Choice of Service Line

gottcha_goin

What is the best service line to be aiming to get into? Im going into PwC in 2011 so preferably would be beneficial to hear any responses from current/past employees. However, any general advice would be helpful also.

Was personally thinking CIPS or Banking. Although, who knows if I'll even get the choice in the end!! :P

jonnybravo

Past employee. There is advantages and disadvantage to all departments. Alot depends on what your interested in doing after you finish your qualification.

CIPS - If you plan on going into industry after your qualified this will give you a good basing on alot of the big companies in Ireland. TICE is pretty similar when it comes to an audit point of view - similar type companies. CIPS tends to have more jobs away from Dublin.

Funds & banking - If you want to go into the Funds / financial services industry this is probably a good start. People that go into funds normally find it hard (not impossible) to move out of financial services industry. Not sure what most people do after banking but I'd tend to think it'd probably be similar to funds and people get pigeon holed.

Just a quick summary but if you have any other questions I'll answer them as best as I can.

gottcha_goin

Thanks for the reply.

Ive personally heard Funds is the one to avoid. Its meant to be painfully boring and apparently you don't learn very much? Any truth in that?

Im kind of leaning towards CIPS I suppose but then again I dont really want to be travelling down to the back end of Clare or something on a Monday morning!! My reasoning for CIPS is that you'd have more varied companies so therefore you would make yourself more employable because you come across different situations???

Im unsure to be honest. Would it matter which service line you go into from an international point of view? i.e. I hope to work abroad some stage after my contract.

milkado

hi gottcha going, did you receive a guide from them about choice of line of service? I haven't gotten anything

gottcha_goin

milkado wrote: »

hi gottcha going, did you receive a guide from them about choice of line of service? I haven't gotten anything

I wasn't interviewed this year for it. I would of been last year. But no I would of just got a general pack telling me the usual stuff...benefits, CSR and all that kinda stuff. As far as I know they give you the choice in the summer before you join. But only heard that on the grapevine.

jonnybravo

gottcha_goin wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

Ive personally heard Funds is the one to avoid. Its meant to be painfully boring and apparently you don't learn very much? Any truth in that?

Im kind of leaning towards CIPS I suppose but then again I dont really want to be travelling down to the back end of Clare or something on a Monday morning!! My reasoning for CIPS is that you'd have more varied companies so therefore you would make yourself more employable because you come across different situations???

Im unsure to be honest. Would it matter which service line you go into from an international point of view? i.e. I hope to work abroad some stage after my contract.

Unless you want to go into funds after qualifying then defo try and avoid it. You don't get much relevant experience for working in a normal company. As its the largest department in PwC put it as your last choice as if you put it 2nd or 3rd you'll more than likely end up there.

Again CIPS and TICE would have a wide range of companies. You could be lucky in either of them & get a wide range of companies or could be unlucky and end up on one company for most of the year - example Eircom / Smurfit. In both of them your likely to have to travel at some stage but CIPS probably would have more away jobs. I'd probably go for CIPS myself if I was to go back but TICE is pretty similar.

From an international perspective you could get a job abroad from any of the departments. Plenty of funds jobs worldwide and the same with the experience from CIPS / TICE.