Coffee with Mr. Big Shot

As I sat in the subway on a busy Monday morning, I was shocked with the following events to come. My hands were shaking from feeling anxious. The heat of rush hour commute did not help soothe my nerves away. Glen Gilbert, Managing Partner of Southern Ontario for Grant Thornton (GT), had agreed to a one-on-one coffee session with me. In short, this is a big deal.

Asking professionals, whom I have made a connection with during networking events, for a coffee session has become a norm to me. Although it was uncomfortable at first, I realized that staying idle would be a tremendous loss for me. Sure, I have gotten “no’s” to my coffee session invitations but I celebrate and make the most out of any “yes” that comes my way. We also need to remember that a “no” is not a “no forever”. In short, coffee sessions are a great way to establish and further enhance your relationship with professionals. More importantly, it is a great opportunity to learn from each other by sharing experiences.

It was nerve-wrecking to talk to Glen Gilbert at a networking event. You can imagine my joy when he agreed to my invitation. Somehow, I had a preconceived notion that it would be similar to meeting a real life Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada. However, I was completely mistaken. Instead, he is one of the nicest individual I’ve met throughout APAA.

As I walked into the GT downtown office, you can sense the feeling of “family” within the organization. I informed the receptionist about my appointment. She went above and beyond to ensure Glen Gilbert knew that his 10:00 appointment has arrived even though I was only a student.

Helen, the receptionist, calls everyone by their first name. It wasn’t “Mr. Glen Gilbert” or “Mr. Gilbert”. It was just Glen. From that point on, it was clear to me that titles did not play a role on how they treat each other. Instead, there is a sense of family and togetherness within the firm which helped me calm my nerves down.

Glen had invited me into his office. As soon as we sat down, I informed him the purpose of our session were to give me the opportunity to learn from his experiences, gain a new perspective and acquire a preview of GT’s Culture. How often will I get a chance to sit in a one-on-one session with someone who I aspire to be one day? I took this opportunity and used it to my advantage. I was determined to pick his brain in order to learn from his experiences.

Now, I would like to share my key takeaways from our conversation to you:

What sets you apart? Glen: Personality. Glen and I had an interesting conversation about the recruiting process. It seems he viewed it as a pyramid shown below:

First of all, everyone needs to start out with demonstrating intelligence. The ICAO requires a minimum overall GPA of 70% in order to be a CA. Additionally, the rationale for the rigorous testing from the ICAO is to ensure that every CA/CPA has the ability by interpreting the standards to articulate intelligent solutions for complex accounting problems.

Secondly, the firm has to believe that you are able to bring value to the firm and their clients. Let’s think about this logically. Why would they hire anyone who they believe will tarnish the quality associated with their brand? In my experience, I believe the best way to demonstrate your value to firms is through your cover letter. How? Research their firm values, connect these values to your own experiences and demonstrate these values in your cover letter.

After you have shown your intelligence and ways as to how you can add value to the firm, ask yourself “what would set you apart?” Personality. Public accounting is a service oriented business. An audit ranges from 1 week- several months. Well, this may mean sharing an office with 2-10 co-workers. More importantly, auditors deal with client interactions on a daily basis. With your personality, you can either provide a great or bad experience to clients

This is the main reason why we have networking events. If personality doesn’t matter, the firms would just hire the brightest candidates in each school. The best way to demonstrate your personality is by staying true to yourself. We are able to achieve this by being confident and comfortable with others. If we see recruiters by their titles and position, our nerves will get the best of us. At the end of the day, recruiters are humans too. Remember, you can’t change who you are. You have to work with what you got!

Confidence is grounded with experience. Recruiters can always tell if you are not confident. You need to be able to demonstrate your confidence. If you don’t believe in your own abilities, why would anyone else do? Glen had an interesting advice to build one’s confidence. How? Through building our experiences. As we gain more experiences, we will start believing in ourselves and our abilities.

Let’s look at this the other way. Confidence supported with no experience demonstrates a person thinking highly of themselves based on nothing. This goes back on demonstrating your values. If you don’t have confidence, how are you able to persuade others about your ability to add value? You don’t even believe it yourself. You have to start saying “I can” rather than “I can’t”. Once you change your mentality, the second step is to demonstrate your capabilities by clearly exhibiting your achievements from previous experiences throughout your resume.

You will never stop making mistakes. Let’s face it. We are all human. Thus, we will inevitably make mistakes. According to Glen, the key is learning from them. Mistakes make us a better person. This is not my first time going through recruiting season. However, the mistakes I learned throughout the process had made me more confident and a stronger person.

Well, this is my summary of my coffee session with Mr. Big Shot. Did you catch my mistake there? It isn’t Mr. Big Shot. If I kept this mentality, it would’ve prevented me from showing my true self. The key is to show who you are. By being my true self, I was able to talk to him about his family’s vacation in Newfoundland and exchanged many more interesting life stories. When I left the GT office, it isn’t Mr. Big Shot anymore. It is just Glen.

- Angelet Lim