Why I Applied for This Job at Findex
Why I Applied for This Job at Findex
Explain something specific that you’re looking for in your job search
2. Tell them something you noticed about THEIR job that you liked
3. Recap what you’ve said to show exactly how their job fits what you’re looking for
- “So that’s why I applied for this job – it seems like an opportunity to build the specific skills I want to be learning in my
career, while working in the industry I’m most interested in.”
- Using the same example ending above, you could add a sentence to the end and say, “So that’s why I applied for this job –
it seems like an opportunity to build the specific skills I want to be learning in my career, while working in the industry I’m
most interested in. Also, since I’ve been doing this exact type of work for the two previous years in my current job, in this
same industry, I’d be able to hit the ground running and start contributing immediately to your team’s efforts.”
FINDEX
I applied to the Accounting and Business Advisory line at Findex due to my affection for providing strategic advice to companies on
their development cycles. I am also inquisitive in the prospect of maintaining sophisticated business relationships with clients from
medium-sized to multinational companies. Findex also provides a unique system for career improvement to continue
comprehending and expanding in professional skills through the Findex Academy and support for Chartered Accountancy and other
accredited programmes. I believe ultimately, my passion for business development, innovation, and strategy will help me flourish
within the Accounting and Business Advisory line at Findex.
FINDEX
I see this as an opportunity to contribute to a exciting, forward-thinking accountancy and financial service firm devoted to propelling innovation
and growth within the industry. I can flourish within the graduate program due to my prior experience in diverse roles catered to multifarious
business components, from marketing and sales to finance and accounting services. I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to be a part of Findex’s
graduate program. It exhilarates me to have the possibility to work at Australasia’s guiding financial services advisory firm to further my capability
and inquisitiveness in being a finance and accounting professional within the industry.
The Opportunity
As a Graduate joining our Accounting & Business Advisory service line, you will join a team responsible for providing strategic advice to
ANZ
ANZ Programme Preferences – Answering why you want this particular role!
ANZ Values
Our Culture
- Customer centred: Human, Open and Authentic, technology and data is combined with empathy to
strengthen relations and create solutions for customers; we care about our customers, our colleagues and
the community, and speak up if we see the need for the change.
- Always Learning: We are curious and believe, we can keep learning and growing, try stuff out and are not
afraid to fall, value what we learn as well as what we achieve, we use data to help us improve.
- Making things simple: We are guided daily by our purpose and values, we try to simplify everything we do;
we create clear boundaries and the freedom to act within them, we focus on outcomes not process or
hierarchy.
The ANZ business graduate programme appeals to me as I have developed a range of attributes from my Be(Hons) and Bcom
degrees. These involve analytical and technical skills from software engineering, problem-solving skills from business management
and strong customer focus within innovation & entrepreneurship. These skills enable me to be a motivated all-rounder, which can
take on challenges that come my way, develop critical, empathetic skills for developing effective relationships. I am excited about
gaining a broad range of experiences within the ANZ business sector and learning about key internal partners, looking at the larger
picture and developing strategic responses to challenging problems. These fundamental skills will help me advance my career in
becoming an established business professional within the corporate industry.
My interest in working with ANZ is that it is one of the biggest banks within the Australasia sector, which has a strong culture that
helps the customer start, buy, and sustainably grow their business to create a much more vibrant business community. This leads to
value-added through industrial insights and unrivalled market connections from small business to large corporations. Having been
involved in various leadership positions at UoA, the ANZ values that resonate with me are Collaboration and Respect. Leadership
requires creating an environment for collaboration within a team to achieve a chief objective. This often requires empathy, respect
and accountability towards yourself and your team members. ANZ is a place which cultivates strong leaders, but also a place where
individual’s talents are recognised and strengthened. I would be honoured to join the team.
