On Moving Interstate, SWE Interviews and Traits of Great Consultants

This episode is a compilation of three interviews I did with friends of mine from University.  

Cooper Harrod is an Associate at Macquarie Group. 

Oscar Harper is a Software Engineer at Atlassian.

Alex Von Der Borch is a Graduate Analyst at Deloitte and former president of 180 Degrees Consulting in Adelaide. 

During each part of this episode, we speak about different parts of their career journeys. 

Skip below to the Important Timestamps to find the parts that most interest you.

Important Timestamps

03:28 Cooper Harrod on Moving Interstate for work

09:41 Oscar Harper on the SWE Interview

27:14 Alexander Von Der Borch on what makes a good consultant

Read - https://www.graduatetheory.com/on-moving-interstate-swe-interviews-and-traits-of-great-consultants/

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Show Notes
00:00 On Moving Interstate, SWE Interviews and Traits of Great Consultants
03:28 Cooper Harrod
03:52 Cooper On Moving Interstate
08:12 Cooper's Favourite Quote
09:41 Oscar Harper
11:06 Oscar Harper
12:33 Oscar on the SWE Interview
27:14 Alexander Von Der Borch
28:26 Alex on 180 DC 
29:35 Alex on Being a Great Consultant
34:24 Alex's Career Advice
35:58 Outro

Transcript

James: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to graduate theory. Today's episode is a little bit different to a normal episode. Usually I'll be sitting down and chatting to someone, hearing about all the things that they've achieved. In today's episode, we're going to do something different. When I first started recording episodes for the podcast, I got in touch with three of my friends and we recorded an episode about their careers and about the things that they were doing. These guys are cooking. Oscar and Alex, and we'll hear more about them later. I've split up this podcast into three different sections where I've taken the best bits out of these interviews and put them into one podcast episode, the best way to navigate this is going to be by the timestamps in the description. So, you know, all of this is going to resonate with you and that's fine, but if you want to skip to certain parts, you can do that in the description of this episode, the first. Part of this podcast is with my friend Cooper. So Cooper is a grad at Macquarie. He's also from Adelaide. All my friends in this episode are from Adelaide and Cooper, moved from Adelaide to Sydney to start working at McQuarry. And one of the things I wanted to talk to him about was his mood and how he actually dealt with. Working into state. And I think it's something that is quite important because now in today's day and age, a lot of us are moving around, moving to different states, doing all these different things. And I thought it was great to get his perspective on his move into state. And you know, what he learned from that, how he dealt with that, what do you recommend that to someone else? That's the first part. The second part is with my friend, Oscar and Oscar is a grad he's also now moved to Sydney and he works at Atlassian. And one of the things I really wanted to talk to Oscar about was about the software engineering interview in his interviewing process, how he prepared for that and how he sort of went about doing it unless he is quite a competitive place to get into, to work, especially as, as a grad and. The software engineering interview is kind of this unique process that takes a lot of, a lot of preparation. And it takes a lot of, a lot of effort to land a job at some of these kinds of companies. It's very unique. And so I got Oscars thoughts on, you know, how he went about doing that and, and what w what he'd recommend if someone was going to go and do that again. The third part of this episode is with my friend, Alex. And he is still in Adelaide and he graduated from university and now works at Deloitte and Alex had a lot of advice. He was. President at 180 degrees consulting, which is a nonprofit kind of consulting club that's associated with the university. So it's based all around Australia, all around the world. And what happens is uni students will come and join 180 degrees consulting and then they'll set them up to work with a nonprofit and kind of do a consulting. Project with, with different nonprofit organizations and Alex was the president of this club outlaid, and he had some great advice about being a good consultant, what it takes to be, you know, good consultant and have a good career. So I've combined all of these together. If you don't want to listen to all of these, please skip around. Find a busy. The timestamps for the three main sections are in the description so you can skip around to wherever you'd like without further ado, please enjoy. So this part of the interview is with Cooper. And as I mentioned, Cooper has moved from Adelaide to Sydney to start work. And he's a fascinating guy. And in this, in this part of the podcast today, we're going to talk about this move from Adelaide to Sydney and, you know, kind of what was w what was his experience moving into state for work, please enjoy. I want to

Cooper: 3:53

school

James: 3:55

Your

Cooper: 3:56

you'll have

James: 3:56

to apply for a role

Cooper: 3:58

problem

James: 3:59

so obviously

Cooper: 3:59

was pretty like

James: 4:00

Adelaide, you've moved to Sydney work at McQuarry. What were

Cooper: 4:04

what was

James: 4:05

thoughts behind that?

