Hi
@Dheepa! Are you able to share your experience with the scheme? I’m also on it this year and would love to hear more.
Were you working full-time while doing it? If so, how did you find balancing your time to attend events etc with work/life commitments?
Thank you so much!
Hey! Unfortunately I wasn’t working full time when I was on the scheme so in all honesty I don’t have the most advice on that front. However, I was working part time almost every day and because of that + uni all in all I think I only attended three open days with firms I knew I really liked. I’d recommend just being more selective with which open days you want to attend (out of the ones you are invited to). More than the open days I think the tthings that really benefited me were:
1. The fortnightly 20 min coaching calls you get. It doesn’t sound like a long time but your assigned coach can help you review your apps and talk you through your mistakes etc and it’s just very useful to hear live feedback in that way. You usually have to book these slots weeks in advance and you can schedule them during lunch etc so that might help in terms of balancing it with work commitments. Also my coach really went the extra mile to hype me up before my first AC which was really nice haha.
2. The mock interviews you can schedule before interviews. I have a strong feeling the questions you get asked are questions that previous candidates interviewing at the same firms have been asked. They ask if you’re willing to provide a breakdown of your AC afterwards and I think that’s where they pull questions from.
3. You may also get selected to be placed on mentorship schemes with specific firms (I was on one with Dentons again no additional application required). These are nice because usually it’s only about 10 people so you get a lot more face time with firm representatives. This raises some of the previous problems on having to take time off work to attend the workshops but you also get calls with an associate/senior associate that are quite flexible usually if you explain your availability.
I hope that helps!