Jodie Murphy

My Graduate Story

My name is Jodie, and I graduated from the University of Birmingham with an undergraduate degree in Drama & English.

Today, I work at PwC, one of the Big 4 professional services firms in the UK, where I am currently on a two-year graduate scheme within our Internal Firm Services department. The scheme is rotational, and so far I have worked in three different teams over the 16 months I have been with PwC: Employer Branding, Recruitment Operations, and Schools Talent Engagement. My next rotation will be within third party services in our Integrated Services business area.

A Day in My Life

This can be slightly difficult to pin down due to the rotational nature of the scheme, but within the team I am in now this is as follows:

• Daily catch ups with my team to set the tone for the day and discuss any urgent business.
• Responding to communications from external suppliers to discuss upcoming events in which we engage school-age students in encouraging them to apply to our programmes.
• Day-to-day organisation of these engagement events, content creation and logistical requirements.
• Daily management of our Back to Schools programme, in which we visit an average of 200 schools over the course of a year to promote our opportunities and engage with the local community.
• Completing work related to university engagement and our inclusion and diversity initiatives. This may include bits of recruitment-based pipeline management or more event organisation, both internal and external (in conjunction with external suppliers).
• Team meetings & one-to-one catch ups

Finishing off the day by noting actions for tomorrow and completing timesheet

(I do also do a lot of presenting & skills session-based work at PwC, and even delivered a personal branding skills session at UoB just a few months ago!)

My Journey to PwC

In my final year of my Drama & English degree, I knew that I wanted to take a different path from what would be typical for my degree. I had the foundational skills built to succeed in the application stages, and used this accordingly. The PwC application process is quite complex as is the case for many grad schemes. I completed the following stages: online test, video interview, and assessment centre.

I do however have a wealth of knowledge now regarding the application process (relevant to many different companies) and visa considerations having sat (in different capacities) in the student recruitment team for 16 months.

My Birmingham Experience

Variety of individuals / difference in people. The course was made up of such a diverse range of individuals, all charged by their love of the arts. Getting to meet such a varied group of fantastic individuals was a great experience.

The teaching and the staff. Again, a group of individuals so passionate about their field and the students they teach. Inspiring to see people so in love with their field of work day to day.

Opportunities to present / perform. At some point, we all have to do some presentations in life! Having this opportunity early on made this a lot easier for me at work.

A chance to explore my own thoughts / opinions about different challenging topics. This experience shapes your opinions of the world and allows you to get to know yourself better, again an invaluable thing for the world of work.

Birmingham's Impact

Although I did not follow the typical pathway expected for my degree, I believe my experiences were invaluable in guiding me into my current career. I gained an incredible amount of confidence in myself through artistic expression and creativity, allowing myself to explore who I am and henceforth what career I was interested in.
Presentation skills and performance have been a massively important learning experience from my course I have taken into the workplace. I am consistently taking part in presentations and leading skills sessions etc. in work, and the foundational skills built in my degree have been invaluable moving into my career.

The experience in general of meeting a range of people from all walks of life at Uni is an underrated part of your personal growth. I have been able to take this knowledge of people into my daily work at PwC, which is undeniably important in the workplace.

My Achievements

I wrote a few essays on some particularly interesting subjects, one being my dissertation on the politics of the body in Orwell’s 1984, and one on presentations of gender in rap performance. I was particularly proud of these as these are topics I am particularly passionate about. Again, my course offered me the flexibility to explore these topics without fear of rejection. Both essays scored really highly & I was incredibly proud of the work I achieved in studying towards & writing them.

Advice for Students

Don’t feel as if you HAVE to apply to an industry that matches up to your degree if you don’t think that’s what is best. My degree has been really useful, but by the end of the three years I had decided it wasn’t what I wanted a career in. You do not need strict experience in the field to apply to professional services firms like PwC, most of the time any degree will do!

Be open to change and challenge. Our minds and bodies are coded to be afraid of change, but you MUST challenge that natural instinct to become confident and succeed at work.

Do not rule yourself out at the first hurdle. It sometimes takes rejection to lead you to the route you are meant to be going in, don’t cut yourself out of the race early if you feel like you’re failing initially. You are good enough to make it far!

Do not let your background define you. I come from a low socioeconomic background / area. Do not allow this to hold you back and feel as if you are not good enough to make that application in comparison to your peers. You will have other experiences that others don’t that allow you to make it far. This sort of background is a strength, not a weakness!