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3.9
  • #3 in Accounting & advisory
  • > 100,000 employees

Jaya Prasad

Don’t compete with anyone but yourself. Everyone’s race is different and our finish lines are all different too.

I’m a first-generation Australian Fijian-Indian originally from Brisbane and chose to move to Perth to start my career with KPMG in Restructuring Services within the Deals Advisory team as I have a keen interest in the energy and resources industry. I studied a dual Bachelor of Law and Commerce, majoring in Finance, at university and while I knew what my interests were, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I finished university career-wise. I applied for as many programs, opportunities and jobs as I could, from university student societies and the university student union to temp roles in law firms, to a short-lived career with Commonwealth Bank, to marketing case competitions and commercial law mooting competitions. It was important to me to meet as many people as possible and experience as many different situations as possible so that I knew what I liked, what I didn’t, and more importantly – what I was good at.

When the time came for me to start applying for vacation programs in my penultimate year, I was on exchange in Beijing, China studying Finance at Peking University. I was so far away from home, making decisions that would impact the rest of my life, and I still didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to work for a large, multi-dimensional company so that I could have as much opportunity as possible to see what was out there. I applied for the Big 4 accounting firms, the Big 4 banks, and the top 5 law firms in Australia, as well as a few global law firms. To keep my options open, I applied for the most general roles I could – and where I didn’t need to state a specific role, I didn’t. I just provided information on my studies, my past work experience, and my interests and crossed my fingers that there was a firm that had room for me. 

When the time came for me to start applying for vacation programs in my penultimate year, I was on exchange in Beijing, China studying Finance at Peking University. I was so far away from home, making decisions that would impact the rest of my life, and I still didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to work for a large, multi-dimensional company so that I could have as much opportunity as possible to see what was out there. I applied for the Big 4 accounting firms, the Big 4 banks, and the top 5 law firms in Australia, as well as a few global law firms. To keep my options open, I applied for the most general roles I could – and where I didn’t need to state a specific role, I didn’t. I just provided information on my studies, my past work experience, and my interests and crossed my fingers that there was a firm that had room for me. 

My recruitment process took place while I was on a study exchange at Peking University in Beijing, China – everything from the first application to the assessment testing to the final interview was done on my laggy university wi-fi that constantly dropped out with an Australian VPN. 

The first online application focused on questions about my character traits in team and workplace situations, as well as questions about myself, my strengths and weaknesses. The second step was the online assessment centre, which was a series of games, riddles, and arithmetic questions, which I practiced for using free online tools and reading Whirlpool and Reddit articles – you’d be surprised how much help and support you can find with a simple Google search! 

The most unique part of the process for me was having my interview via Skype phone call as I couldn’t attend an interview and my internet kept crashing so video conferencing was out of the question. While some people think phone interviews are ‘easier’ or less stressful because the interviewer can’t see how nervous you are, I found it to be the opposite. Over the phone,

I couldn’t see how the interviewers (now my Partner and Associate Director) were reacting to my answers. There were a few instances where the phone cut out and I had to call back – and I was so scared they wouldn’t answer again! – but they were both so understanding and took interest in why I was overseas, what I was doing and what I had learned.

I work as an Analyst in the Restructuring Services team, which is within the Deals Advisory division of Deals, Tax and Legal. We provide two main areas of service to clients – firstly, restructuring and transformation advisory, which looks at helping financially distressed companies progress into more financially stable or sustainable business models; and secondly, formal insolvency appointments, or external administrations, which involve either trading on a business in order to place the business back into solvency, or winding the business up.

This is something I learned from my team – “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.” Nothing beats preparation and hard work!