From: 潘文 [mailto:@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, 23 May 2014 3:03 PM
To: Platinum
Subject: Re: Congratulations for your new job

Hi Scarlet. thanks for you email. I would like share my experience. But before that I would like to thank Coco, Jeff for the Resume modification and special thanks to Humam for his great work during his time in adelaide. He was always friendly and helpful. Thank him for the suggestion on the second interview. Great person.
I will share my experience below.
First interview
Tell me about yourself? I told her/Finance GM I was from, my background with funny words and smile, we all laughed.
Lets go through your resume. She ask how long I was in Platinum and the experience in China. I honestly told her I havent not have much experience in accounting especially in Australia and She said she knew it and we both laughed again. Then I told her how I did really good in china and how I did to pursue my expecting life, my business. She was impressed she told me.
Then she asked do I have any knowledge about the company. I told the only thing I knew was what business you do. Your home page doesnt even have a option called "about us". She was shocked. Then she said that was just one of their brand. She told me they are a list company and asked if I knew. I told her I didnt. She said she liked my honesty.
Then asked did I have any question. I told her I got a call when I was doing my business yesterday and came in for interview before 9am today. And I didnt know your company much. So my only question in mind was how did you think about me. I thought I screw up so I just wanted to know how did she think about me. She told me she apreciate my honesty and she liked my board experience in other field and life.
Last part was some chichat about life and family of both us. I thinks I have humor.  She told me she was happy and will let me know the time for second interview.
Second Interview with FGM and Chief GM of Operations
Same questions and I did the same except I told them now that I knew your company. and asked 6 questions I have prepared in the end.
different questions
What paid are you looking for? I told them I learned that they have really good employee benefits and give them a board range from my research about the position.
age? board range again and tell them it has nothing to do with my performance.
last question was tricky. You said you did really good on sales and If we offer you a sales position what do you think? I told him accounting is my first choice and I have no intention to be a sales person. I would lose the chance if I took it they told me.
Chichat again. Then they said they were really impressed by my board experience,my hardwork to pursue my goal for the fact that I have a business, and were really happy about me. they did mention my humor was one of the reasons they considered. and told me they have to discuss which team to put me in. Would let me know in a day or two. And told me I had defeated more than 300 applicants which I dont really believe though.
Called me the day after to let me know their offer.
My story could be too long to read through. But if I can find a job, you can find one as well.  Hope that helps. Good Luck every one.
Kind Regards
Wen
On 23/05/2014 9:48 AM, Platinum wrote:
Dear Wen,
Thank you for sharing this exciting news that you secure your position as a Graduate Accountant.
Congratulations!
If later you wants other help with reference check or anything else, let us know, we will try our best to provide on-going support.
Would you like to provide us some feedback by email on how your interview went, what questions you were asked and how you answered them ? And if you have job hunting suggestion and experience that would like to share, you are also welcome to email us.
Have a nice weekend!

Dear Everyone,

Please join us in congratulating Eugine's, one of our interns, in landing a Graduate Accountant position in Government Department. Before Eugine joined our Level 1 program, he was a fresh graduate without any accounting working experience.

However, Eugine was such a hard-working intern that we could already tell that he has attention to detail, great work ethics and efficient communication skills. He was fully committed to the Level 1 program from September 2013 and finished the program early this year. Later on, in January 2014, he successfully joined Government Department as a Graduate Accountant.

I have attached the interview feedback from him below and I believe that it will be very helpful if you are looking for a similar position.

If you would like to know more about the current job market and technical skills in job hunting please feel free to contact us.

From: Eugine [mailto: Eugine.*****@*******]
Sent: Thursday, 12 June 2014 10:12 AM
To: Sally
Subject: Thank you Platinum Accounting

Dear Selina, Sally, Sherry, Coco and others,

Thank you for all your help and support. You guys have been great help in myself acquiring the ‘Graduate Account’ position with Council. I have been here for the last 5 months and I thought that I have already sent you this letter however, I found out from you that you didn’t receive it.

What I have learned in Platinum Accounting has helped me a lot in the last 5 months at work. Wouldn’t have done it without the training and support of PA.

Interview: 3 member panel – I prepared for it for 2 weeks, studied about company in details, such as income, expenses, services, customer, clients, what they do, their mission and vision, who the CEO; .

Studied about 100 interview questions including previous work example for every answer I was about to answer.

