Consultancy at Deloitte

If you’re interested in becoming a consultant, Deloitte are running a case study event at the Careers Service to give you an insight into how they work with their clients. You’ll work alongside consultants from different areas of Deloitte’s work (eg. Technology Integration, Enterprise Applications, Strategy etc) on a realistic business scenario.

• Date : Thursday 19th November
• Time : 12.00-14.00
• Where : Careers Service, Crawford House (5th floor)

You’ll need to sign up in advance, and do some preparation by reading their website describing the range of consultancy work at Deloitte. I’d also get to the event in good time, as I suspect it will be very popular (and the first to get there get the seats).

Public Policy Competition

While you’re on the Deloitte website, you might also want to have a look at their Public Policy Competition. This is an essay competition, open to all UK students (it explicitly mentions Masters and PhDs) where you’re asked to tackle a great big complicated problem facing the Government (of whichever flavour) over the next 10 years:

“The current economic climate and an ageing population present significant challenges to Britain’s public services. If you were in charge of a government department dealing with these issues, what key changes would you implement over the next ten years?”

Come up with an answer in under 2000 words and you might be in with a chance (and no, I don’t think “I’d stop paying consultants” is going to get you very far…). You need to register by 15th January at the latest and the closing date for entries is 29th January. Prizes allow you to choose between work experience at Deloitte – or holiday vouchers.

UK and International Applications

Deloitte, like many other consultancies, are open to applications from UK and international students, subject to work permit restrictions. They are happy to consider those who can work in the UK through the Tier 1 (Post Study) scheme, so that could apply to most of our current postgrads. Their website clearly states their stance on work permits and it looks like the only area where they explicitly state you need a UK passport is for their “Enterprise Risk Services Technology (Security & Privacy)” roles.

UK and International Equivalent Qualifications

They also have clear requirements of the level of qualifications needed, including undergraduate degree level, and A levels or the equivalent qualifications which got you to university. Unusually, their website also clearly lays out the international equivalents – worth a look if you’re confused about how your non-UK school qualifications compare to UK equivalents, even if you’re not planning to apply to Deloitte. Just be aware that they do set the bar pretty high (especially for their consultancy roles) so other employers may not be quite so demanding.

Postgrad Study Fair – Weds 28th Oct

Tomorrow is the big Postgraduate Study Fair at Manchester Central (G-Mex as was).

Good reasons to go:

• You’re thinking about continuing with postgraduate study (for most of you, this will be a PhD – or maybe another Masters?)
• You want to talk to almost 100 exhibitors, face to face, about applying to their institutions, what funding they have, what their university is like etc.
• You want to investigate studying outside the UK – there will be representatives there from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, in addition to lots from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England.
• You’re interested in some professional study programmes such as News Associates Journalism training or MAs from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
• You want to talk to careers advisers about where postgrad study might fit in your career plans.

Bad reasons to go:

• You’re looking for postgraduate jobs.
  This is about doing postgraduate courses. There isn’t a purely “postgraduate jobs fair” – all the graduate jobs fairs include jobs open to postgraduates.
• You need to talk to someone about a specific PhD or research topic.
  They’re unlikely to have your potential supervisor in attendance, but may be able to talk to you more generally about support for postgraduates.
• You’re looking for more of those freebies you picked up at the last two fairs.
  Hmm, these are universities, so you might strike lucky with the odd pen or cardboard coaster but don’t expect lavish giveaways (though I have heard that someone will have mugs which you can write on with chalk, like blackboards – but I’m not telling you who’s got these until I’ve been there first…)

Don’t Want To Work For Someone Else?

If you fancy being your own boss, there’s a new one day event aiming to help you, taking place in Manchester, with free places for graduates and postgraduates.

The thing I particularly like about the Flying Start “Make It Happen” programme is that it recognises that whilst some of you might want to set up your own businesses, others are more interested in self employment or freelancing – and they have follow on programmes for each of these approaches. In addition, they are offering 12 months mentoring support to help get you started.

The initial Manchester programme is on Wednesday 18th November at the Manchester Conference Centre (right next to North Campus) from 10.00am until 3.00pm, and in addition to Flying Start, they say there will be representatives from Business Link and HSBC. You have to sign up beforehand for a place. I suspect this offer will be popular, so if you’re interested, I wouldn’t wait too long to register.

Life Sciences – Careers Panel

In a slightly different sort of Question Time to the one in the news at the moment, there will be a Careers Question Time for life scientists next week. This is the chance to talk to life science graduates and postgraduates who have gone into careers in :

• Patents
• Pharmaceuticals
• Clinical science
• Science communication
• Clinical trials
• Medicine (as a graduate entrant)
• Business development
• Environmental strategy (come and meet Erica, former zoologist, who I met at Yorkshire Water)

It’s taking place on Wednesday 28th October, from 2-4pm, in Stopford Lecture Theatre 1. Come armed with all your career questions.