The ANZ Institutional banking graduate programme appeals to me because it is one of the most dynamic and diverse areas of ANZ,
focusing on specialised financial insights and relationship solutions to institutional clients across the globe. This would give me much
exposure and opportunity to meet with some of the largest listed New Zealand companies and subsidiaries of multinational firms. I
understand that the institutional division holds the number one market position across New Zealand’s central banks in all
relationship, product and services categories. Therefore it would provide me with a fantastic opportunity to learn from experienced
bankers, inspiring professionals within the Auckland region. These fundamental skills will advance my career skills in becoming an
influential strategy analyst with the corporate industry.
My interest in working with ANZ is that it is one of the biggest banks within the Australasia sector. This strong culture helps the
customer start, buy, and sustainably grow their business to create a more vibrant business community. This leads to value-added
through industrial insights and unrivalled market connections from small business to large corporations. Having been involved in
various leadership positions at UoA, the ANZ values that resonate with me are Collaboration and Respect. Leadership requires
creating an environment for collaboration within a team to achieve a chief objective. This often requires empathy, respect and
accountability towards yourself and your team members. ANZ is a place that cultivates strong leaders but also a place where an
individual’s talents are recognised and strengthened. I would be honoured to join the team.
My real career passions are business management and entrepreneurship, and the best way to incorporate those
passions within a corporate setting is through management consulting. I ultimately envision strategic management
consulting as my future career pathway. I have previous entrepreneurship experience within social innovation start-up
companies through the Velocity 100K challenge and consulting experience working with small businesses through
Impact Consulting Group. 180 degrees consulting is an exemplary organisation at the forefront of providing impact-
based management consulting to social innovation companies within NZ. Therefore, I feel I possess skillsets and
capabilities with leadership, strategic planning and management to help provide a social change impact within our
communities while developing my professional management consulting skills with one of the premier social change
management clubs with the University of Auckland. My main reason for choosing Auckland as my preferred location is
due to the fact that it is closer to my family, but if need be I am willing to work in other locations.
Why are you interested with working with non-profits? Please outline any volunteering experience or any other
experience you think is relevant.
Management consulting, at its core, is solving problems. The world is encased in a myriad of problems. Sadly some
issues such as poverty, hunger, sustainability do not attract commercially-minded experts. This is why I want to employ
my skillsets within consulting and entrepreneurship to help companies focus on social impact to propagate positive
communal change.
I currently work as a strategy analyst at Socius XR, a social impact startup focused on creating experiential education
experiences for neurodiverse individuals. Due to the nature of the startup working environment, a diverse strategic role
required developing skills in every facet of the venture. Critical components involve Socius XR's value creation and
capture strategies, product development cycles, market validation systems, venture KPIs, investment proposals and
marketing strategies. I successfully accrued a $30,000 entrepreneurial grant from the Westpac and Ministry of Education
Innovation Fund for the Socius XR's prototype product Spectrum.
I have also worked as a consultant for Impact Consulting Group. This role involved leading a team of five student
consultants to complete a pro-bono management consulting project for companies focused on social innovation and the
Auckland region's social impact. The first semester, I gained skills around evaluating grant and capital raising
opportunities within the education, sustainability and technology industry, creating a social impact model with SROI
metrics for investment proposals, A three strategic plan for product release milestones and market validation and a go-
to-market strategy on digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
What skills and values do you believe make you well suited to be a ThinkPod Consultant?
Work Ethic - I have a rigorous work ethic and a commitment to excellence. I will work after hours on weekends and
every moment of my free time to complete a task at hand to the very best capability I can produce.
Temperance - I like to listen more within conversations and attempt to understand the client's perspective rather than
pushing my agenda and ideas. Consulting is about the client and their needs; therefore, it is essential to assume
temperance within professional meetings.
Passion - Management consulting is my passion, something that I engage in learning about in my downtime. This
generates proactivity to up and beyond for clients and their needs and wants.
Empathy - I think the most critical management skill a leader should incorporate into their toolset is empathy. The ability
to understand and go into the person's shoes in front of you is vital in client-facing professions such as management
consulting which require you to often ponder about the client's motivations and attempt to see their needs and wants
from their perspective.
