Online Application
This will take around 1/2 hours to complete. It requires you to fill out your personal details, education history, and any work experience you have. PwC requested a CV, but for Louis’s application there was no Cover letter.
Expect an immediate before progressing to the next stage.
Video Interview
You will watch a short introductory video explaining the details of how the interview is conducted before being asked questions from a pre-recorded clip. For each question you have to prepare an answer and answer within the given time-frame.
Example task
There will be a number of questions tailored to your division, such as Why this division? What kind of work do you think you will be doing in this division?
How to respond for success
Make sure you dress appropriately, preferably business casual. It may also be helpful to have a pen and paper at the ready to jot down some key words to refer back to your answers if you find yourself getting off track. It is vital you keep as much eye contact with the camera as possible because the assessor will know if you are looking elsewhere. Make sure to read up on your division, the kind of work they do and recent news events around your area, in Louis’s case this would be recent M&A activity.
Expect a 1-month wait before progressing to the next stage.
Situational Judgement Test
Depending on the role you apply for, you may be asked to complete a situational judgement test. For Deals Advisory, Louis was asked to complete it. The test involves generic office type scenario questions.
Example task
- How would you handle a disagreement with your superior?
- You are asked to do something you have never done before, how do you go about it?
How to respond for success
Answer all questions honestly, don’t get caught up trying to think of the response they want to hear. They want to know if you’d be a good fit, given your personality and method of approaching various scenarios.
Expect a 1-week wait before progressing to the next stage.
Careers Unlocked Assessment
Careers unlocked is a game based assessment used by PwC, that substitutes the typical ‘aptitude test’ with more fun engaging games. You are asked to download an app from the app store and complete this stage of the application. The test is designed by Arctic Shores, and it collects data from the way you address each task. PwC then uses this data to see if you are suitable for the role in which you are applying for.
Example task
You will be faced with around 12 tasks, that involve things such as inflating balloons as much as you can without popping them (risk taking), going through memory games, then toward the end Louis remembers being faced with a numerical test involving graphs and tables. The numerical test can be very difficult as you are doing this on a phone, not on your laptop!
How to respond for success
Louis recommends doing some research on Arctic Shores and there methods of assessment.
Expect a 1-month wait before progressing to the next stage.
Assessment Centre
Prior to this expect an email explaining various details, and a plan of the day. Due to covid, the assessment centre was conducted online. In your prep email you will be sent a number of zoom links for online rooms you are expected to join at different times during the day. Louis remembers the assessment centre starting around 9/10am and going through to around 4/5pm, with a number of breaks.
In between your interviews throughout the day, you are set a number of tasks. This involves things like building reports and answering excel type questions (dependent on your business division). Louis remembers around 5-7 of these tasks being set throughout the day. For one task, he remembers writing a report on a potential acquisition target. There is also a group task at some point in the day, where you need to complete research prior so you are able to go and present to the interviewers.
In between tasks, the face to face interviews you will have are with PwC employees, Some are more generic, whereas others can get quite technical.
Example task
For the face to face interviews, Louis was asked various technical questions around M&A topics like, What specific teams within our division are you interested in? What specific transitions have we worked on that have caught your eye? What technical skills do you know in M&A.
How to respond for success
In the tasks between interviews, time management is key. It is important to prioritise too, because you may not have enough time to complete all things being asked of you, don’t worry as this is done on purpose to see how you cope. In the technical interviews, Louis really showed his knowledge of M&A, talking about DCF’s (Discounted Cash Flows), LBO modelling (Leveraged buyout modelling).
