BT Commercial Awareness Tips

Katie Bradley and Julia Mansi, two trainees from BT's in-house legal team, visited UEA on Wednesday 11th November 2015. They came to discuss the value of commercial awareness to working in-house and to run a workshop enabling students to develop their commercial understanding.

BT has one of the largest in-house legal departments, with over 200 lawyers across the globe. Their training scheme is extremely generous, with a £31,500 starting salary, fully-funded LPC, BT Sport for just £1, support to help you with your studies, and much more. Only 3 applicants a year are given a place, and so it is fundamental that you prove you are more than just academically talented.

When applying for a training contract anywhere, not just at BT, it is fundamental that you demonstrate you are commercially aware. This is because you will be working for a company, and part of your role will be to support the business in its commercial goals, as well as providing legal and regulatory advice. It is therefore crucial that you have a clear vision of those goals and understand all the relevant factors that help or hinder the realisation of those objectives (e.g. political and economic climate, business structure, competitors etc). This vision and understanding is essentially commercial awareness.

Demonstrating your commercial awareness is fairly simple, and Katie and Julia gave us some top tips for your applications, interviews and assessment days:

• Research the company, its values and culture. 
• This can easily be done in a number of ways; looking at their website, attending open days, vacation schemes or internships, asking employees about their experiences. 
• Read the annual reports of the company. 
• This will help you understand more about the finance and structure of the business. 
• Reflect on previous work experience. 
• Be aware that you should never just list what you did, you should explain what you learned and how that development will allow you to be an asset to the company. 
• Reflect on other experiences. 
• You don't just learn skills from working, anything can be used to show that you can think critically. Popular examples include travelling, where you can show you have had to manage finances or organise the most efficient route, or being a committee member, where you can demonstrate that you have organised events based on the needs and wants of your members. 

For more information about the BT graduate scheme, visit: www.btgraduates.com.

- Ellie Dobbyne

The Critical Importance of a Commercial Perspective

Football and business – two great passions of mine, and surprisingly to some, two sides of the same coin. Neither can exist without the other, but why is that the case?
It seems that for students looking to enhance their commercial capabilities, we can look no further than to the beautiful game for inspiration. At every level of the chain of command, individuals demonstrate time and time again their tremendous knack of making lots of money for themselves, or for the organisations they represent.

CEO’s are the standard bearer for commercial awareness, simply because it is their job. For example, Ed Woodward, of Manchester United, who in 2014 agreed a world record $559m shirt sponsorship deal with Chevrolet, which originated from an innocuous meeting with the global marketing manager at a roadshow event at Kuala Lumpur. Managers are commercial too, typified by Alex Ferguson’s £40m NET profit on player transfers during his two decade tenure. But these feats are eclipsed by the guile and cunning displayed by footballers themselves.

I am particularly appreciative of the subterfuge displayed by Sergio Ramos of Real Madrid in the most recent transfer window. With a year left to run on his contract, he expressed a desire to join another team, which accordingly prompted them to make a bid, which was rejected by his current club, and resulted in him earning a bumper new contract – this was always his intention. One can also admire Papy Djilobodji, Bebé and Iago Aspas’ technique of compiling videos of their best bits, and sending them to scouts who naively think they have found the next Messi, when in reality they are no better than the Norwich and Norfolk Sunday League. I am aware these names are very obscure, but they are all millionaires in their own right because of their understanding of how the system works, and how they can gain from it.

I think the point I am getting at is, the people who accomplish their commercial objectives, have a clear understanding of how to leverage their own capabilities in particular industries. It is, in a sense, taking your skills and strengths, and making these as valuable as possible.

So when you are next applying for a job, or heading to an interview, have a clear focus on creating value – think about what makes you valuable, what are they looking for and how that will translate into added value for that company.

- Conor Bell

Commercial Awareness Meet and Greet Event with Colin Dobbyne

On the 20th of October, The Commercial Awareness Society at UEA were proud to hold their first event, comprising of lots of pizza, drinks, the opportunity for members to sign up to the blog and our guest speaker Colin Dobbyne from Karl Storz.
Colin has worked in business consultancy for just over 10 years. Within this time he has owned his own company, predominantly dealing in the medical sector, sold this company and now works for Karl Storz as a consultant.
The talk was started off with a particularly influential quote from Oscar Wilde ‘I am not young enough to know everything’. This was a familiar trend throughout the session, where we were made to realise in the business world you will constantly be learning things and the importance of adapting to changes to remain successful. The session then went on to break down the particulars of commercial awareness, and how to break the concept down depending on what firm you are focusing on. As we are all aware, the term changes invariably depending on the circumstances. These main particulars were; what makes the business a success, who are the customers, where the business is in the market place, how it makes money.
From this, Colin stressed the dangers of how individuals can have amazing ideas, but without putting these factors into consideration they will be left pennyless. Colin spoke of his personal experience, whereby he lost a lot of money through the team advising him failing to be ‘commercially aware’, in that he would simply be ‘outspent’ by the other side. This was then tied in with the importance of communicating effectively with clients and customers. The latter part of the talk focused on figures and terminology, where Colin spoke about how to make an impressive mark. This included general factors such as the health of the business, where it is in the market, its profits and costs. Other values to focus on are what it says in the mission statement.
A particularly helpful example was given of a Bakery, whereby Colin demonstrated the importance of having an knowledge of environmental forecasts. The reason being, the success of the harvest season is predominantly determined by the weather, thus the availability of ingredients and the prices etc. 

With Kodak being used as an example of a company failing to recognise and adapt to threats, leading to failure in the market, Colin rounded up the session by advising members to have a clear idea of where you are, the obstacles in front of you and how you are going to get to where you want to be.

- Ava Bazley