International Consultants Answer Your Questions

Our on-line forums have suddenly got a whole lot busier, as our plan to link you with alumni has finally taken off. Now available to answer your career questions on-line are:

• Karen Lau – formerly one of our Chinese postgrads (MSc in Statistics) who is now working for UK strategy consultancy, Wood Holmes Group in Newcastle.
• Kelly Qian – another former Chinese postgrad (Msc Management) who is an Executive Partner working as a search and select consultant (that’s “senior management headhunter” to most of us) at The Jace-Kelly Leadership Acquisitions in Shanghai.
• Mark Thomson – a former business graduate, who, after a year as a Sports Sabbatical Officer, now works in strategy consultancy for Oliver Wyman based in Dubai.

This is a great opportunity for you to question our alumni about their experience of working in consultancy, particularly if you’re keen to work overseas or are an international postgrad who wants to work in the UK.

You’ll need to use your university log-in to access the forums and fill in some brief information the first time you log-in, but then you can ask questions or just lurk and read the answers already given (look under the Discussions marked “Expert Advice”). We’d love to schedule some more alumni disucssions so we’re on the lookout for others who would like to help you – if you know anyone who would be keen to help, just let us know!

More Writing (And Software) Jobs At IBM

I’ve been running around campus this week talking to as many new postgrads as possible, dodging the “gorilla dressed in a tutu” marketing stunts, trying to convince you that there are still jobs around this year.

Just to reinforce this, I was chatting to a manager from IBM yesterday and found out that not only are they planning to recruit graduates and postgraduates this year, they’re recruiting more this year than last year.

For any postgrads (OK, and grads too, if they’re reading this) who are looking for work right now, there are current jobs on their website as well as positions for next autumn, for both “software developers” and “information developers”. Neither need a Computer Science degree, though you will have to show a “passion for technology”.

I hadn’t come across the term “information developer” before, but turns out they are technical writers. I know from my experience as a software engineer, that the last people you want to write user documentation are the programmers and developers themselves – much better left to skilled writers who know how to translate your jargon-ridden explanations into something anyone can understand. So, if you enjoy using technology, love communication and can explain complex subjects to non-expert audiences (any science communicators out there?), these jobs could be for you.

IBM were also keen to point out that they were very interested in receiving more applications from women, for whatever jobs (and no, you don’t need to wear a dark suit any more – one of the other IBM representatives was wearing a red suit which I was secretly coveting).

Details of the software and information development jobs, both for immediate start and for next autumn, are here.

Trainee Medical Writer Jobs

There are lots of medical writer jobs advertised, particularly with agencies around Macclesfield and Oxford, but they often prefer people with experience. However, Peter Llewellyn from Network Pharma has sent us a vacancy for a trainee medical writer with Caudex, based near Oxford. Caudex say they are looking for 2 trainees, no closing date at the moment, but if you’re interested, I’d get your applications in as soon as possible.

The ad below has a useful description of the role of a medical writer, so could be of interest even if you don’t want to apply for this particular job (click on the image for the pdf of the vacancy). Additionally, there’s always the great “From academic to medical writer” guide from Network Pharma for loads of info on medical communications.

pdf of job ad from Caudex - Trainee Medical Writer

A Little Something For the Ladies

Or how, in one well-meaning easy move, you can completely undermine your aim and alienate most of your audience…

Lord Drayson, the science minister is in the news today with a debate tonight with Ben Goldacre on the state of science journalism in the UK – it’s also being webcast through the Times Higher website from 7pm.

However, it was Lord Drayson’s recent performance at the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC) Conference which came under scrutiny from someone I met recently who attended this event. The UKRC works to tackle the under-representation of women in science, engineering and technology, and whilst Lord Drayson had some positive things to say about presenting modern female scientific role models for younger girls, it sounds like he blew it within the first 5 minutes.

Here’s the report from my contact, who, for professional reasons, has wisely opted to remain anonymous:

“Looking forward to the upcoming Drayson vs Goldacre debate on ‘Science reporting: is it good for you?’. I have half-heartedly been following the debate about the state of popular science reporting in the mainstream media on Twitter. But I have to confess I am biased since I heard Lord Drayson, minister of State for Science and Innovation, speak earlier this year. Although the event took place in March (which I realise is the Middle Ages on blog timescales) my blood temperature still rises when I think of his address to the conference  of the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET (Science, engineering and technology).

