Get commercial awareness October 27, 2010

Often misunderstood, commercial awareness is a great area to focus on if you want to stand out at interview – it is a competency employers really value, and it is where the under-prepared will falter.

The good news is there are a range of ways you can brush up on it, from reviewing past experience, through to making a job of it in itself…

A recommended read

Read

• Accountancy Age http://www.accountancyage.com/
• Accountancy Magazine http://www.accountancymagazine.com
• City A.M. http://www.cityam.com/
• The Economist www.economist.co.uk
• eFinancial News http://www.efinancialnews.com/
• Financial Times http://www.ft.com/
• Insurance Times http://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/
• Management Consultancy http://www.managementconsultancy.co.uk/
• Google news – search for recent stories about the company (and competitors)
• …and the company website of course

What are you looking for? To be prepared for questions like these:

Describe a company you think is doing well/badly and explain why you think this is so.

Who do you think are our closest competitors?

­Can you give me an example of when you have done more than your duty in order to provide a good service to someone?

Can you give me an example of when you’ve saved money for an employer?

­ What do you think will be the most important issues facing this sector in the next five years?

Tell me about a recent business news story that you found interesting. Why?

When it comes to current affairs, a good strategy is to have a couple of stories prepared in more detail with some facts and figures, drawing on a few sources, as they may ask you to talk about a topic of your choice. But you should also have a good overview of recent big news like the Comprehensive Spending Review, sector-specific news like impending regulations, and how they all impact on your chosen industry sector.

Do

Image by DanielBroche (Flickr)

Some ideas…

• Start your own business – it doesn’t have to be big, you’ll still get to grips with competition, pricing, marketing, tax etc and that gives you something to talk about. You might start with an online business,  a market stall (e.g. Portobello, Camden Lock, Old Spitalfields) or an empty shop.
• At uni
  • Become a society treasurer
  • Get a position in the student bar or shop where you will have some responsibility for purchasing, negotiating, or generating new profit-generating ideas.
  • Enter student-focussed business challenges and competitions
• Outside of uni
  • Run an event for a charity, keeping to a budget.
  • Work experience and work shadowing.
  • Meeting with others in that business sector, perhaps at an employer presentation or careers fair, and chatting to them about their experiences and views.

These are suggestions – if you haven’t done any of these and you want to apply for a job now, don’t be put off, you may be able to demonstrate enough experience and knowledge from your reading and from previous jobs (see below). If in doubt see a careers adviser, they can help identify what employers will be interested in from your CV.

Reflect

• Think about any work experience you have had, even if it does not seem relevant, and ask yourself the following questions.

• What kind of business do/did you work in?
• What is their main product or service?
• Who are their main competitors in the market and why?
• What makes the business successful (or not)?
• If you were in charge of that business what changes would you make?
• What business issues are facing that organisation?
• What skills have you learned from your experiences?
• How will these help you in future jobs?

From PWC – Commercial Awareness – Hints & Tips

• In a competency-based interview you will need to describe examples and experiences to demonstrate how you meet that competency, preferably using a Situation Task Action Result (STAR) structure. Based on your personal experiences, which are your strongest commercial examples that you would talk about? Is there any extra research you could do to add some hard facts and figures to your description of the situation?
• Have opinions – be able to construct and argue a case for your opinions, based on your what you have read and what you know from experience.
• Prepare a few questions to ask them – these should demonstrate your insight as well as interest in the company.