much more attractive route than the University route for me as I felt that gaining experience from working would excel my development more than full-time education would. I received my offer in the Autumn of 2019 and joined PwC virtually in September 2020.
19 months later and I’m delighted that I decided to join PwC. I have had countless positive learning experiences and have felt empowered in my project work, whether that has been in a virtual or office environment. PwC Higher Apprentices spend the first 12 months with internal teams on two 6-month long rotations. I spent my first 6 months within the Sales and Marketing team which supports all the large bids that PwC are aiming to win. They offer pursuit advice, coaching and support to the bid teams and add great value to the proposals that they support. Due to the pandemic, I had to spend all 6 months of my time with the team virtually which was a challenge as I had to build relationships and work with colleagues whom I’d never met. I enjoyed this challenge and didn’t let the virtual environment stop me from building great relationships with the team and their internal clients. My next 6-month rotation was with PwC’s Commercial team. This team supports all of PwC’s ongoing projects with commercial planning and management to guarantee that all work is being completed in line with the commercial agreements that were made when the contract was signed. The team had just embarked on PwC Consulting’s biggest transformation in over 10 years – they were moving all their Commercial Management tools from Excel onto Anaplan, a cloud platform that allowed greater visibility for all PwC staff on how their engagements were performing commercially. I was responsible for managing all of the MI reporting that was shared with the COO however most of my time was supporting PwC staff with the tool and any issues that they were having. I thoroughly enjoyed both projects and they gave me a brilliant opportunity to develop a broad range of skills that I could apply to client projects. I then joined a project working with a Government Entity to support them with a modernisation to not only improve their processes but restructure their organisation to create efficiencies for them and their consumers. It has been a fantastic 7 months full of in-person events, workshops and working sessions which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I am motivated by knowing and seeing the impact that my work has had, and I’ve felt really proud when I’ve seen something that I have created or contributed to being used to better the general public.
I am looking forward to joining a project in the Financial Services or Private Sector soon to continue my learning and development but most of all, continue to enjoy myself by travelling and working with the excellent colleagues and clients that I get to work with day in day out at PwC.