Commercial awareness interview questions…

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  • December 13, 2021 at 2:56 pm #10729
    Peter Watson
    Keymaster

    This is the place where you can ask me and/or the team about any commercial awareness questions you may have!

    December 13, 2021 at 5:43 pm #10731
    Xenia Baranova
    Moderator

    Hi Peter and the team! How would you recommend that I keep up to date most efficiently with commercial news stories throughout the year leading up to the application period to succeed at interviews?

    December 13, 2021 at 5:57 pm #10732
    Andrew Spencer
    Moderator

    Hi Xenia, great question! First of all, I think that Watson’s Daily is, of course, a fantastic tool to stay on top of everything (and save a lot of time). Personally, I used Watson’s Daily pretty much exclusively during my law firm interviews to improve my understanding of commercial trends, alongside some longer articles from BBC Business on particular deals that I was interested in. I’d also say that if you are interested in a specific sector, it might help to make some brief notes that you update to see how any stories unfold.

    One other helpful tip I received was setting up a Google Alert for topics or firms you are interested in. For example, I set them up for a few law firms to regularly receive email notifications on their activity. I think this is especially handy to keep track of any important news about a firm that might come in just before an interview!

    December 13, 2021 at 6:59 pm #10737
    Peter Watson
    Keymaster

    First of all, Xenia, well done on getting your brown belt (as a rank)! CONSISTENCY is what you need to get better with your commercial awareness. This is going to sound blunt, but you are kidding yourself if you think you can improve it by just reading up once a week/month/just before the interview! I’d recommend sitting down and working out, firstly, how much time you want to put towards this on a daily basis (and I would include weekends here as well). You could treat listening to podcasts as an extra outside this because you can probably listen to them while you are doing something else. You also need VOLUME of stories. Again, it’s no good picking out five stories per week and hoping that’ll be enough. You need to read a LOT of stories in order to see what the trends are and to get an idea of what is more important and what is noise. Obviously, you can pick whatever works for you, but I read huge amounts of articles on a daily basis and present you with a distillation of all this EVERY day in Watson’s Daily. I’m trying to save you time so that you can fit as much “quality” in your commercial awareness research as you can!

    December 13, 2021 at 7:05 pm #10738
    Peter Watson
    Keymaster

    One thing I would say, Andrew, about Google alerts is that – depending on what your alerts are for – you will end up with a lot of “noise”. If you end up seeing a lot of “noise” in your inbox, the likelihood is that you will stop monitoring it and then you’ll be back at square one. I would suggest that you maybe think about a set of topics and themes that you are interested in and then keep on top of those (the FT and the Wall Street Journal have decent search functions). Also, I would recommend that you somehow try and use the information that you have gleaned by writing about them or discussing them because this will solidify your knowledge.

    December 13, 2021 at 7:52 pm #10740
    Andrew Spencer
    Moderator

    Thanks, Peter. I tend only to click the articles if they seem relevant because you are correct that there can be a lot of “noise”. Thank you for the tip – I will give it a try! I also completely agree that discussing the trends is ideal. I found that the weekly subscriber zoom call solidified my understanding of what I had read and allowed me to think about stories from multiple perspectives.

    December 13, 2021 at 9:13 pm #10741
    Xenia Baranova
    Moderator

    Thank you both Andrew and Peter for your comprehensive answers!

    Andrew, I agree that sector specific notes would be helpful, I will try this out! The new ‘notes’ feature on the browser version of Watson’s Daily will help with this, but I have to be consistent. Going forwards I will note down developments in the corresponding trends that come up within Watson’s Daily inthe notes section, and make a working Word document.The same goes for specifically targeted Google alerts like you both mentioned.

    Thank you Peter for acknowledging my belt! I am still working towards the brown one, I have a habit of looking at Watson’s Daily on my phone instead of the browser, so I need to make sure I am registering all my points by accessing the browser! I agree regarding the consistency and volume. What I found particularly helped me remember stories has been exposure to the same stories via different mediums – I first read the Daily, then I listen to the podcast whilst walking my dog, then I attend the weekly subscriber call and then listen to the weekly podcast and read the weekly which help me remember the important stories.

    December 20, 2021 at 12:32 pm #10837
    Andrew Spencer
    Moderator

    Hi All, I wondered if you could please help me with a commercial awareness related question. What do you think is the best way to answer: “What does being commercially aware mean?” at an interview?

    I think it’s tricky because commercial awareness can be used as a buzzword. I thought a good starting point would be keeping on top of news stories, but I’m interested to hear other thoughts on this.

    December 20, 2021 at 4:15 pm #10838
    Xenia Baranova
    Moderator

    Hi Andrew! From my point of view being commercially aware is as you said keeping on top of news stories as a seating point. Secondly, forming an opinion on those stories. This is important – I find that I can only form informed opinions on pieces of news that I find interesting or where I have followed the new story into an emerging trend. This makes it easier for me to have an opinion on what is to come for that emerging trend. Lastly, when it comes to commercial law firms, they will want to know how business stories will affect their clients, sectors and practice groups. Being commercially aware also means knowing how the business world works in general and being able to apply it to fictitious scenarios during case study exercises etc 🙂 I hope this helps somewhat!

    December 27, 2021 at 8:26 pm #10881
    Andrew Spencer
    Moderator

    Hi all,

    This week I’m back with a new question – what’s the best way to navigate: “Why are you interested in working at our company/firm?” or “Why are you interested in this industry?”.

    I’ve found this a common way to start an interview, and I’ve always approached it like a story explaining how my interest developed and changed over time. I also think it’s a great place to demonstrate commercial awareness by discussing how sectors you are interested in relate to their business. How do you all approach this question?

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