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Name - Gillian Orr
Job title: Associate in Performance Improvement Consulting
Name of Organisation worked for: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
What are your primary responsibilities?
My job description essentially requires me to act as a team member on current project/s in the capacity as an Associate. I have, most recently, been working on projects across 5 local councils in England which has involved a variety of internal and external stakeholder management in addition to working with the extended teams to produce the required outputs.
How do you spend your time?
Very variable depending on the demands of the project -
Most recent project:
25% Stakeholder management - internal
5% PwC internal tasks e.g. expenses, timesheets, internal projects etc.
10% Client time
60% Project work
What is typical career progression in this job area?
Career progression is not dependent on age or time worked for the organisation – it assessed solely on performance. I joined on the programme ‘Foundation for the Future’, for experienced hires/recent graduates.
To what extent, if at all, do you call on your legal knowledge and experience in this role?
I have not had the opportunity to directly use my legal knowledge and experience in this role but there is always the possibility of undertaking contract management/review on certain projects. Other ‘latent’ legal skills have, however, been useful to me during my time at PWC, e.g. extensive use of analytical skills.
What do you enjoy most/what motivates you in your job?
I most enjoy the opportunity of working with a variety of clients on both long and short term projects. This often requires travel to client locations across the UK and there are often projects available which present a chance to work abroad.
What would you do if you were trying to start out in this job area?
In applying for this role, I focused on my experience of commercial situations and on the business-transferable skills which a law degree offers. I would also advise researching as much as possible about the consulting sector and try to identify the type of consulting you are most interested in/what your target employers are most ‘famous’ for. In my case, PwC is a leader in the field of transformational/change management consulting and I tailored my application to the skills/attributes recognised by practitioners in this field.
What is typical career progression in this job area?
Associate – Senior Associate – Consultant – Senior Consultant – Director - Partner
What skills are most critical to success in this area?
Flexibility, all mediums of communication skills, adaptability, resilience, stakeholder management, analytical skills.
How useful have your legal skills, knowledge and experience, from your studies and/or your work in the legal profession, been in this area of work?
My legal skills have not been of direct use, in a pure sense, in my current work. Nonetheless, I have been able to use a variety of the skills I acquired during my work experience and over the course of my degree, for example:
- Analytical skills
- Comparisons/document review.
- Governance arrangements
- Contract interpretation
- Stakeholder management
- Presentation skills
……and others
Is there anything else you think would be helpful for anyone considering this field?
It is a question of research into this type of career and whether you believe it would be most suited to your own career goals and skills and what career path you are seeking to pursue/experiences you are most interested in gaining.
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