Cooper: 4:07

that Like,

James: 4:07

you know, being open to moving to state, is that something you were always keen on or did you kind of see

Cooper: 4:12

seeing that,

James: 4:13

did you go

Cooper: 4:13

having to go back. Yeah. Good question. I think, I wouldn't say I was always keen on moving into state for work, but it was probably more something I noticed when I was applying for internship role that there, there weren't too many that I was interested in in Adelaide or, or graduate programs or just full-time work in Adelaide. Especially in the front, the financial industry, there's a very big presence there. So I think it was, it was something more out of necessity looking into state into other Sydney or Melbourne, particularly in Australia. So yeah I pre COVID, I think I definitely had big plans to try to work in a lot of different places. Again, experience living in different countries. I think working Latin, New York or London would be absolutely sick. That's definitely something we want to try and do one day. But yeah, it's, it's sort of a different environment at the moment, particularly with that yet this three month lock down that we've been in. But I think, yeah, I wouldn't say that. It wasn't something I always wanted to do, but I think it, it, it just sort of happened to turn out that way.

James: 5:21

Yeah,

Cooper: 5:21

Yeah,

James: 5:22

no,

Cooper: 5:22

So

James: 5:22

you've won. I think that

Cooper: 5:24

that was mine.

James: 5:25

too was yeah, a

Cooper: 5:26

Yeah. So

James: 5:28

you

Cooper: 5:28

like here, if I got like

James: 5:29

10 I want to work, like none of them were in Adelaide, almost like even I'm thinking, trying to think back of the place I did end up applying. I mean,

Cooper: 5:39

probably

James: 5:39

barring like

Cooper: 5:40

like.

James: 5:41

of the consulting

Cooper: 5:41

Oh,

James: 5:42

the big four, like almost every other place I applied was, into state. Because

Cooper: 5:48

yeah. That's definitely my experience as well.

James: 5:50

yeah.

Cooper: 5:50

Okay.

James: 5:51

And he that's just, like you said, that's just what do. And yeah, I

Cooper: 5:54

I got,

James: 5:55

for me as well, I had the experience like internationally,

Cooper: 5:58

sorry, buddy.

James: 5:59

the university. So it

Cooper: 6:00

felt like

James: 6:02

I felt more confident doing that. Like, what were your thoughts on like, were you

Cooper: 6:06

I'm

James: 6:06

going

Cooper: 6:07

going to say

James: 6:08

It's obviously quite a

Cooper: 6:08

quite a bit.

James: 6:09

like, sort of move out of home, into state and start a new job. Like all the same time. How, like,

Cooper: 6:15

yeah. What ways?

James: 6:16

what was your experience like?

Cooper: 6:18

Yeah, it is definitely a nervous time. It's quite difficult as well, but I think when I, when I first moved over which is every this year it was. I think it was really good moving over and then starting a grad program because there's a lot of people who are in the same shoes as you who had the same experience. You don't know anyone over here. So it was really good to have those people who understand, like what are you going through at the moment? And then be able to connect with them. But it's also really exciting. Cause I mean, Sydney is definitely a different vibe to Adelaide. A lot of the other grads at work. And I think that I come from some country town in the Outback of Australia. So yeah, it's, it's definitely, it's, it's it's definitely challenging. I mean, I won't lie about that, especially during yeah. A period of lockdown like this, but I think just trying to remember back to when I first started, it was really exciting, but yeah, I think, I think it definitely helps if he found people who are going through the same experience. So I think that was the benefits of joining a grad program.

