A culture that treats people as individuals within a supportive team environment. Enjoy your work, while keeping a sensible life balance and achieving rapid career progression, working with high-achieving colleagues and dynamic, ambitious clients.
People in our Strategy practice get to work on a broad spectrum of clients: people and businesses with ambitious plans, working in both innovative, young sectors and more established industries. We help them to assess their existing business models and weigh up the feasibility of exciting new ideas.
The practice covers three main areas of work - all of which, as an associate consultant, you'll enjoy exposure to during your initial years:
- Corporate strategy - advice to blue-chip organisations, including strategy planning, business plan development, customer proposition development, organisational transformation, pricing strategy, sustainability and market entry strategy to name but a few
- Private equity consulting and Commercial Due Diligence - working with private equity funds, helping them to understand target businesses that appear to present attractive investments, and to assess the robustness of such potential acquisition's business plans and strategies.
- Corporate mergers and acquisitions - advising corporate clients on investment and acquisition strategies and advising them on the growth potential of takeovers and buyouts
A career in PwC's Strategy team is one in which exceptional graduates will flourish - making a real contribution to projects from day one. You'll realise then what differentiates the Strategy practice at PwC from other management consultancies. As a pivotal member of the team, your role will be to help shape the advice we give our clients, so that they make the right strategic decisions only after understanding all the issues involved, regardless of their complexity. Projects you could be contributing to include helping clients:
- Drive the value of a business following its acquisition
- Assess the options of expansion into new markets
- Build a sustainability strategy that delivers value
- Shape a company's approach to its price positioning
- Help drive profits through strategic sourcing
On each project, you'll work with a new mix of people, in teams working across a range of sectors, from financial services to retail and consumer goods; from media, entertainment and leisure to technology and communication.
Typically, your work will involve field and desk research, analysis and modelling, telephone interviews and briefings - talking to everyone from CEOs to focus groups - followed by the development of your findings, ideas and recommendations at team meetings, and their presentation to clients.
From early on, you'll also have the opportunity to play a part in other aspects of the practice - from recruitment and training support to contributing to pitches and marketing campaigns.
Strategy at PwC has one of the highest employee retention rates within the management consultancy sector. Why?
We're meritocratic; we understand that people who join us want to learn and develop as fast as they're able - and be rewarded for their efforts and successes. And we share more than just knowledge - our team is composed of a diverse range of nationalities and languages, making it a fascinating place to work.
We also believe it's important that we enjoy what we do - that's why our people consistently excel. And we don't insist that people put in unnecessary face-time in order to impress - we focus on outcomes, which makes for a happier, more productive office atmosphere. And as we're largely office-based in London, it's easy to regularly socialise together. We get on with each other - and we think that matters.
Our aim - through close-knit teams and differing project types - is for you to develop a broad range of in-depth skills as fast and effectively as possible. And while we operate like a niche boutique consultancy, we offer all the advantages that the resources of a global professional services firm bring.
A comprehensive, two-week induction will introduce you to the basic tools of strategy consulting, with theoretical and practical courses and a challenging case study to test out your new skills. After that, you'll enjoy first-class internal and external training resources, both strategy-specific as well as 'soft' skills, such as people management and negotiating skills.
On a day-to-day basis, the learning curve will be steep - but you'll be coached and mentored by talented, experienced colleagues, who are trained to get the best out of eager associates, and ensure you learn as much as you can handle. You'll be given the opportunity to gain practical experience in the topics that interest you, all the while aiming for promotion to consultant, realistically within two to three years. We also offer opportunities for international secondments and even sponsored MBA programmes to exceptional performers.
To be considered as a talented potential associate, we'll expect you to demonstrate a rare combination of razor-sharp commercial awareness, superb time-management and analytical skills, and the confidence and credibility to present your opinions to senior colleagues and clients. You'll want and expect to be challenged on a daily basis. Most importantly, your team fit will turn on how closely you share our appetite and ability to use your expertise for the benefit of some of the word's leading organisations and entrepreneurs.
You'll need a 2.1 degree (in any discipline) and 340 UCAS points (or equivalent).
Strategy offers unique opportunities to develop excellence in business consulting at top speed - working with the best in their field.
To apply you will need to send us your CV and a covering letter via our online application form. In your CV and covering letter you should include information relating to any extra curricular activities you have been involved in as well as any work experience you have undertaken. You should also state why you would like to work within the Strategy Group at PwC and your understanding of the services the group offer.
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