Deloitte Vancouver Office Tour

Since I decided to become an accountant, I am always curious of how their work day look like and what's their working environment like. It was a great opportunity to answer all that questions of mine simply by joining a Deloitte Vancouver Office Tour!

This event is composed of three segments: presentation, office tour, and networking.

Presentation 

During the presentation, the parts that I like about Deloitte are

• going green & environmental friendly--we talk about saving the environment for our generations, but not everyone would care to carry out a plan to protect the environment. 
• donate money to charities--for instance, they have jeans day every Friday, and people who wear jeans donate $5 to charities. 
• sports team-- soccer, ice hockey; jogging & hiking events 
• end of season parties--work hard, play hard! Rewards after a busy season cannot be neglected! 

Pursuing CA:
Vancouver office UFE pass rate is 98%. The company provides:

• one on one mentor
• weekend study sessions
• financial support to pay all of your materials (textbook and CA fees)

Students have the full support from the company to pass UFE. 

Work life:
Client's office is often their office. They might be away for one month to discuss with their clients. They don't always work from 9 am to 5 pm. During busy season some times they have to work from 7am to 11pm, especially tax people. 

Services:
Assurance & advisory, tax, financial advisory, consulting.

Variety of Clients:
Mining, IT, banks, auto...

Co-op:
Students have to rotate audit, tax, financial advisory, and enterprise risk services.
Summer projects: IFRS Training, Toastmasters, Ultimate Tournament...
 

Office Tour

Some of the questions that answered during the tour: 

• The company holds training for employees to broaden their knowledge. Each employee needs to meet 100 hours of training. It's great for employees to continue learning and improving. 
• If you are not sure whether tax or audit best fits you, then start with audit, from there you might start to have a sense of which direction that you want to go.
• As an audit student, you have a coach who you can seek help from, ask questions, deal with stress, discuss your accounting interest, your future plan...etc

Networking

Rest of the time, they left us to mingle around the room and ask questions regarding the company. I met a girl who studied forensic accounting, which is a program that teaches you how to collect evidence that points to whoever committed the crime. Dennis, from BCIT, gave me an advice to have 2 people as your study group because it's a lot of work and you need someone else to discuss the accounting problems with. 

Networking is always interesting that you are able to meet people from different kind of backgrounds. Generally, the students who joined the same tour with me were from UBC, SFU, Capilano University, and BCIT. This group is composed of people with a variety of knowledge towards accounting. Some of them just graduated, and some already started working, and rest of us are still studying. 

As to most of us were interested in becoming an intern at Deloitte, we were told to grasp the opportunity to apply during September. 

 

Discipline

I am a goal-setting person. Without setting goals for my day, a day can pass by quickly and I accomplish nothing, which makes me feel discontent. Recently, I have been reading The Hunger Games. It's a fantastic book that it will just drive you to continue reading until you finish. That's not good. It completely interrupt my plan! I have a speech to deliver just in a couple of days, but I can't help reading it! Sometimes I'm so tempted to think that it's okay since I'm having a summer break. In the mean while, I have another voice telling me to start preparing my speech. Finally, I came up with couple of solutions.

Reward Myself

It's hard to tell myself keep working the whole day. When you think of it, you would instantly feel that's going to be hard, and then you really don't want to do it. So, why don't you tell yourself to work on things you need to do first, and you can reward yourself with some time of leisure? I plan to work on my speech for one hour, and then I get to read one chapter of Catching Fire. It doesn't sound so hard as working all day with a few hours of reading time just before bed time.

Finding Back my Motivation  

When you are distracted while you are trying to pursue your goal, think about why you want to reach your goal in the first place? I made myself to deliver at least one speech a month, and I know it's for my own sake. If I fail to accomplish this month's goal, sooner or later I'll regret it. Then why would I even want it to happen in the first place? 

Stop Whatever You're Doing and THINK

When you're lost, and don't know what to do, just stop. Put down everything you are working on, put on your sneakers and go for a walk. Moving around, changing the scenery, and breathing in the fresh air help you to generate ideas, sometimes you can even come up with solutions that you never thought about. 

The most thing that I desire to do is finish my speech and deliver it smoothly on Wednesday! 

The Hunger Games

Imagine you are put into an arena, where you have to fight to death with the other 23 people. Only one survivor is allowed. Not only that, you also have to find a way to survive in the nature; finding your own source of water, food, and a safe place to rest. This is the story of “The Hunger Games” written by Suzanne Collins. You might not think that you would ever encounter something like this in the real life. However, some of the strategies used in the games might be helpful in the workplace.

Know Your Strengths

In the arena, Katniss, the main character, knew well that she was excellent at archery. The tributes that survived after the first day in the arena have some special talents to keep them alive. Similar to the workplace, you need to know "what are you particularly good at?" "What is something that you do much better than others?" "What makes you stand out?" If your strength does not land on physics or mathematics, then why go for engineering?  