James: 7:25

Yeah,

Cooper: 7:25

Yeah,

James: 7:26

And

Cooper: 7:27

And now that you've

James: 7:28

you know, you've kind of been there for a bit over six months now,

Cooper: 7:31

now, is that

James: 7:32

moving to safe work, something that you'd recommend someone that's still, you know,

Cooper: 7:37

Yeah, I, I think I, obviously it depends on I'm pissing second shots with them, a little of that, but I mean, it was many that I think. I've definitely grown out of, out of this experience of wanting to be more independent, which I haven't really had the choice in that because I mean, I live in line here and didn't really know anyone outside of work, but it's definitely forced me to, to become more independent and, and grow as a person, I think. But yeah. Yeah, I definitely recommend it, but you just understand that when you do it, it's going to be, they're going to be hard times and you got to sacrifice some things. I would definitely recommend doing it. Yeah.

James: 8:12

And that's great. And one that thing I asked you before to coming on here today was your favorite quote I'm very keen to hear what you want.

Cooper: 8:23

yes, sir. I remember this, these guys I twin, when I was leaving. In my family home, we had a, a Michael Jordan poster in my shed and it had a picture of that Michael Jordan taking shots. And it said, you miss 100%, 100% of the shots you never take. And when I was a kid, I remember looking at that and it just didn't make any sense to me at all. So just thinking, I mean, okay. But to shoot it then, cause it, it, it just, it's not very intuitive. I remember I was mad my dad about it and what it means. And when he explained it to me, I saw that it's, it's much more than just you know, you're not going to miss it. It's more like if you don't give yourself the opportunity to succeed, then you're destined to fail, I guess. So I think that that's fine. That's definitely affected me. I mean, it, it, it applies in a lot of different scenarios as well, and it's definitely something that I consider. Of deciding whether or not to move over to Sydney and move into staple work. But then I realized if I didn't do it, then I would always question what if, and we never know whether or not I could have been, could have succeeded there.

James: 9:42

It was really great hearing Cooper's experience moving into site. And it was definitely something that aligned with my experience as well. I was similar to Cooper in that I was moving out of home, starting work and moving into state all the same time. And it's something that is certainly quite daunting and can be tricky, especially considering the past two years where we've been living through the pandemic and having lockdowns and all this kind of stuff. So I think I would echo what Cooper said in that it's so many character building experience and it's something that I really enjoyed now. Something that I'm glad that I did and I know Cooper is too. And I think that was great way to summarize his thoughts at the end of that. Where is it something that you're going to look back on and regret? So I think moving into safer work, I mean, nowadays with kind of in this period where it's easy to travel around, but it's also, you don't need to as much because of the ability to work remotely and things like that. So it would be interesting to see where we go in the future, but my lesson, I guess, and my experience would be. You know, don't hold yourself back from looking at opportunities that aren't where you currently are, because I think, you know, going out and doing those things and getting the full experience of what's out there is really great and a really good opportunity when you're a young person. And when you have that ability to move, I think it's, it's something that whoa, worth taking it. So the next part of the podcast today is with my friend Oscar. And as I mentioned, Oscar is a software engineer at Atlassian. And in this part of the podcast, we dive into his experience of his interview process. And then also what he would recommend for someone studying or preparing for this software engineering interview. And just to give a bit of background. So the software engineering interviews are at the moment, most quite standard across a lot of the companies. And that will, they'll kind of get you to do, is these. Standard type of software or programming related questions and the amount of preparation that goes into these is quite significant. So if you, if you go and if, you know, familiar with this space, there's lots and lots of content available to study for these things. There's countless websites and books all built just to repair for this exact interview. But as we, as we go on and talk about it, you know, there is. Sort of more hard skills programming type of question that you can get. And then we also touch on the, the soft skills and kind of the things that Oscar talks about you know, getting your Austin, his preparation tips for when he interviewed her last year. So I think this is really fantastic and it's a great insight. Kind of what it takes to go through the interview process at this kind of company and, and just say, you know what, what's actually involved. So I thought this is really, really interesting. And I'm hoping you guys say, we'll see you at the end. I hope you enjoy. I mean, so like applying for internships again at the end of your third year was there anything you did to prepare for those or like how, what was your experience like in that year?

