Graduate Profiles Detail South Asia

- Providing direct and indirect tax compliance services and payroll services to a diversified portfolio of clients

- Providing tax advisory services for complex assignments which mainly focuses on providing income tax implications for feasible business strategies, tax planning, assessing treaty benefits etc.

- Leading and managing a team on tax due diligences for sell-side and buy side advisory service engagements to provide clients on tax impact assessments and mitigation strategies

- Providing Global Mobility Services to manage Sri Lankan tax compliance for foreign individuals

- Assisting the team to compile alerts on legislative changes and documents on annual government budget

- As a project manager my job role also includes managing project economies of my portfolio, invoicing, debtors’ management and reporting to leadership based on budgeting and staffing i.e. group management matters

- Coaching and development of junior staff, performance evaluations and career guidance to the team

There’s not just one but a few things I like about my job.

I like that every engagement is a new challenge and learning opportunity for me to enhance my technical skills as no two client queries are the same.

I also like that my job role requires me to interact with different people which makes it more interesting, be it my team, local and foreign clients or even officials at the Revenue Authority. I also get to liaise with internal shared services such as finance, IT and risk management teams which always provides additional insights to my role.

Performance evaluations are the most important and interesting area in coaching my team members. I enjoy guiding and mentoring my team especially school leavers who are stepping into the corporate world.

Aside from having positive feedback and recommendations from clients which also encourages me to do better and like what I do more, the best part of my job is having an amazing boss and team who motivates me to always reach a step higher.

Having completed my bachelor’s degree at a State University in Sri Lanka helped me step into the corporate world and progress. However, completing My MBA from UWE exposed me to two different systems altogether like the local curriculum and foreign curriculum. The MBA curriculum was structured in such a way that it gave me a practical experience of the real corporate world, starting from how to prepare and face an interview both from an interviewer’s and interviewee’s point of view and how to negotiate my way through to finally leading and managing a team and the skills to develop thereon.

It is apparent when you progress in your career to have more people’s skills such as more advanced human resource management, project management and operational management and this was the core curriculum in my MBA program. It gave me perspective of how I should approach situations and adapt as required. The programme has also expanded my network which is definitely handy. All in all, the MBA programme has helped and continues to help me in my professional career.

Reading through other graduate profiles as well, it appears all UK qualifications are structured to give you a feeler of the corporate world. My advice to any student is, make the best use of the curriculum as it is definitely going to help you as you progress in your career irrespective of the specialisation you choose. The MBA program is structured in such a way that it will help all types of professionals such as accountants, tax advisors, HR professionals etc. Don’t simply undertake the programme for the sake of it, but actively participate and identify the areas that will help you develop yourself personally and professionally because you will experience and practice heavily the theories you learnt when you do the real job.

Prepare a winning resume and remember to customise it to each opportunity you apply as it is important you match your resume to the requirements of the job role you are applying for. Don’t make things over complicated. Keep it simple and you will nail it if you are true to it.