Tell us a bit about yourself (How do you spend time outside of uni)?
I am in the last year of university studying for a BE(Hons) & BCom, majoring in Software Engineering, Management,
Innovation and entrepreneurship. My passion is entrepreneurship and business strategy. Since my early days in high
school, I had tinkered about business ideas and started creating websites for small companies in Auckland when I was
fifteen. My skillsets have progressed over the years, and I am now principal for my digital marketing firm known as
KiwiOps. At KiwiOps, we provide small businesses with an opportunity to outsource their digital marketing efforts from
creative advertisement creation to strategy. For the last year, we have kept a consistent pipeline of 4-5 clients with a
peak of 7 clients over the summer break. Other than that, in my downtime, you will find me dwelling into volunteer
service with charitable organisations across Auckland, in pro-bono strategy consulting services. So far I have worked with
clients such as Starship Foundation, Apprentice Training Trust, Eat my lunch, Child fund and The Asian Network
Incorporated.
Describe a situation where you encountered a challenge or problem and the steps you took to resolve that issue,
What did you consider? What was the result? What might you have done differently next time?
When providing creatives to one of our initial marketing clients at KiwiOps, The client became very irate that the
advertising creatives didn't represent what she envisioned as the branding of her business. She claimed that we hadn't
done the job correctly and threatened to decrease our payment for our services after we had already given her a
discount to meet her needs. I was perplexed by this situation since we had extensively discussed her business branding
before beginning creative creation. As the principal contact, I suggested that we could do the proposed changes and
provide her with the mended creatives in two working days, but she wasn't having it and wanted the retainer fee
reduced because of our mistake. Ultimately we decided to go forward and complete her demands and provide a 2-
month Facebook campaign, but the sourness of her treatment led to some people leaving our team. In retrospect, this
was the wrong choice, and we should have set expectations on professionalism for our client initially during onboarding,
have never tolerated aggressive client behavior, decided to stop services and return her initial payment.
Are you interested in being a Team Leader, if so answer the following questions; 1 -
How do you monitor the performance of the people that you have to lead? 2 - How will
you delegate responsibilities efficiently?
1 - When monitoring team performance for a large consulting project, I would chunk the project into smaller tasks and
equally split the individual team members' tasks. This would involve small milestones where a daily standup would
occur, explaining their progress, what they are working on next? and what they found difficult? It is essential to set early
expectations for the quality of work required, e.g. if there is a research segment of the project, the consultant would
need to have 6-8 quality references. The last method, while slightly outdated, involves setting weekly hours of 6-8 hours,
which can be filled within an excel timesheet document to ensure everyone is putting in the time and the expectations
required with that time.
2 - When working on a large project, We can chunk the various components and determine a task list. Using Agile
methodologies, we now have a task backlog. Consultants can now decide which tasks they are interested in, which will
boost productivity and motivation. Each consultant is given an equal amount of tasks for that week which is known as
tickets. Each week there is a new chunk, with any additional tasks being added to the task list. When there are more
tasks, the weekly ticket limit is increased to manage.
Last year in 2020, I was awarded a top project award for ENGGEN403 - Managing a business, one of the most challenging
courses in 4th year engineering. As a group leader, I led a team of 34 engineers in compiling a 40-page consulting report
about Covid-19 impact on the NZ economy and models for furthering it within these turbulent times. This was a
challenging management experience. Half the team members worked in person at university, and the other half were
working remotely. It was difficult to effectively manoeuvre these constraints in making sure everyone had a fantastic
experience. Ultimately the countless hours spent were worth it as I was awarded the Top grade from 823 4th year
engineers.
