Penningtons Manches cooper application

[Meghna]

Hi Everyone, I am applying to PMC this year and this is one of their questions:
How would you leverage your skills and experiences to add value to Penningtons Manches Cooper? (Max. 250 words)
Any advice on how to go about answering it?

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hi Everyone, I am applying to PMC this year and this is one of their questions:
How would you leverage your skills and experiences to add value to Penningtons Manches Cooper? (Max. 250 words)
Any advice on how to go about answering it?

Hi @Meghna I think you should go for the usual 'Why me' skills/experience structure with some tweaks to address the specific point about adding value. Thus, I would employ a structure like the following:

1. Walk the reader through your the relevant experience/achievement, using a STAR structure - explain the context of the situation, focus on the specific activities and tasks you did, and try to quantify any results.
2. Explain the skills/attributes that the experience demonstrates and why those skills/attributes are relevant for the role of a trainee solicitor.
3. Connect the general relevance of those skills/attributes to some of the specific features of PMC. Some options include explaining how those skills are particularly useful for the usual trainee tasks in PMC's flagship practice areas and sectors, how they would enable you to provide particularly excellent service to some of their main clients, or to provide a great quality work product on the typical mandates they advise on. Besides this, you can generally look to see if there is any overlap between the skills and associated interests and the firm's USPs from a client perspective. If you can go the further step to show how your contribution will result in added business value to the firm, in that it will increase revenues, reduce costs, or result in long-term growth, that will be even more impressive.