That day we discussed the ‘leaky pipeline’: the fact that for many SET subjects there are now (almost) as many women at undergraduate level as men but that at higher academic levels the percentage come down to single figures and women are very under-represented in senior management roles in SET based companies. We lamented the lack of female scientist role models.

It was therefore bizarre that Lord Drayson opened the conference by telling us about the day he had fallen in love with his wife (he obviously thought that would go down well with the largely female audience). The irony that his wife WAS a scientist then, but now looked after his children and his racing team seemed lost on him. He also didn’t mention her by name, adding fuel to the role model debate. His comments are, not surprisingly, glossed over in the conference brochure. It will be interesting to see how he stands up in the debate against Ben Goldacre.”

Luckily, the UKRC website has lots of other inspirational case studies and blog posts on how women are being successful in science, engineering and technology (current blog post is from a vet who’s invented a haptic cow – go on, you know you want to click).

If you want to hear what Lord Drayson actually said (which starts and ends well, just dips a little with his lovely anecdote about looking like he was interested in his future wife’s research project while figuring out how he could get her to go on a date with him…) you can download the podcast here. Warning: it took an age for me to download it, but if you’re keen, he starts talking from about 10 and a half minutes in.

Yorkshire Water

How many of you would guess that “the best place to work in IT” in 2008 was a water company in Bradford? Yorkshire Water topped the “Best of the Best” awards in Computer Weekly that year, giving a clue that the image of a slow paced, bureaucratic utility company is well out of date.

Giving up the chance to be schmoozed by the finance sector, this year I volunteered to go on the employer visit to a water treatment plant in Leeds*. Unfortunately the visit to the sewage works in Bradford was cancelled, which spared our noses (they’re up front about it – yup, it does smell) but meant I lost out on a good anecdote.

How not to take a photo of people in high visibility tabards - against a lit background (Come on, I'm a careers adviser, not a photographer!)

There’s a lot of inside info we can pick up on these visits, so here’s some of the official information plus some things you might not find on their website.

The Corporate Stuff

Yorkshire Water supply fresh water and treate waste water in the Yorkshire area. They also have contract operations outside their region, including in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, through Kelda Water Services. They have a number of business units and if you’re interested in the water industry, it’s best to know which does what:

• Water business unit – provides clean water to customers (tend to be more engineering and science vacancies in these operational roles).
• Environmental business unit – deals with waste water. Yes, they do mean sewage, not environmental strategy.
• Regulatory and Investment – this is the strategic business unit, lots of dealing with legislation, liaising with government, managing assets including SSSIs and nature reserves as part of their major land holdings (this is the bit for environmental strategy if that’s what you’re after). Just looking for a good degree, not a specific discipline here (eg Erica, the Zoologist from Manchester 2008 who did a great job of organising the day for us).
• IT business unit – lots on networks and development of ruggedised mobile technology to be used out in the field, as well as the usual support services. It’s techie “get your hands dirty” IT rather than business analysis, so you’ll either need an IT degree or another degree with reasonable IT content (such as science or engineering).
• Kelda Water Services – these operations cover commercial contracts such as PFI and Public Private Partnership waste management services, but also includes novel projects such as those looking at “energy from waste” plants. This is the unit which seems to employ lots of scientists, including postgrads.

Employing Graduates and Postgraduates

McKinsey PhD Workshops

I’ve recently spoken to management consulting company, McKinsey, and found out that they are running 1 day PhD workshops in September, in London (17th), Oxford (21st) and Cambridge (18th). The workshops are primarily aimed at PhDs from, well, guess where, but they are prepared to consider excellent applications from wherever they come*. In addition, they pointed out that if they find a fantastic applicant who can’t be accommodated within these September workshops, they may be able to direct you to other opportunities to meet up with McKinsey. The closing date is midnight, Wednesday 9th September and you’ll need to upload a CV as well as an on-line application.

As you’d expect from one of the world’s most high profile management consultancies, their standards are high.  “Just” doing a PhD is only a fraction of what you’ll need to impress them, but if you have academic and non-academic achievements which show that you’re something out of the ordinary, you could be just what they’re after. Just make sure you don’t sell yourself short with your CV – for consultancy, a one page stand-out CV is more impressive than two (or more) pages of waffle.

If you don’t get the chance attend one of these workshops, they expect to run a more detailed three day Insight programme in the New Year, which hopefully I should be able to tell you about in January.

* At the moment, their on-line application system allows you to choose your university from a drop down list which includes “Manchester Business School” and “Manchester Institute of Science and Technology U of” – but not “University of Manchester”. They’ve said they’ll change it, but in the meantime, just use your common sense and use whichever you prefer!