Oscar: 12:44

Yeah. I, so I'll say first that I interviewed for it. LaSeon at the end of second year before I got that internship I got to the final round even, but didn't get an offer partly because I was a little bit under-prepared and also they. I had to like present a project which they don't have in the interview process anymore, but I had to basically present a project after two years of being at uni. Like I didn't have much

James: 13:15

Yeah. Yeah,

Oscar: 13:16

like, aside from uni projects. But they were all pretty small. So at that point I didn't have enough experience really, or like a large enough project that was sufficient enough to show that I was worth hiring.

James: 13:28

yeah,

Oscar: 13:29

So when they rejected me, I totally understood. I was like, yeah, fair enough. And the interview was like gave good feedback. And I was like, yeah, Okay. You sold through it.

James: 13:37

yeah,

Oscar: 13:37

So I didn't feel bad at all. And so I took this other internship, got a whole bunch of experience, did my eight hours a week roughly on a project. So I was rejected the first time I applied again now for a grad role, as opposed to an internship role. And. I guess like, sort of knew the process now. And so it was I, at least I knew what to prepare for. Not that they spring it on you, like rarely will people just be like, this is like, those usually give you a bit of guidance on what to prepare, unless it's just like quiz questions or

James: 14:18

yeah.

Oscar: 14:19

coding questions. If it's something more than that, they'll let you know. And that's where you need to do as much as you can.

James: 14:26

Hmm.

Oscar: 14:27

For me, like my uni tanked so hard while I was preparing, I was doing like so many coding questions and like, I prepared a PowerPoint

James: 14:37

yeah,

Oscar: 14:38

my PR my project presentation thing pasted all these snippets of code and like some diagrams and stuff and like prepared all this stuff could have been over. They don't require that, but I was like, I'm not letting this opportunity to go again. I've, I'm lucky enough to like, have already gotten to the final stage. So I've already experienced that interview before, so I can prepare, obviously all the questions were different, so it's not like I was cheating, but

James: 15:03

yeah,

Oscar: 15:04

you just kind of, you do everything you can

James: 15:07

for sure.

Oscar: 15:09

to make sure. that you're as well-prepared.

James: 15:11

Yeah. That's so cool. So when you were like the software engineering, like interviews are like that like massively like, well study there's countless like questions and websites and everything that you could possibly want to, to prepare for these. So what, like, what was your kind of strategy for preparing for these

Oscar: 15:33

I think, I think everyone thinks of interviewing as like Google interviewing. And obviously they have to have the hardest interviews because they have the most people applying. Like they want to take the best people they can. And so that's why they are so hard. And also they just look for really smart people and I was not that smart.

James: 15:55

Hmm.

Oscar: 15:57

so I don't even think I ever got an offer, like even a first interview from Google even when I applied after my internship. So yeah, that's pretty tricky. But in terms of prep, it's probably best to know who you're applying for and what kind of interviews they have. You can usually find either like a like a alumni who's who's at that company. You can probably find them on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, or something, and just like reach out to them and be like, Hey, can you give me like a debrief on what the interview process is? And so you can kind of get a little bit ahead of. You kind of give yourself a bit more time to prepare as opposed to like sending in your resume, not knowing anything, getting the first interview and like that's immediately when all your prep starts. Cause you don't know anything before then. And then like you may be done interviewing in two weeks. But if you can go and find someone and just have a chat with them, most people like to talk about their work. so I'm sure you'll be able to find someone that's happy to chat and they can just tell you like, oh, you'll have this kind of interview. Up first you may have like a behavioral interview seconds on like a phone call and then you'll have a, a white boarding interview and this other kind of interview. And so they kind of just let you know what is coming, what to prepare for.

