More than you expected
Grant Thornton UK LLP is part of a global network of independent audit, tax and advisory firms, made up of some 58,000 people in over 135 countries. We're a team of independent thinkers who put quality, inclusion and integrity first. All around the world we bring a different experience to our clients. A better experience. One that delivers the expertise they need in a way that goes beyond. Personal, proactive, and agile. That's Grant Thornton.
Job Description:
NEW GROUND WON’T BREAK ITSELF.
Every day our teams help people in businesses and communities to do what is right and achieve their goals.
We’re happy to talk flexible working and consider reduced hours and job shares, we’ll support you to balance your work and life.
Our Transaction Advisory Services (TAS) team within our Deals & Business Consulting practice work with clients evaluating both M&A acquisitions and divestments. Working on both buy-side and sell-side deals for private equity and corporate clients, our TAS team specialises in delivering the financial, tax, commercial and operational due diligence insights to clients across a range of industries in a fast-paced, high intensity and cross-border deals environment.
Our due diligence engagements involve large and complex datasets which form the basis of financial and commercial analysis. The use of data analytics capabilities in cleansing and analysing such datasets increases the efficiency, robustness, and quality of our analysis. In addition, our clients are increasingly requesting that we deploy our data & analytics capabilities on engagements to solve crunchy data problems with a combination of data savvy and commercial nous.
Therefore, we are inviting interested candidates who have a logical problem-solving mindset, a passion for data & analytics and deals, and a bias for action to get involved in the continued growth of our M&A Data Analytics team.
If you enjoy working on a wide-reaching range of projects that will help businesses and communities flourish, you will fit right in. You will join an exciting growing team and have the opportunity to develop your skillset in a dynamic and evolving profession, mastering cutting-edge analytical tools and techniques in a commercial setting.
We are recruiting for new joiners at Associate level, to join our team of Data Analytics specialists.
Overview of the role:
You can expect to spend:
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40% of time prepping, processing, and analysing large data sets (in the 10’s to 100’s of millions of rows of data)
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40% of time visualising, explaining, and storyboarding our work into actionable insights for management teams
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20% of time working on other ad-hoc tasks such as industry research, pitch preparation and tool development
A look into the role
As an Associate you can expect:
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Building Proof of Concept and adhoc visualisations to support pitches
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Tackling large data sets of high: Volume, Velocity, Variety, and varying Veracity
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Employing data skills of blending, joining and unioning data
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Slicing and dicing data with visual, predictive, and spatial techniques to develop commercial insights for clients
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Using best practice visual and guided analytics
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Working both independently and alongside other Data & Analytics professionals in varying team sizes
Working solo and alongside other Data & Analytics professionals in varying team sizes
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We will provide you with thorough on-the-job coaching and support in using Data Analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI and Alteryx
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You will acknowledge the limitations of your own technical expertise and request support from colleagues within the team where necessary
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You will assist seniors within the team with the delivery of Data Analytics training workshops to the wider TAS team
The minimum criteria
Familiarity with one or more of the typical Data & Analytics tools that the team uses: Tableau, Power BI and Alteryx
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We will provide the necessary on-the-job training in using both Tableau, Power BI and Alteryx on the datasets we work with. We encourage our team to work towards completing both the Alteryx and Tableau professional certifications, if they haven’t done so already, and to demonstrate their competence within the tools where they have.
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Familiarity with similar tools such as Qlik or Google Data Studio instead of Tableau, and KNIME or Google Data Flow instead of Alteryx, will also be considered as there is some cross-over with transferrable skills from similar platforms.
Financial literacy
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Can you interpret and explain a set of key figures from a financial statement? As well as being able to work with large volumes of detailed transactional data from a data cleansing and analysis perspective, it is also key to step back and understand how the detailed analysis builds up into the bigger picture of the business and vice versa. The skill of understanding the aggregation and disaggregation of data is vital in data analytics professionals.
Excellent time management and individual responsibility
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M&A projects commonly have tight timelines and therefore the environment in which we work is often time pressured and fast paced. It is important for our team to be organised and able to juggle competing demands, whilst always maintaining high-quality standards. How do you handle pressure?
A logical, systematic, and scientific approach to dealing with data
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Our fast-paced deals environment calls on us to be pragmatic and to the point. We are often asked by our clients and TAS colleagues at the beginning of an engagement before data has been received, of how the data needs to be provided for the required financial analysis to be produced. It is here where a logical and systematic approach to understanding the desired result and working back to understand what would be required to achieve that, is of great importance.
A passion for solving crunchy real-world problems with data
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Have you had a situation in the workplace or in an academic setting where your analysis helped discover an insight that inspired action? Analysing financial data provides insights to our clients about either their own business or a business they are looking to acquire. Ultimately, these insights can result in a change in the deal price or a change in business decisions.
A knack for communicating visually with high-impact and meaningful analytics
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Have you developed a visualisation in Tableau or Power BI? What stories inspire you and how could you use data and analytical tools to illustrate that story?
Skills to set you apart
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Practical experience in using Tableau, Power BI and/or Alteryx in a group-working environment and able to highlight the challenges faced by teams collaborating remotely on large data sets.
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Coding skills with your data science toolkit of choice. We leverage both Python and R code in our Alteryx data workflows and are agnostic to language choice, although we’d love to hear your thoughts on why you chose one over the other!
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An awareness of general data science concepts such as: when would we use a classification model over a regression model? What techniques would you use to perform a customer segmentation analysis?
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How would you explain your chosen segmentation analysis technique to a client CEO?
Knowing we’re right for you
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Embracing uniqueness, the culture at Grant Thornton thrives on the contributions of all our people, we never settle for what is easy, we look beyond to deliver the right thing, for everyone. Building an inclusive culture, where we value difference and respect our colleagues helps our people to perform at the best of their ability and realise their potential.
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Our open and accessible culture means you’ll interact with leaders who are interested in you and everything you bring to our firm. The things that set you apart, we value them. That’s why we give you the freedom to bring your whole self to work and pursue your passions inside and outside of work.
Beyond the job
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Life is more than work. The things you do, and the people you’re with outside of work matter, that’s why we’re happy to look at flexible working options for all our roles, and we’ll always do our best to keep your work and life in balance.
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The impact you can make here will go far beyond your day job. From secondments, to fundraising for local charities, or investing in entrepreneurs in the developing world, you’ll be giving back to society. It’s that drive to do the right thing that runs through our every move, grounded in our CLEARR values – Collaboration, Leadership, Excellence, Agility, Respect and Responsibility.
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We’re looking for people who want to contribute, spark fresh ideas and go beyond expectations. People who want to be able to proudly do what’s right, for the firm, our clients, our people and themselves. It’s how it should be.