At the interview I was confident because I had the technical skills from University and PAP,  I knew a lot about the employer and I had answers and examples for all the interview questions.

Interview Questions = Answers and Examples

•         Tell us about your self – in a way they are asking why you like accounting
•         What do you know about us? Wanted to give back to our community………….
•         Have you got any questions for us – I said ‘yes’ I have prepared few questions but I will ask shortly.
•         Why do you want this job? Said, this is my dream job working and helping the community that gave so much to me……………….
•         Why did you study Accounting? Answer and an example is needed
•         Do you work well in team? Answer and an example is needed
•         An Accounting question – how, if ever, made any money for previous company? Answer and an example is needed
•         Any questions?  What kind of Accounting software are you using? How many people in the team?
•         Thank you for your time and send them all a ‘Thank you’ letter.

Special thanks to Sally and Sherry, always willing to help the interns.

Recommend Platinum to anyone who is looking for an Accounting job!

Please acknowledge once you receive this!


Kind regards,
Eugine

Dear Everyone,

Please join me in congratulating Jack's new Graduate Auditor Position at a local Accounting Firm.

Today, our special case is a new Uni graduates Jack. As a fresh graduate, he had no clue about how the local accounting market worked and had no idea of the differences between the commercial and public practice sectors. He was really worried, because some of his classmates already joined some internship programs and gained working experience before they graduated, and he was falling behind.

With the help of our professional Internship Program, he only used one and a half months to secure this Graduate Auditor Position. We are really happy with his current achievement, because he worked really hard in his Internship tasks and eventually his hard work was rewarded with this brand new position.

If you are in a similar situation to Jack and also would like to apply for an Auditing position, please feel free to contact us for further info.

Keep your spirits up!
With continued knocks of the door to the accounting field, you will hear a positive response soon.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jack **** [mailto:j*****@live.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 18 June 2014 2:28 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Accounting Internship

Hi Yolanda,

I am just letting you know that I have been offered a graduate auditor position at a local Accounting firm in **** and I will be starting work on *****.

Thanks for all your support with regards this internship program. All the experience I have gained throughout this definitely will help me through my entire working life.

Job interviews vary from time to time, but my first tip with regards interviews would be to study your resume and cover letter very thoroughly since the person interviewing you could ask you anything, so be prepared on all fronts.

It is very important the the day or 2 before your interview to study the company's/ accounting firms website. It is important to know what client base they have, services they offer, general history about the firm (existence and how many partners/ employees) etc.

A nice firm handshake on arrival, eye contact and smile - and also think of a question to ask them at the end to show your interest in the company.

Hope that helps for everyone.

Many Thanks,
Jack

Dear everyone,

Please join us in congratulating Stella!
She is our latest intern who was successful in securing her first role in the accounting field as an Accounts Clerk in a small to medium size business transitioning from MYOB to XERO accounting software.

We have recently had many interns get hired across the finance and accounting industry during this busy end of financial year period and Stella is another who is able to begin her professional career.
She joined our internship in March and within 4 months was able to secure her first accounting role. Her background is quite common with other international graduates. She graduated from university a few years ago and also completed her Masters in Accounting last year for migration purposes. She worked part time in an admin role but she still struggled to secure any interviews in the current accounting industry through her job hunting.

The Australian accounting market has a stronger focus on work experience, local technical skills and software capabilities. This is to prove you have confidence to execute procedures unsupervised and work out solutions to real problems on real life accounting data, not just within your Degree.

Stella has shared her interview strategy with us, please refer to her interview feedback. With the help of our professional Internship Program and training hours, it took her only 4 months to secure this Accounts support position. We are really happy with her current achievement, because she worked really hard in her internship tasks and eventually the hard work was rewarded with this brand new position.

If you are in a similar situation to Stella and feel frustrated with your job hunting outcomes, please feel free to contact us for further information and assistance.

