Week 6: Personal Contribution

At this point in my internship, I have had the opportunity to work with a variety of people on a variety of different project types in different capacities, and through this exposure, I have been able to contribute positively in a lot of ways.

A lot of the work that they do in transfer pricing involves analyzing and benchmarking client data against the data of comparable companies, and doing this requires lots of continuous reviewing and attention to detail. When working on summarizing some of the analysis for a client, I caught some discrepancies across the results and a corresponding report. While this may seem very small, the reports submitted as part of tax filings are SEC regulated (and regulated by the corresponding office in other countries) so inaccuracies are costly. This impacted the final product by ensuring its complete accuracy for the client. Beyond just this one deliverable, this instance helped my earn a reputation as someone who puts a solid effort into all of their work, which made associates, senior associates, and managers more excited and willing to work with me.

Work reputation is very highly valued at PwC, and people with higher reputations tend to get more and higher quality opportunities. One opportunity that I would really like to get more on is the transfer pricing M&A (mergers and acquisitions) team. This would allow for more strategic thinking and analysis. It also works with more divisions outside of transfer pricing within the firm, which is particularly appealing to me because I am not confident that I would want to stay in this division my whole career, though that is a fairly common path. In terms of how I can find this opportunity, a lot of emphasis is placed on reaching out to people yourself. I have already connected with a few members of the M&A team, including a partner. Again, because reputation is valued so highly, I believe that showing my ability the initial task they give me will segway into more tasks.

Because I am not in a hierarchical leadership position, I do not find that people look to me for leadership “wisdom.” However, I feel that I see a lot of examples of leadership theories which is very cool to witness outside of a classroom setting. I also can apply the theories that relate to followers and group dynamics to better understand my surroundings.