There was a time in my life where I was down and out. I had given up on many things and felt like I would never amount
to anything. Days of lying in bed made me ill. One day browsing YouTube, I stumbled across a motivational video. While
a bit cheesy, it provided me with an impetus to continue watching those kinds of videos. I eventually spent two days
watching motivation videos from morning till night, and on the third day, I had the strength to get out of bed, slowly
resuming my daily activities and have never looked back since. The wisdom from these online mentors has propelled me
to forward get out of my comfort zone and engage in success. Through this personal leadership journey, I understood
the meaning of the positive thought process and optimism, and now I take care to listen to positive thoughts every day,
even for a small amount of time.
Leadership is both personal and communal. These two facets intertwine into each other to produce the optimum results
in challenging situations. When conducting my ENGGEN403 systems week project, I was chosen as the group leader to
thirty-four engineers who needed direction, guidance, and a vision to complete a 45-page consulting report on the NZ
economy's incentives post-Covid-19. My dilemma was the lack of experience in leading many individuals, quickly
understanding the different leadership dynamic required for the current situation. I promptly began researching various
Fortune 500 CEO's and business leaders within the industry and how they managed corporate governance with a fast-
paced and ever-changing business environment. My research resulted in learning about agile methodologies, which
introduced the focus of the autonomous team member and the critical role of line managers within large business units.
After culminating the key philosophies, I successfully implemented a line manager rotation for the key milestones of the
project. I also implemented an autonomous environment for team members to select preferred tasks that allowed
management of individual burnout. These key implementations led to our group being awarded the top ENGGEN403
group out of 22 other 4th year engineering groups. I was subsequently awarded the top grade for the systems project. I
took this opportunity in order to grow my leadership skills towards large teams and learned various skillsets on how to
effectively manage teams of 30-40 people.
Why KPMG?
KPMG is a perennial firm and is consistently ranked amongst the top ten consulting firms in the world. It is a company
that exhibits innovation and leadership, providing an opportunity for meaningful career development and experience.
This inspires me greatly because of the wealth of knowledge and exposure to the corporate world, which can be
obtained from KPMG. But the most crucial thing about KPMG is its focus on organisational culture developing values
that help nourish society, industry and the firm itself. Throughout my undergraduate degree, I have developed real
passions for strategic planning in business environments and entrepreneurship. In my free time, you will find me toiling
away at my next business idea or keeping up to date with the happenstance of varying industries. For me, both of these
passions culminate themselves into a role within the management consulting opportunity. Management consulting
graduate opportunity will provide me with the opportunity to utilize previous entrepreneurial acumen with a fast
moving space of business to tackle challenging business problems within a variety of industries. In my career, the
alignment of passion for entrepreneurship and business strategy finds a crucial intersection at KMPG’s management
consulting division.
One of KPMG's Values is "Together for Better". What would you bring to the KPMG whānau and add to this value? And
why have you applied for this particular division? Minimum 200 words.✱
I believe I can bring a broad scope of experience in leadership capabilities, coupled with comprehensive finance
academic knowledge, to be a sumptuous asset to the KPMG Deal advisory team. I have learned to appreciate, respect
and empower strength in working with contemporaries and associates through a myriad of situations in work and
university circumstances. I believe KPMG's "Together for Better" values exemplify diversity and inclusion; this inspires
me greatly since it coincides with my paradigm towards organisational culture.
Throughout my tenure at the university, I have been heavily involved in innovation and entrepreneurship, finance and
management consulting ecosystems. I have been rewarded the final position twice in the prestigious Velocity 100K
entrepreneurship competition. I have been a senior consultant at Think pod Consulting Co, Impact Consulting Group,
and 180 Degrees Consulting. I am currently a junior equity analyst at the university investment club.
This past summer, I worked at Socius XR, a transformational education technology company focusing on empowering
neurodiverse individuals to enter the corporate industry. I demonstrated the ability to create innovative solutions to
transformational and challenging problems within Small to medium (SME) enterprise circumstances. My role involved
conducting numerous financial analyses and assisting with capital-raising activities of $150,000 for the firm from
Westpac and the Ministry of Education (MoE) Innovation Fund to develop a supplementary mobile offering. In addition, I
performed DCF analysis, assisted in monthly FP&A forecasts and developed revenue improvement recommendations for
the firm.