"Surviving Skills"

During the games, not only does Katniss needed to protect herself by using the bow, she constantly needed to hunt in order to feed herself, and she needed the knowledge to treat her wounds. It's not enough, if you only get strengths in the workplace. You need to constantly learn new skills that would help you to thrive in your career. For instance, you can always make an effort to learn leadership, social media, technologies, or even a second language. You might not need to use those skills yet, but if you know how it can be an asset.

Tactics 

After Katniss found the source of her food and water, a place to hide, and a weapon to protect herself, she began to form plans and schemes. She had a good understanding of the Career Tributes, who are trained to be killers, only has the strength of killing, but they didn't know how to find source of food on their own. Katniss formed a tactic of destroying their food, and then they would starve to death. When you think of it as applying to the workplace, you probably don't want to destroy your colleagues, but you should form your own strategies upon the environment. Think of it as "What can I do to bring most profit to the company?" I met a girl from Douglas Toastmasters. Their target members are generally students. So, they organized meetings for students to practice interview skills, and that meets their needs.  

Turn Adversity into Advantage

One time, Katniss was trapped on the tree with a pack of Career Tributes waiting on the ground to kill her, and she found a tracker jacker nest above her head. She managed to drop the nest and all the venomous bees all flew out to attack her enemies. She successfully turned an adversity into her advantage!

Get the Right Ally 

During the games, one of the tributes, Rue, warned Katniss a beehive was above her head. They formed an alliance soon after that. Rue cured Katniss's swelling, and Katniss shared her food with Rue. In the workplace, people often care only about themselves. You need to be careful when making friends with others. It's hard to say that if they truly want to help you, or they will stab you from behind someday. However, if you happen to find genuine friends, they can be an asset as to help you in your career.

The Hunger Games is a fantastic read that I enjoyed very much. Furthermore, I realized I learned so many lessons from the book that I can certainly apply to my life, even though I don't have to hunt to survive.

Toastmasters Leadership Institute

Waking up at 8 am is not something I would do during the weekend, but today I have a special mission to accomplish: join the Toastmasters Leadership Institute! This conference is made up of the following sessions.

Characteristics of Effective Leaders 

          "Leadership is ultimately about creating ways for other people to make extraordinary things happen."
Personality Qualities:

• Emotionally mature: no negative emotions because it will influence the whole team
• Independent: be confident enough to say your ideas; don't always rely on the team
• Strong-willed: don't fluctuate when someone else say something; have your own set of ideas; be focused 
• Courageous: feel the fear and do what you want to do anyway; have the courage to make mistakes
• Ambitious: ambition is the driving force that gives you motivation
• Resilient: keep going even run into problems
• Charismatic: influence team members, inspire them

 As a leader you need to know

1. Yourself: know your core values; you don't want to do something against your own core values; integrity  
2. Your team: know them well enough to inspire them
3. Environment: work environment, economic environment...

Working in the Team Environment

Strategies and tips to:

1. Develop Team Relations: in order to build team relationships, you have to know them and see the master in them. The way you can accomplish that is through communication. Have social events, such as luncheon. Remember don't ever think that you are too big for someone. A good company leader knows every single person in the company! 
2. Encourage Commitment: get people involve and give them a chance to grow
3. Provide Structure: reward accomplishment 
4. Build Trust: listen, share, and be honest with them. Whatever you do, keep it consistent. Otherwise, people will have doubts in you. If you make mistakes, apologize genuinely.    
5. Resolve Conflict: conflicts can bring positive effects to the team if it is well resolved. Conflicts is caused by unfulfilled needs and expectations.  

Goal Setting and Planning

Don't set up any goals but S.M.A.R.T. goals! (Specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and time-bounded) For example: instead of setting up a goal as writing a book, let's put it as "finish writing a 200 pages book before the end of 2013 by writing 5 pages per week".


Success Tips

• Write out your goals: put it in a place that you'll see everyday. Remind yourself of the goal. 
• Communicate your goals: tell your friends and family about your goals so that they can help you achieve it.
• Celebrate milestones: whenever you make an achievement, celebrate it! Rewarding yourself before you go on to the next level is important, it makes you feel worth the while and it motivates you to go on.

"He who fails to plan, plans to fail."     

Unlocking the Toastmaster Secret 

I think the secret of Toastmaster is members help each other out. Not only do them want themselves to grow, they also want to see others succeed. The constructive feedback or evaluation of each speaker is truly the reason why members grow. They accept the feedback and continue to work their way out.


This conference truly is a valuable experience for me. I got to hear not only from the speakers but some of the audience's ideas and thoughts. If they ever hold an event like this, I will definitely go again, and I recommend you to go and see for yourself!