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PwC Employability E-learn Interview script - Sonia

Video – Team working:

Candidate: Sonia

 

Watch option C:

Interviewer: OK, please describe a time when you have worked in a team to deliver a piece of work?

Okay, sure, last year, during my first year at university, I had to work in a team for a project after a field trip to Iceland studying glacier movements it was part of our climate change module. Erm I was really excited about going somewhere I’d never been before. We were put in groups of five and we had to do research while we were there, which needed to be written up and handed in as a group assignment a few weeks later.  Our tutor put us into groups a few weeks before; erm I didn’t know anyone in my group so erm I thought it would be a good idea to get to know each other before the trip.

(Fidgeting)We ended up meeting in the Student Union, after lectures had finished on the Monday before……it was just a good place for everyone to meet and erm, although it was a bit awkward at first…. I made a real effort to speak to everyone, asking questions like if they been out the night before…. and what other modules they were taking as I think that’s always a good ice breaker. We also had Meilin in our group, an international student from Hong Kong, so I asked her if she was enjoying her time here and if she was missing her family.  I’ve always wanted to go to Hong Kong so I was really excited about getting to know her and have a bit of a chat to her about the city and stuff. Anyway, I feel better having met everyone and, in fact, found out that Mel, one of the other girls, is from my home town and so she knows some of my college friends so bit of a small world!

Interviewer: And what was your role in the team?

Erm…well, my role was that I was responsible for getting everybody together – which worked out really well because erm when we’d met in the union, I suggested that we each take responsibility for a section of the assignment rather than all of us trying to do the whole thing. I asked if anyone was interested in one of the subsections in particular, or if they felt, you know they’d be particularly good at something and it actually did turn out that people were really focused and ……….luckily everyone was interested in different parts of the project so that worked out well…..erm so, we split up the project so we each had a part to do, and, going to be assessed on this so it was important we all put in the same amount of time and effort because we were all going to be assessed on it together.

Erm I also ended up volunteering to pull the whole final report together because (laughs) I quite like formatting documents to make things look neat and I could make sure I was completely happy with how it looked and how it read.

So the week after we went out to Iceland and collected our data, yeah that was the week after. It was a great trip and the glaciers are amazing. (Jokingly) so it was a little bit too cold for my liking but we had enough hot chocolates to keep us going! And I just really enjoyed spending time with the others too, we found out we had a lot of things in common and yeah I learnt some things from working with them too and we all got on really well.

Interviewer: So, how did you work with the other team members?

I think I worked effectively with everyone – I tried to ensure I listened to everyone and wasn’t too bossy; I can be a bit controlling sometimes but particularly when you know there’s so much at stake, such as in this instance; I wanted to make sure I got a 2:1! So when we got back we all met up again to talk through getting a first draft done as soon as possible so we had enough time to review it and tweak it before the final deadline – I needed the time to make it read well and these things tend to need one person I think to go over them completely as you’re bringing different writing styles together.

(Plays with hair) Anyway… we were discussing when we were completing the first draft of the report, someone suggested that we try and get it done asap, ahead of the deadline and whilst it was still fresh in our minds… This sounded good to me, but I noticed that Meilin looked a bit worried. So I specifically asked if she was ok with the timeline …..and she said she was organising an event to celebrate the Chinese New Year with her Cultural society so she had lots to do with that. We all sympathised with her because, especially since we had seen how hard she worked -……… as a group we decided that we didn’t need Meilin to get her work done by the new deadline so, to give her a bit of space for the event, I think we allowed a bit more time for her, I think it was only about another 10 days.…... so it meant that I couldn’t finish the formatting until this was done; but, that was fine.

Interviewer: So, to what extent was the team successful in delivering the report?

Yeah really successful actually! So, once we’d pulled together our first draft we realised that we were in good shape to submit soon anyway…..and it just needed a few little tweaks. I think, what made it successful is that everyone was happy with the approach we took so it was, we were all supportive of getting a good result. I think also we’d built a really good relationship as a group and I don’t think anyone wanted to upset that by not delivering their part of the project. We handed in our work on time and got a mark of 65% overall, which went towards our end of year result and yeah I just really enjoyed working with the group and we didn’t really know each other before the project but because we spent so much time together on the field trip and we met up afterwards and it was really, you know really helped me get to know them better and I’ve made some new friends. Meilin even invited us to her event and so we decided to go along as the group and yeah was a really nice night.

 

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