James: 17:17

Hmm.

Oscar: 17:18

And Yeah. there's. I mean, you can totally like read all the books. There's

James: 17:24

Yeah.

Oscar: 17:25

articles that will probably explain it better than me. But yeah, in terms of, I guess like the coding side of things, just do some like li code questions on HackerRank or Topcoder or all the other different ones out there. Just get some practice in for that sort of stuff. you can never be too prepared.

James: 17:46

yeah,

Oscar: 17:47

And then also for like, you'll get hit with behavioral stuff, is very much like that one I think is harder than the coding. One, the coding one, you either have it, or you don't like,

James: 18:00

yeah.

Oscar: 18:01

a bad day, but you hope not, but like that either give you a question that you don't really know how to solve or you do, but with the behavioral stuff, it's very, like, you can always answer a question. Like it could be a shit answer, but you

James: 18:13

Yeah.

Oscar: 18:13

just give an answer.

James: 18:15

Yeah.

Oscar: 18:15

But That's where you've got to learn. Like, I think there's a thing called star or whatever, where it's like, you give the situation and then like who the people were, what you did and like the outcome of it. And it's like this kind of structure to your answers that the interviewers are all looking for as well, because the interview was a trained in star. I think it stuck. I don't

James: 18:38

yeah. That's right. I can't

Oscar: 18:40

it is, yeah.

James: 18:41

mean, but that's yeah. That's all right.

Oscar: 18:43

But Yeah. I think it's thought, and it's just like the interview is know about it and if you know about it, it's like super fluent.

James: 18:50

Mm

Oscar: 18:51

so that's one thing I would recommend and just trying to premeditate a, a range of scenarios and range of experiences because if you keep coming back to like the same group project, doesn't look so good. Say that interviewers are smart and they've done hundreds. Right. So they kind of know every answer in the book just about and like every uni group, project dynamic, there is a, and so. There's no to blow things up bigger than they are. Often you do that, like you're in your resume. You'd be like, I did all these great

James: 19:30

yeah.

Oscar: 19:30

and they did all these cool things, but it's like, what do you really achieve? Like, that's what they want to know. Like what was the outcome? Which a lot of people miss, a lot of people miss, like how did it go? That's often like the up question you get from an interview. It's like, you're like, oh, we did this. project. And like, there was a bit of conflict, but we managed to resolve it and we made it, we made this decision and they're like, okay, like, how'd it turn out? And you're like, oh yeah. It was all right.

James: 19:57

Yeah.

Oscar: 19:57

Like, it doesn't have to turn out well, but you have to have at least shown that you evaluated the outcome. Cause that's what you learned from. And they want to see that in this scenario, you may have made the wrong decision, but you acknowledged the outcome and how you could do it better next time. And that's the. Real behavioral learning that they want to see.

James: 20:18

So I want to dive in a little bit more into hacker rank or late code or whatever you chose to use. Did you have like a kind of curriculum that you'd set off or like we, like it was a very structured or did you just kind of go in there and just try and just do as many as.

Oscar: 20:34

In terms of, well, I was lucky because one of the courses I did as part of it, you had to do like three we use Topcoder in that course, but it's like the same as. all the others. We had to do three problems per week. It may have been, or per fortnight or something. I think it was per week though. And they gave you like a set of five to choose from or whatever. And they had like the difficulty. So I ended up doing across like 12 weeks or 10 weeks, like 30 questions or more. And I also picked the harder ones because like I wanted more value from them. And so I kind of had after finishing this course, like a fairly strong foundation of Some popular algorithms or at least like exposure to them. You don't have to like memorize them until you get to the interview. Of course. But at least know of them,

James: 21:21

yeah.

