Week 11

Monday   

     It was my last week of internship but only my first day at the last client's place in Kelana Jaya. As usual I arrived on time and was given the task of documenting the previous meeting's minutes. Alvin had recorded the hour-long meeting for me to listen to and fill in la template based on last year's minutes template. I learned which information was material and to be included and which should be left out as it was private and confidential (P&C) or immaterial. It also sharpened my listening skills and I practiced writing concisely. 

Tuesday

     Alvin had a meeting to attend so I was under the supervision of Yi Chong, an Associate. I did some vouching work where I had to make sure a sample of purchases were authorised and signed by the appropriate employee because each employee had a certain limit that they are allowed to authorise. Larger sums would require the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to approve. At first it was quite a challenge to recognise all of the signatures involved because there were quite a number of them but after awhile I could recognise them easily. Hence, this task helped develop better attention to detail as well as common sense in judging the compatibility of the authoriser and the amount authorised by them.

Wednesday

     Deloitte, who does the client's taxes, came by to give a seminar on the upcoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) that would be implemented on the 1st of April and how it would specifically affect the client. As I have only done some light reading on how GST affects consumers like me, I decided to join in on the talk to learn about the effects of GST from a company standpoint. Since the client is involved in surgical and pharmaceutical products, I learned which types of product would be taxed at the standard rate and which would be zero rated. The second half of the talk was slightly more complex for me to understand but what I could remember was that there were specific codes for the client to implement in their system as failure to do so could result in a heavy fine or worse. Despite the client's worries, Deloitte assured them that they were headed in the right direction. 

Thursday

     Thursday was my last day at the client's place so Alvin evaluated my performance thus far and I am pleased to say the evaluation was not only constructive but also motivating since he mentioned that he would definitely recommend me for reemployment which hits Objective No. 6. I took what Alvin said about challenging myself more as motivation to expand my knowledge and I did not let his criticism discourage me or to be taken too personally. Afterwards, he took the whole team out for a farewell lunch.

Alvin, Kim Chern, Yi Chong, me

Friday

     It was finally the inevitable last day of my internship at PwC and I had to be back at headquarters for the clearance process. The morning started off pretty slow with minor errands to do for Yi Chong such as mailing out a debtor's confirmation and scanning some documents. This made it my first time learning PwC's process of mailing out a letter. This was followed by slipping thank you cards into the lockers of my seniors as a little surprise for them. After lunch I met up with a couple of my friends to do the clearance together. Below is what the clearance form looks like before all the signatures were collected: 

Clearance Form    

     Handing over the laptop was the second last step before having to return our access cards so I took this as a chance to meet up with some of my previous seniors who were in office that day to say my good byes and in hopes of creating long lasting connections (Objective No. 5). Afterwards, we went to various floors to take pictures as keepsakes of our time spent at PwC.

With Keet Mann, Helmi, Wei Khit

     Lastly, it was time to hand over our access cards at the Human Capital Department where I finally met with Mona, the head of resourcing, and she gave me some great advice as I have already mentioned under Further Development. Again this helped me obtain Objective No. 5 as well as Objective No. 1 which is confirming where and what I would like to pursue after passing my professional papers. 

     All in all I could not have asked for a better experience because PwC definitely trained us interns well and I have achieved nearly all of the goals I had set at the very beginning. I can later re-enter the working world knowing just how to conduct myself amongst my colleagues and superiors (Objective No. 3) as well as having some basic knowledge on the audit process, which is a key learning experience to me. On top of that I have developed better soft skills like communication and technical skills like Excel shortcuts. For a reserved person like myself, I take the communication skills I improved on as a key achievement for myself. Plus, I got to visit so many different places, places where only audit jobs could take you as Alvin would say.