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PwC Employability E-learn Interview script - Jessica

Video – Manage Projects:

Candidate: Jessica

Watch option C:

Interviewer: OK please describe a time when you’ve successfully managed a project for example coursework or organising an event

(Looks down at hands, playing with hands; looks up for very short periods) OK..umm…I’m part of the Hockey team at university and I recently managed a project about how to get a new team kit from a new sponsor. I was team captain as well, so I managed the whole process. Our first competitive match was really early on in the new term….so erm….we only had a few weeks to get everything sorted.

(Looks up briefly but doesn’t make eye contact- gazes to the right) So……, I got the whole team involved to save time and split up all the tasks so we could be really efficient. I researched costs for the new kit as well as trying to get us a discount from the new kit supplier. I had to be really organised in getting that done……our pitch to the potential sponsors would depend on having the right cost information…..and I didn’t want to let anyone down.

(Slight pause) …. So, I asked the other team members to try and get appointments with potential sponsors…..just local retailers and businesses that I thought might be interested…..and I also asked them to speak to the student union….just so we could get a bit more advice about how to pull together the proposal; I’d not done anything like that before….. I know that they help loads of societies …..I thought it would be really good to try and get them on board and get them to come and help us. (Pauses).

Interviewer: And what did you do to plan the project?

(Fidgets, looks down throughout response, looks up only a few times) Well erm….I sort of worked backwards from the first match…..counted that as my deadline…..I planned when we needed to get certain things done by, when we had to have our proposal completed…… when to pitch the potential sponsors……then I added in some time so that they could sort things out at their end as well……because I didn’t want anything to risk us getting our new kit.

So I used a small project plan just to keep track of everything that we’d done and when  we needed it done by …….it was nothing fancy; just set up a shared calendar on google so the whole team could have access to it. I added in things, like the big milestones, ‘proposal completion’ and planned when we needed to pitch to the sponsors….just so they could start booking in to see us for the pitch. Erm…I set up weekly meetings as well so we could all catch up on everything and if there was anything I needed to know or they needed to know vice versa …. That worked out really well as everyone was always up to speed on everything.

Erm…er…I had to get the costs completed asap as that was really important for us to get the right quotes across on our pitch. So I made that my priority while the other people would speak to the Union about how to structure the proposal….that way I could get all the right slots in the final report. I used Excel to summarise and keep track of the different quotes so then that way I could just pick out the best one.

Interviewer: Okay and what challenges did you have to overcome?

Er…the biggest challenge we had to overcome… oh was when one of the sponsors said they couldn’t offer us sponsorship anymore because of internal changes. We were only told that a few days after the pitch…..that meant we’d lost a few days and we could have been planning a pitch to someone else and then I started to get worried that we might not get a sponsor because we hadn’t heard back from anyone yet. So, we made it a priority to get a pitch to another company….. I got some of the team to call up some of the other businesses that we’d already contacted but they hadn’t got back to us….just to follow up and see if they’d missed any of our emails….erm..I asked some of the girls to contact whole new businesses as well. We managed to get another business to see us the next day near campus and but we made it clear when we needed their final decision just in case we didn’t hear back from anyone.

Interviewer: So, what was the outcome?

(Looks at interviewer for a brief moment) So, we got a new kit funded by a local bar….… we had them printed up and they arrived a couple of days before the first match…..they looked really good, the whole team really liked it. I don’t think this would have happened if I hadn’t been so busy organising with the team and sorting out all the tasks……..the project plan I created really helped to keep everyone on track and it meant that everyone had different things to do so we could meet all the deadlines. Prioritising things like the costs and speaking to the Student Union and it helped us put together a really strong proposal……and because I had planned ahead we knew that we had some time to deal with the issues  like when the other business pulled out …… which we might not have been able to do if I hadn’t been so organised and planned ahead.

I also managed to get us a discount on the kit for both A and B teams. That  was a really good result we didn’t win our first match, but we’re currently top of the league! 

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