What's your job about?
KordaMentha is an advisory firm that deals with forensic, real estate and restructuring matters. The largest division is the Restructuring team where KordaMentha works with businesses in distress to help them restructure and recover value. My team deals with businesses who are struggling financially and they’ve come to us to help them get back on track or provide a return to creditors. Currently, a typical week for me would include managing receipts, payments and purchase orders and assisting with the overall trading of the company. Each day I liaise with the company staff and their suppliers to determine what is needed to keep the company operating. I often have to communicate with creditors and shareholders of the company and explain to them how the Administration process works and what it means for them. This can be challenging as it is normally is a difficult conversation with people who have lost money. But it’s not all hard - something cool that I will be doing this week is a tour of the Perth Mint so I can see how gold is actually processed!
What's your background?
I was born in Karratha but spent majority of my childhood in Perth with my Dad, Mum and younger sister. I was lucky to do a lot of travelling throughout my high school years, so I decided to go straight into uni full time after high school. Whilst at uni, I was invited to join the Wesfarmers High Achievers Club which was what eventually prompted me to start applying for different internships whilst studying. Over the summer of my penultimate year, I completed three different internships and tried to experience as many different areas of accounting as I could. I am so glad I did this as it really allowed me to get an understanding of the different types of work out there and how important work place culture is to the enjoyability of a job! One of the firms I interned at was KordaMentha and I instantly knew that this was the place I wanted to commence my career due to a combination of the interesting work and the great culture. Luckily, I was offered a grad position and I was able to go through my third year of uni knowing I had a great job lined up! I am now in my third year at KordaMentha and still enjoying it.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, definitely! Whilst I did an accounting degree, my role doesn’t involve much standard accounting work. I think it is important to have some sort of business background to do this job, however, it is more important to be a quick learner, have good problem-solving skills and strong empathy and emotional intelligence. These skills are important as we are constantly appointed over new businesses where we have to quickly obtain an understanding of all their processes and systems. Empathy is important as we are often dealing with people in distress who have either lost money or at risk of losing money.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The best part of my job is being able to speak to people who are confused and scared about losing their investments and being able to provide them some comfort and familiarity over the process and what’s going to happen next.
What are the limitations of your job?
This job can require a lot of over-time work and can be quite unpredictable in when the ‘busy periods’ are. This can often make it hard to plan your life outside of work. It can be emotionally draining at times if you are working on an engagement where we can’t recover much value in the business, and you are dealing with people who have lost a lot of money. The stakeholders we deal with often don’t have a good understanding of insolvency so often they can misplace the blame and anger about how the business has deteriorated onto us which can be hard.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...