Oscar: 21:21

like shortest distance sort of algorithms and stuff like that. And so I had that exposure, but I guess if I hadn't, I would have, you could still like plan the different data structures you want to learn. So like maps sets just working with strings in general in a race, like sometimes you want to do fancy stuff with strings and then graphs, which graphs and trees. And so you can kind of like pick the different bits you want to work on. And then usually at least under HackerRank does will like categorize problems that require a certain type of data structure. So at least it's not a mystery, what you should use, but it's like getting you some experience in developing a solution with a data structure and the same applies to algorithms. you'll need some different algorithms to solve certain problems, like dynamic programming and other stuff like that. And so you can generally like pick out the things you want to learn and then on whatever website it is, find the category for that and like work your way through some problems.

James: 22:25

yeah.

Oscar: 22:26

It's about it.

James: 22:27

Cool. W what are like, you know, you've done a few of these, you've probably some of your, your colleagues at work have done the similar process to you. What are some mistakes that you think a fairly common at this stage? You know, when we're going through like this interview process that you think, you know, whether that be the technical part that we've just spoken about, or the actual behavioral part, what are some big mistakes that you think people commonly make, and how would you go about fixing.

Oscar: 22:58

So I guess for the coding ones, it depends on the company. They look for certain things. In my opinion, that like, if you're interviewing someone writing code, you don't just want to see the answer because that doesn't tell you a whole lot about the person and how they're going to work in a team. And at least how they're going to work under, like within a group and like you're given requirements and tasks and so on. And also just getting the answer is not good enough in real life. Like, just because it works doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. And so it's important to see, even if they get the perfect answer, sometimes you like. Do you really know what you're doing? Like, so you want, there's a few aspects to like how you code that should matter. Maybe it's best to ask the interview beforehand. Like, do you care about variable names? And if they're like, nah, it doesn't matter. I don't care then. yeah. Use whatever names you want. But if they do use normal variable names, like use meaningful ones, like I, it frustrates me when I see people using like a and

James: 24:01

yeah,

Oscar: 24:02

X. And it's just like, what is that? sure. You can, you know what it is when it's only like a hundred lines, but when you're dealing with like a big code base, that means nothing.

James: 24:12

yeah,

Oscar: 24:12

and an interviewer might see that and just like take a small note and be like, okay, it doesn't really care about variable names. I may ask you and be like, can you give some better names? And then you go and give some better names, but like, it takes no time.

James: 24:27

Hmm.

Oscar: 24:29

It helps yourself. Cause you can go look back and be like, oh, that's what it's doing. It helps the interviewer understand your code as you ride it. And it's just a good practice in general. Blue names, number one. Also I think, Yeah. these all really depend on the format of the interview. So maybe it's best to just ask or like the interview might tell you, but if it's a rapid fire questions or like they plan on asking you multiple coding questions across however long the interview is then maybe speed is important. But if it's maybe one or, or it's a question that kind of has extensions to it and they would just keep adding on more and more over time then it's worthwhile when you get the question, just kind of thinking for a moment like you don't dive into the code. Just have a think about. What your solution might be broadly, what data structures you're going to use, what kind of performance it will have those sorts of things. Impressive. Two interviewers to see that you can have that foresight into what solutions are good and also valuate different ones. I think that's another thing that people don't do nearly enough of

James: 25:37

there.

Oscar: 25:37

have a solution in mind and they just dive into it. And you don't know if they ever thought of anything else they could have just gotten lucky and picked that the first time they could have evaluated like three different options. Didn't say a thing and then just pick one. So. Talk about it and be like, I could do it this way and use this, but I know that that's really inefficient. I could do it this way. But maybe it won't work or I could do it this way. And I think this is the best option to go with, like show your decision-making. Because again, decision-making is a really valuable skill,

James: 26:08

Mm.

Oscar: 26:09

as a developer, not just like, oh, I got it to work.