Since early high school, I have been inquisitive about entrepreneurship, starting my foremost business in year 12 as a
web development consultancy for a small business. Since then, I built a digital solutions company with three co-founders
called Kiwi Operations (Kiwi-Ops), which earned $145,000 in two years, maintaining a 42% profit margin and working
with 18 local New Zealand small businesses within various sectors. My ambitions are now to develop and maintain
sophisticated business relationships with corporate clients while learning more about financial services within the
industry. So, I returned to university to conduct a graduate diploma in finance to learn the fundamental skillsets
required in transactional business analysis.
I feel an opportunity within the Deal Advisory team fulfils these passions and inspires me greatly to apply. Thank you,
and I hope to see you soon.
Why was your grades affected? (Additional notes you would want to send to people)
I have been a hard-working and diligent student and completed high school with the highest of honours and
scholarships. Within my second year of university, my mother was diagnosed with terminal Tuberculosis; my family
suffered tremendously for a year and a half. I requested a gap year, but the university did not approve and would
remove me from a hard-earned spot within the software engineering cohort. Ever since my mother's passing, I have
been working hard and have maintained an unofficial average of 6.5-7.5 GPA for the last four years every semester. I am
also studying for side certifications to supplement my lower GPA and broaden my experience through extracurricular
and part-time corporate finance and financial consulting work. Last, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read
this sincerely.
This drawback in my academic career has broadened my insights on the importance of academic knowledge, and I hope
to continue studying through to postgraduate in my own time to rebuild my subsequent GPA till it exemplifies my
commitment to excellence in my learning.
Choose a Charity
The worst thing that can happen to humans is to be an orphan without any adult support. Everyone should have a right
to have a home or a place to call home and an opportunity at a better life. I think Give little charity does that, focusing
on providing support to children who do not have homes or have been abandoned. They give that opportunity to those
children to rise again in society and become something that they believe in. KPMG could provide scholarships to older
orphans to learn from some of New Zealand's leading experts within the corporate world or donate and support the
organisation raising awareness of its contributions to society.
BDO
3 Things you want in an organisation, why?
An organisation continually striving for excellence: I wish to continue growing through my career and am pretty
ambitious to complete many academic and corporate achievements. Hence, a culture of lifelong learning is appealing to
my ambition.
Professionalism: I am very interested in learning behaviors associated with professional corporate relationships and
dealing with higher-level clients.
Diversity and support: I am interested in joining an organisation with a diverse range of individuals and where support is
provided to work together; strive for excellence.
My proudest achievement last year was despite dire circumstances in my personal life, I completed my conjoint degrees
in software engineering and commerce. I maintained an unofficial GPA of 6.5-7.5 for the last three years every semester
of my degree.
Grant Thornton
What attracted you to apply for a Graduate role at Grant Thornton?
I am currently undergoing the Grant Thornton virtual internship and have thoroughly enjoyed my experience. Grant
Thornton is a perennial advisory firm that operates worldwide, with a wealth of experience and serving a mid-market
clientele (<250m). Hence, I believe Grant Thornton provides the significant opportunity to learn aspects of consulting
and finance in-depth and not be conformed to a mechanistic role provided by the big four and other larger firms. I
believe I would be a great addition to the team and have an aptitude to continue growing and learning as a valuable
addition to the firm.
At Grant Thornton, one of our behaviors and values is to explore and innovate. Please tell us
about how tell us about your extra-curricular activities and/or volunteering?
This year I volunteered as an Equity Analyst at the University of Auckland Investment Club, conducting security analysis
on firms within the AS/NZ financial markets while observing a $30,000 AUM Investment fund. I developed
Memorandums for the EBOS group and SkyCity Entertainment Group. By developing the club's foremost artificial
intelligence trading algorithm, I innovated and automatically checked comparable base ratios for the firms, listing stocks
that met our areas of interest. The exploration into programming, investment analysis and comparable ratios like
price/EPS and price/book.