Kind regards,
Cindy

Hi all,
On this opportunity, I'd like to say thank you to Jeff, Yolanda and all other staffs at Platinum who have helped me and other interns to prepare ourselves for our next step in our career. I am so excited to share the story how I got the job.
So as you know I got temporary job before and it was on going contract. One day I got phone call for an interview that I applied before.
The Director of the company that I'll be working for and his external accountants were interviewing me. I was nervous and they ask me these few questions:
- Tell me about yourself
- What do you normally do in previous companies
- What do you expect from an employer
- What is your 10 years plan
They did not ask me any technical issues at first interview but they said they will want to interview more candidates but I did very well in the interview. Well I did not believe that actually but I keep myself positive and just wait for their call.
The following week, they give me a call and I got 2nd interview with the director himself. On 2nd interview He only ask me about how do I do accounts receivable and whether I got experience of using Xero or not. Finally, he told me that I am at the top of the leaderboard and I got the job.
I went home with such excitement and shocked as well. All I can say from this job hunting experience is that, you always have to have positive mind, always come prepared with answers and show some confidence. You have to believe in yourself or who will?
If you did not succeed, don't stop trying and applying for jobs. You have to give yourself opportunities out there.
Once again, thank you so much for your support and help. Really appreciate it!! All the very best to you all!!

Sent from my iPhone

Dear Everyone,

Hope you are having a great day so far.

Last week we had an intern from Brisbane office, Hera, secured a job as an Executive Accounts Assistant in a Chartered Accounting firm.

Hera graduated last year and joined our Level 1 program early this year and has been working very hard to get herself equipped with all the relevant skills. Eventually, her effort was paid off last week when she got her job offer. According to her feedback it is very critical to gain practical skills before interviews since there are always technical questions and tests that interviewers conduct with the candidates.

Please find the interview feedback from her below. Hope the feedback will give you more insights.   

Wish you all the best in your job hunting and good luck!


Kind Regards,


Sally Park
Accountant


From: Hera Wang <******@yahoo.com.au>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:47:53 +1000
To: Zhu Sally <[email protected]>
Subject: interview feedback

Hi everyone,

I want to give many thanks to the whole platinum team for training me up. Such experience has helped me tremendously. The resume writing skills that Coco taught us have been very useful as well. After modifying my resume I started scoring  interviews for a variety of companies including retail chains, architect groups, property managing firms, etc. And eventually I landed a job in an Australian charted accounting firm as an executive accounts assistant. I am very happy to share my story about how I got this job.
One day I received a call from the firm and they conducted a phone interview straight away, mainly by asking me what I have done previously for all my jobs. After some talk I was offered a face-to-face interview.
A few days later at the interview, the owner asked me a few questions:
•         What is your background? During what time have you done what job/study?
•         Tell me a bit more about your responsibilities for your current job?
•         How would you describe yourself at work?  And how do you spend your spare time?
•         What is your future plan?
•         What would you like to know about the firm or myself?
All the questions were quite personal/behaviour. We had a pleasant conversation,during which he also told me a lot about himself, how he runs the firm and what he expects from me.
The following week I was scheduled to meet with my direct manager for my final interview. And this time it was more technical. She went through her job task list one by one and asked me how to perform all of them. I also had to jump on MYOB to demonstrate. Those tasks include AP/AR, reconciliations, payroll, financial reports, tax and ASIC regulations. In the end, I was told to wait for their final decision.
A week later the firm emailed me asking for my referee details. And they contacted them the following day. Thanks Sally for providing me an amazing reference check! I got the offer soon after.
The whole experience was very thrilling. I think it’s very important to accumulate interview experiences, be prepared with answers and equip yourselves with solid accounting skills.
Last but not least, thanks again for the whole journey and I hope my feedback will help more interns getting their dream jobs!
Sincerely,
Hera

欢迎来电咨询，我们的座机是(07) 321 000 37 Mobile: 0430 827 666
可以和我们预约进行免费咨询哦！


Dear Everyone,

Please join me in congratulating Doris for landing her first accounting position as a full time Accounts Payable Clerk.

Doris graduated last year and joined our Level 1 program early this year and has been working very hard to get herself equipped with all the relevant skills. Her internship experience within our firm is the only experience she has as part of her professional experience. Before the company made the final decision, they called us for a reference check. We did the reference check for her in the morning and she got the job offer in the afternoon. According to her feedback, technical questions and tests that interviewers conduct with the candidates need to be prepared in detail before the interview. Ideally this preparation is drawn from real practical experiences. Fortunately, we can provide a complete solution to help you learn the skills and gain practical experience and secure an accounting job for you.

Please find the interview feedback from her below. Hope the feedback will give you more insights.   