James: 26:14

So it was great to hear from Oscar about those different experiences that he's had. In a programming interview. I thought it was really interesting, the amount of effort that he put into preparing for that coding. Part of the question he was saying that his university grades went completely went way down basically when he was preparing for that interview, which is really interesting to say, you know, how much effort he put into it. And and you know, I think it's a great example of really what it can take to get a job in these kinds of companies and preparing for these kinds of interviews. And I thought it was interesting to his focus on the, the softer skills as well. And it's something that. Probably typically programming types aren't as good as that kind of thing. It was interesting. His focus on that area and how important that also is compared to the more hard skills in programming and things like that. So, yeah, I thought that was really fantastic. The next part of this podcast today is with Alex and Alex. He is a friend of mine. From also from Atlanta, as I mentioned, he was the president of 180 degrees consulting. So as I mentioned right at the start of the podcast, why don't you degrees consulting is this place where you need students can come together and do sort of pro bono consulting for charities and small companies. And it's a great way to get exposure to consulting while you're a student and also to sort of, kind of give back to the community it's a win-win for both yourself and for the charities and for the places that you're hoping out. Well, I had a great experience there and that's one of the areas that I got to know Alex, a bit better and his experience there. He was involved for many years and I believe he's still involved today. He met so many people through that and really found out what it took to be a good consultant. And he's now a graduate at Deloitte in Adelaide. So I got, I sat him down and, you know, we're really speaking to. What are the attributes and what are the characteristics today? Things are important in a consultant and you know, how can you go about developing those and, and what really, what traits kind of set you up well for success? So this is another great conversation and I hope you enjoy. And what for the viewers who don't know what 180 actually is, can you give us a bit of an insight into while they do and.

Alex: 28:36

Yes. So 180 degrees consulting is a student led volunteer consulting organization. So it's global and it's run through universities. And it's pretty much just getting some of the top talent. So I think opera and shed probably about 20% acceptance rate and stuff like that. And then only about 25% of the branches who apply to start actually get through. So it's, I'm trying to get that the university talent who really want to do really want to get. Experience and hands-on experience working with clients and then marry that up by helping not-for-profits. So you just need some really cheap or pro bono consulting advice to sort of become more efficient and effective with what they do. So, yeah, just get students who want a bit of experience and get them to help charities and get, build a bit of social impact leadership within students as well. So that when they go into the workforce, they are a bit more conscious of having a community impact rather than just. Getting to a job and working.

James: 29:35

one thing I really want to ask you about is like the amount of graduates that you've seen through your involvement with the university and with, with 180, what are some key things or key traits? That you've seen in people that end up, you know, succeeding in that kind of environment versus the people that. Yeah, they kind of stumbled. Or they can say they're not really cut out for it in a way that you'd like,

Alex: 30:03

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it depends on what the definition of success is. I'm going to have a bit of a quick look beforehand and Google defines it as the accomplish accomplishment of an aim or purpose. And Cambridge is the achievement of desired results. And they're pretty, pretty broad definitions. Whereas we typically think of success as like. There's a definite financial component. There's a social economic status where you're, you know, the classic partner at a big four firms sort of thing. But it really depends on what each person defines as their own personal success and what that aim or desired result is for that person. And that is probably the main thing that would make someone fall into a typically good or typically bad category for that

James: 30:45

Yeah.

Alex: 30:46

as a consultant is because. What they think has success. Won't be to be a very good consultant. It might be that they're spending more time with her family or that they've got better grades. So that really is what would be the difference between a good consultant at 180 in someone who might be as much of a high performer is just because their focus isn't on that task. The focus was on something else. And that's the only reason that I ever saw people either leave or feel like they were. Going to be doing well or sometimes the poor performance as well. It's just that they weren't applying themselves to 180 as much as they were to something else. And it's not necessarily, and they definitely weren't bad. They were very good at what they did. They just didn't have that time spare to, I find a 180 and that's just sort of the the challenge of graduates is to spend your time and make that decision with the best available information as to where you want to spend your time.'cause I think there's something called like Parkinson's law, whereas like work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So if you're giving yourself one week to do an assignment, you'll take a week to do an assignment. And if you're giving yourself one hour to do 180, then you're lonely. You know, you might be really good with that hour. You might be really bad with that house. So, Yeah. but some of the typical sort of traits that are find with people who are good and did apply themselves. Was obviously, yeah, they applied themselves and they both wanted to, and did try to actively tried to learn new things. So they weren't sort of stagnating the constantly asking questions and asking for that feedback about how can they do better, what are some tools they can use to perform better? Is there anything they can research and look at in their spare time to help be better at 180 and be a better consultant? And that's when we can sort of steer them to certain organizations. YouTube channels and stuff. They work well with other people regardless of whether or not they're similar or not. So, it might be the typical challenge of a law student and a business student where they've just got different ways of thinking. They're not really going to work together, or I'm an art student against an engineering student where they're both almost polar opposites in terms of hard skill and soft skills sort of work. So, working well with other people regardless of their background is really important. And that sort of set people apart. Because if you can't work well as a team, then it's sorta difficult to progress up in a leadership team where the team being the operative word, because especially in the club management, it's, everyone's just sort of doing their spare time. So you need to work with each other to manage it. You can't do it all by yourself. So, as the president, I had it, I was very lucky to have a good team behind me as well, to help them. That's that leadership of the branch as a whole, but everyone had their own different job. And it was sort of just, my job was to enable them to be able to be better at their job. Rather than me trying to do everything myself as a maniac.