I also maintain avid presence within the University of Auckland pro-bono consulting initiatives, having consulting for
charitable organisations such as Starship Hospital, Childcare fund, Apprentice Training Trust (ATT) and Asian Network NZ
(ANNZ).
My name is Dweep Kapadia, and I am an incoming graduate from the University of Auckland, where I studied a Bachelor
of Engineering in Software engineering and a Bachelor of Commerce in Management, Innovation and entrepreneurship
and now Finance. I have worked in various corporate positions, from management consulting, investment analysis,
corporate finance, product delivery and research and development. My current interests coincide with investment
analysis and fund management, and I would love the opportunity to join this career pathway in investment and financial
services. Some things I have achieved recently:
This past summer, I worked at Socius XR, a transformational education technology company focusing on empowering
neurodiverse individuals to enter the corporate industry. I demonstrated the ability to create innovative solutions to
transformational and challenging problems within Small to medium (SME) enterprise circumstances. My role involved
conducting numerous financial analyses and assisting with capital-raising activities of $150,000 for the firm from
Westpac and the Ministry of Education (MoE) Innovation Fund to develop a supplementary mobile offering. In addition, I
performed DCF analysis, assisted in monthly FP&A forecasts and developed revenue improvement recommendations for
the firm.
Since early high school, I have been inquisitive about entrepreneurship, starting my foremost business in year 12 as a
web development consultancy for a small business. Since then, I built a digital solutions company with three co-founders
called Kiwi Operations (Kiwi-Ops), which earned $145,000 in two years, maintaining a 42% profit margin and working
with 18 local New Zealand small businesses within various sectors. I aim to develop and maintain sophisticated business
relationships with corporate clients while learning more about the industry's financial services and investment analysis.
So, I returned to university to conduct a graduate diploma in Finance to learn the fundamental skillsets required in
transactional business analysis.
I feel an opportunity within the investment advisory services fulfils these passions and inspires me greatly to apply.
Thank you, and I hope to see you soon.
I believe my skill sets from various roles in entrepreneurship, product management, consulting, and finance will help me
be a well-rounded individual to join the ANZ fund management team and progress my career in finance. Adherent to a
lifelong learning philosophy, I plan to continue studying part-time at the University of Auckland in postgraduate
specifications in finance and obtain my CFA in the future.
As a Grant Thornton management consulting intern, I bring a logical structural flow to problem-solving, effective time
management, dedication, and perseverance.
As a strategy and financial analyst, I bring technical capabilities around DCF analysis, revenue improvement strategies
and finance professional conventions in my past role in Socius XR.
As an entrepreneur, I bring an unrelenting drive to succeed despite setbacks in my academics due to depression from
the passing away of my mother, a continued approach to learning and the long-winded road to excellence with small
steps.
As a product analyst and programmer, I have first principles and a logical approach to problem-solving, understanding
and being in line with the latest technological releases.
I feel an opportunity within the Fund management services at ANZ fulfils inspires me greatly to apply. Thank you, and I
hope to see you soon.
when considering your next career move, what are the three most important job features you’re looking for?
The three most critical features I look at within a job when planning career changes:
An opportunity to learn and grow: This is very important to me; I want to continue growing in my job,
learning more and becoming better in my field every year. Albeit I will continue growing my academic
capabilities by continuing my master's studies and going higher towards a PHD in my own time, I hope to grow
on an industrial practitioner basis while working within a role.
Complexity and challenging work: I love problem-solving; I don't see myself as a conventional person who
would like to go home at 4 pm, but instead love to be able to take my laptop and continue working well into the
later hours of the night on complex problems which make me feel rewarded in the pursuit of excellence.
Opportunities to upscale: I would love to see the lack of corporate bureaucracy and opportunities to upscale
myself to higher managerial roles as the years come by. Development plans, learning goals, and career
trajectory discussions are precious for me to charter a long-term tenure at an establishment.