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.

 

[mat123]

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.

Hi Andrei @Andrei Radu

Regarding your last point on showing 'how your contribution will result in added business value', do you have any basic real life examples of this? I find the concept of demonstrating how my experiences at an early stage in my career can help to create real business value quite difficult!

Thanks so much!

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hi Andrei @Andrei Radu

Regarding your last point on showing 'how your contribution will result in added business value', do you have any basic real life examples of this? I find the concept of demonstrating how my experiences at an early stage in my career can help to create real business value quite difficult!

Thanks so much!

Hey @mat123 - I agree there is a limit to how much business value you can add at this early stage, but I still think you can make some plausible claims. If the firm did not see potential for added business value, they would not commit to the significant financial investment involved in hiring a trainee. Now, as to an example as to how you could go about showing this: say you reference a past work experience in which you used a variety of resources (tech, getting input from more senior colleagues, great organization skills, or your own innovative approach) to increase efficiency. Then, you can explain how this skill would allow you to complete your tasks in a more time-efficient manner at the firm. This will mean the firm will have to bill clients for less hours of your time, but also that you can help out colleagues complete their work more effectively. Firstly, this will ensure your work is never holding anyone up, but instead potentially allows others to deliver on their tasks earlier than anticipated. Secondly, if you are efficient with your workload you will have capacity to take on more work from the hands of other colleagues, which will also help free up the more senior colleagues to to take on more work, which should result in increased revenues for the firm. However, the broader point here is that by being able to speed up completion of your tasks, you will help the firm deliver legal service to clients in a more time-efficient and cost-efficient manner, which always makes clients happy. Making clients happy increases the chances they will return to the firm with more mandates, which drives up revenues and profits.

 

[mat123]

Hey @mat123 - I agree there is a limit to how much business value you can add at this early stage, but I still think you can make some plausible claims. If the firm did not see potential for added business value, they would not commit to the significant financial investment involved in hiring a trainee. Now, as to an example as to how you could go about showing this: say you reference a past work experience in which you used a variety of resources (tech, getting input from more senior colleagues, great organization skills, or your own innovative approach) to increase efficiency. Then, you can explain how this skill would allow you to complete your tasks in a more time-efficient manner at the firm. This will mean the firm will have to bill clients for less hours of your time, but also that you can help out colleagues complete their work more effectively. Firstly, this will ensure your work is never holding anyone up, but instead potentially allows others to deliver on their tasks earlier than anticipated. Secondly, if you are efficient with your workload you will have capacity to take on more work from the hands of other colleagues, which will also help free up the more senior colleagues to to take on more work, which should result in increased revenues for the firm. However, the broader point here is that by being able to speed up completion of your tasks, you will help the firm deliver legal service to clients in a more time-efficient and cost-efficient manner, which always makes clients happy. Making clients happy increases the chances they will return to the firm with more mandates, which drives up revenues and profits.

Hi @Andrei Radu this is incredibly helpful, thank you so much!