Commercial Awareness
What is Commercial Awareness?
Many graduate recruiters often look for commercial awareness in graduates, but what does it mean?
The definition most often used is by Christopher Stoakes in his excellent book 'All You Need to Know About Commercial Awareness':
"At heart, commercial awareness is about being able to talk to clients, finding out what they want, why they want it, what they will do with it and what they are prepared to pay, and then delivering it in the way they want.
To do that you need to understand how organisations work, the issues they face and the role of people within them."
Organisations operate in a competitive marketplace and need graduates who can quickly grasp the internal and external challenges facing it, understand their customers and make good decisions on how best to develop the business.
The term Commercial Awareness can appear in other guises. For example, the law firm Addleshaw Goddard seek in trainees, what they call 'Commerciality'. "In essence", they say, "what we are looking for are people who appreciate that we are business advisors, not just legal advisors." KPMG calls it 'Business Focus' and IBM splits it into two competencies: a 'Client Focus' and a 'Passion for the Business', both of which are key elements of commercial awareness.
Andy Moverley, UK Graduate Recruitment Manager at IBM said: "Our most successful graduates have a distinct set of characteristics and a clear focus on delivering exceptional service to our clients. These characteristics or competencies include a passion for our business plus a strong client focus requiring an understanding of our customer's needs and requirements. These competencies reflect a requirement for a commercial awareness plus an understanding of IBM and its industry in order to succeed as one of our graduates."
Sadly, many recruiters say that students and new graduates lack this important competency. But like any other skill, you too can develop and improve on it, whether or not you have a business-related degree. This resource is designed to show you how to learn more about commercial awareness, how to develop it whilst at university, and how to prove to employers that you are indeed commercially aware.
Why is it important?
The more commercially aware you are, the more:
- attractive you will be to graduate recruiters;
- the better you will perform on applications and job interviews, and
- the better will be your chances of getting and succeeding at a job.
Rachel Pickles, a graduate recruiter at KPMG says: "We need commercially aware graduates in order to better understand the drivers behind clients' own financial results and to offer a high quality service to our clients. A commercially aware graduate would also find their job more interesting."