James: 33:27

Yeah,

Alex: 33:28

And then there's always the classic, you know, be professional and dress appropriately within your own style. So what we're seeing is a lot of organizations is removing dress code policy. Deloitte even gone as far as to remove working hours. So you can work as long as your work is done within the week, and you're not leaving your team with too much other stuff to do then. Yeah. you can work whatever hours you want. So some people start at six and finish at three, so they have more time after school where their kids, And some people will start later cause they're just not really functioning in the morning. So they might start at 10 and finish a bit later in the evening. Cause that's just works for them.

James: 34:00

Hmm.

Alex: 34:01

Yeah, so it's be well presented within your personal style. And there is a sort of line that needs to be followed as well within consulting and, you know, just don't rock up in a t-shirt unless you've got a client that only wears t-shirts sort of thing. And then, yeah, again, just last things as they like working with clients and likes solving problems, Which sort of goes to do what you love and you'll never work attain your life. So, yeah. which is a bit dry, but I think.

James: 34:24

You've done all these amazing things through your whole time. You know, what is one piece of advice that you'd give someone starting university? Let's say it started next year.

Alex: 34:34

Well, I think because you you've spent five years at uni as well, cause I've, I've done about five years at uni as well, and at needed to.

James: 34:40

yeah, I did five.

Alex: 34:42

Yeah. So I think that's probably one of the things I've learned more than anything is that, I mean, a career your whole lifetime and career is about 40, 50, 60 years of work. And that some little thing that often gets left out when you're doing the success talk is there's a lot of pressure to succeed at a very early age. So it's sort of, you know, if you, I mean, I'm 24 now and I'm just starting as a graduate, only being there for three months. I still feel like I'm relatively young in the whole careers career side of stuff, and still got so much to learn, but there's a lot of pressure to succeed. The typical definition of like, you know, social status and wealth and stuff at an early age. So, I just, the, the piece of advice would be really just to take your time. There's absolutely no rush. If you're still getting into a decent job or getting into the workplace that you want to work out or. The organization or the job that you want to work in before you're 30, I think that's still a really good achievement. Some people might not actually ever get into the job they like. So, it's this take the time, learn some skills and just be easy on yourself because you've got 40, 50 years to work. So you might as well enjoy the 20. Enjoy your twenties one.

James: 36:00

Thank you for listening to episode 13 of graduate theory. I hope you enjoyed and thanks so much for making it this far. Some great lessons there to finish off the episode today. I hope you enjoy this one. It was a little bit of a different format next week. We'll be back to the normal format with another interview, but thanks so much for listening to this spot. I hope you got some value out all. How the module have a little of the episode that you chose to listen to. If you'd like to stay in touch with graduate theory a bit more. If you want to get episodes straight to your inbox, please consider subscribing to the newsletter and the newsletter. You've got the episode and you also get my takeaways from the episode as well. Thanks so much for listening to this far, and I look forward to seeing you next week.