From: doris [mailto:***@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, 14 September 2014 12:18 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Reference check

Hi Scarlet,

Sorry for the late reply and thanks again for the great reference check.
In the interview, they asked me several questions as follows:
1. Tell me about yourself. Very common one, everyone should know how to answer this question.
2. What is your daily routine at platinum Accounting.
3. How long have you been in Australia and why you choose accounting as your major?
4. Tell me three good qualities about you. Provide example of each good qualities. You should prepare some stories to support your words.
5. They also asked me about some part time job experience during my study and what I got benefit from that.
6. How to manage your work according to the priority.
7. What benefit do you think you can bring to our company?
8. How do you know about our company and the health care industry?
Always do enough research about the company before you go to an interview.
9. Do you have other questions to ask? I asked two questions related to the position and the company.

Hope this can help. Thank you again.

Kind Regards
Doris

欢迎来电咨询，我们的座机是(07) 321 000 37 Mobile: 0430 827 666
可以和我们预约进行免费咨询哦！




Dear everyone,
Please join me in congratulating Grace in getting a Payroll Officer role. She worked overseas for a few years and since coming to Australia we have worked together to help her find her first job related to Accounting. After the training, she became more confident in starting work and completing the interviews since she had practical experience about everything on her resume. Her strength was that she was able to explain all her tasks in detail in the interview. Grace also did a very good follow up with the position and finally was successful for the role!  Thanks to Grace for sharing this great news with all of us!

From: Grace M [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 8:48 PM
To: Cindy Gao
Subject: Re: Resume needed for a reference check



Hello Cindy,



Thank you so much Cindy for the good reference. I have been applying jobs for 6 months now and even couldn't believe that I got this job now. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Coco,Selina and other Brisbane staffs for being so passionate in teaching us. I couldn't secure this job without having my experienced from your accounting firm. That was my only experienced here in Australia. One thing that really helped me to secure this job is through making follow up every once a week and letting them know that I really wanted this job in a courteous manner for 3 weeks until I got it. Another thing is being confident that you can do the job, I had previous interviews but it didn't went well because I'm not confident with my answers and it showed on my body language.



My interview went like these:



1. Tell me about yourself?

    Answer: I am Grace and I am 30 years old. I have been employed for almost 6 years in different commercial organizations. Most of my employment history was accounting related which makes me believe that the Payroll position suits me well. In fact, I made payroll for almost 50 persons when I was working in a finance department of a petroleum company. I was very effective in my job, so I believe that I can equally perform this job well.

2. How are you adjusting with your colleagues?

    Answer: I am a flexible person, if my job calls me to be on one corner the whole time and not talk to my work mate, I did that before for 2 years and I pulled it well, and if the job calls me the other way around I can equally pull it too when I worked as an Operation Manager, I always communicate with my colleagues the whole time because with the nature of our job, communication is very important.

3. How long can you see yourself in this kind of job?

   Answer: I see myself in an accounting job as a long term because this is where I am passionate about and I love working in this field and I even plan to pursue an accounting degree here soon while I am working.

4. How much salary are you expecting from this job?

   Answer: I am not particular in any figure for now as this is my first job here in Australia.

5. Can you think of yourself as competitive person?

   Answer: Yes, in everything I do especially when it comes to career I am always competitive that's why I always got promoted or awarded. Even when I was assigned as a Marketing officer for 6 months, most of the time I met or exceed the target quota.

6. Do you have any questions about the position?

   Answer:1. Am I working alone or I will have a team? And her answer was, you will be working with 20 people in your team in the payroll department so you will have support when you need some help.

              2. What accounting software are they using? Her answer was, SAP.

7. Do you know SAP?

    Answer: I have an idea about SAP, with my work before they have the same program as SAP, the difference is just that their program is specifically customised to the nature of their business. I know I can easily learn that program because I have fundamental knowledge about payroll and accounting, and I even have experienced with MYOB, with all those combined knowledge I can easily apply it to the new software.

8. Do you have other questions?

    Answer: What would be my job description if I'll get the job? Her answer was, this job is a payroll processing job, you will be doing payroll for government health workers such as doctors, nurses etc., encoding on timesheets, sick leave, holiday leave and other payroll related things.

9. My last statement was, I can fully see myself doing those tasks effectively.

10. Her last statement was, It seems that you have the qualifications that we have been looking, if you'll get this job we'll inform you the longest is 2 weeks. you will be casual and we'll call you as soon as we have made the decisions and you call us if you want to follow up.

11. Then I said, thank you so much for considering my application for this position and thank you so much for your time and I would be glad to talk to you soon.

Kind Regards,
Grace