Ever heard of the term KISS? Well it means "Keep it simple stupid." This is something that my basketball coach used to tell me all the time and something that couldn't be further from the truth. This methodology is exactly why this week's MM is short and sweet.
This past week I entered into the Amazing Race Canada with my long time friend Kevin Shaw. If you haven't checked out our video, please do so at: Sean and Kevin - Amazing Race Audition Tape but what most of you will not be aware of, is how the final product was drastically different than what Kevin and I initially had envisioned.
Whether you’re looking for a job or looking to advance your career, recognize this: Your personal brand is the key to achieving success. So, what does this look like? Your personal brand is your story revealed. The challenging part is communicating this and having it consistent across all platforms – in print, in person and across social media outlets such as LinkedIN, Twitter and Facebook.
To help job applicants enhance and maximize their brand on and offline, here are my personal pillars to successful personal branding:
My name is Sean Burke and I am a Senior Associate in Tax at the Vancouver office.
I started with the firm as a summer student in 2009 and joined fulltime in September 2010 after graduating from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Business Administration. Throughout university I was focused on my academics, but was also highly involved in the community and athletics. My involvement in these areas is what ultimately led me to my summer internship at PwC, since then, I have never looked back.
Last week I was invited to the PwC BC
Region Acceptance Party for the candidates who accepted an offer to start with
us in 2013. What a party! We boarded the bus around lunchtime, which
whisked us out of drizzly, grey Vancouver, along the gorgeous Sea-to-Sky
highway, and dropped us off at one of my very favourite weekend destinations –
Whistler!
So – you were a social butterfly at the
networking sessions, and built many meaningful relationships.
Then – you completely rocked your first (and
possibly second) interview, amazing your interviewers with your vast experience
and distinctive responses to their questions.
In the B.C. region, offers went out on
Friday, and because you were such a superstar, you have received offers from
more than one firm. Congratulations! Now
the tough part really begins – how do you choose between all of these great
opportunities?
As noted in my last post, the Tax CA program provides multiple opportunities to go on short term (3 – 6 month) secondments to offices in Canada, the US, and India. These give our junior staff the chance to get some experience working in another office, build their global internal network, and get an idea of what the primary industries of our clients in different parts of the world. For example, in Vancouver we work with a lot of mining clients, while in Toronto or New York many of our clients are financial institutions. In our California offices, we have a lot of high tech and entertainment clients, while in Alberta or Texas, there is a good chance most of your clients will be involved with oil and gas.
As promised…this post will be dedicated to international secondments. Secondments refer to a period of time (usually 3 – 24 months long) that are spent working outside of your own office. In the Tax CA program, we offer short term (3 – 6 month) secondments to other PwC offices in Canada, the US, and India. Once you have obtained your CA though, the options are virtually limitless. Markus, a colleague who started the same day as I did in the Tax CA program, is now one year into his two year secondment in London. I decided to “interview him” in order to get some insight into what you could expect from an international secondment.
Within a week of every recruiting event, I usually get emails from students with questions about what it’s like to work in Tax as opposed to Audit. Since the questions are usually so similar, I figure that some of the most common ones are probably of interest to a lot of students. So, this blog will be dedicated to some of the Tax v. Audit questions that I get asked most commonly.
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