[avlasova]

That’s a really interesting question!
It seems to me that the current demand may be caused by a backlog of meetings and conferences that have to happen in person, or maybe an initial desire to return to “the norm”. Xenia’s point about impressing clients is also very convincing!
However, overtime that interest is likely to wane, at least to a certain degree.
This is especially so as there are lots of new ways to carry out conferences, site inspections, etc, coinciding with a rise in ESG concerns and a resulting structural decline in business travel. Some companies use drones to visit various locations, others deploy AR technology, and then there are offerings such as the metaverse on the horizon. Due to the costs, other available options, and ESG concerns I think that a shift is happening in the business travel sector towards cutting unnecessary trips, unless perhaps for high-profile client contact.
There has especially been a decrease in travel for internal company meetings – which, notably, constituted around 40% of pre-pandemic corporate travel. IMO in the short to medium term, the industry will have to rely on SMEs, who can’t afford investing in some of the new tech, and higher-end client-facing corporate travel.

[avlasova]

Thank you Emily and Peter very much for the advice, a super useful point to remember that it is all ultimately about the client, their commercial goals, and the business that you are applying to!

I find it helpful to ask myself further questions in preparation to see if some topics work better than others, because most likely the question will have follow-ups such as “how does this affect our clients/firm” or “what do you think will happen next”, where they get you to analyse the topic beyond the information you’ve read in articles and often to link it to other news. The Watson’s Daily “So What?” section of the stories is very useful as an example of the analytical and “bigger-picture” thinking that they want you to engage in when discussing the news.
So I really recommend picking a juicy topic that you could confidently analyse and that has potential implications for the firm and their clients, including through a wider socioeconomic ripple effect.
A second recommendation is picking something original that would make you stand out (in a good way!). While many of the bigger news stories trending at a certain time are fascinating and complex, there is a high chance that many others will pick the same one and end up clashing. So, without going obscure, picking a topic unique to you and that supports your application or otherwise differentiating yourself, like through picking a new angle at a popular story and linking it to your own experience and ambitions, improves your chances of standing out. Hope this helps and eager to see what other tips everyone has!

[avlasova]

That’s a great approach Ines and very helpful tips!

I absolutely agree with picking something that you can demonstrate that you are working on and improving, and a skill that is not absolutely central to the firm and work as a trainee (so perhaps not attention to detail or teamwork, as Ines pointed out).

For example, I tend to talk about public speaking and show how I am proactively working on improving it, through taking initiative and pushing myself, including  participating in the Watson’s Daily podcast.

Firms always like to hear a story and the journey that you have been on to see how you will grow as a professional. This really isn’t prompting you to reply that you are great at everything and your biggest weakness is your relentless perfectionism. They want to see that you are capable of realisistically assessing yourself as an individual and doing a form of a SWOT analysis on your own skills.

Would love to hear others’ experiences and advice!

[avlasova]

Great tips Ines, thank you!

I find it helpful to focus on specific sectors that are often highlighted in the Daily, like tech, energy, or real estate, and analyse how those might impact a firm’s clients or the firm itself as a business. The latter is an important bit to remember – the firm is a business too, it pays energy bills, rent, salaries, and its goal is to stay afloat and develop its short- and long-term growth through keeping up to date with the commercial trends. I think it is also crucial to know your target firm’s clients, as they are who you will ultimately be working for and giving commercial advice to.

The analysis of the wider economic landscape is important to pay attention to as well, and it’s always good to think who will be the winner or the loser in a specific scenario (e.g. see lots of PE and M&A activity we saw in the past year, in particular due to low interest rates, and similarly lots of insolvencies which kept law firms busy). Also, thinking about how the specific firm makes money is key (a great piece of advice I learned on one of Peter’s Zoom calls) – which sectors it or its clients might think about growing in or retracting business from following more general trends like developments in tech, economic forecasts?

I support your advice about using SWOT, Ines! It may seem like a rigid structure, but it doesn’t have to be, and it allows you to look at whether your target business may profit or lose from a given scenario, and where their opportunities lie.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by avlasova.

[avlasova]

Great article Yenli! A truly engaging read.

I found your point about Facebook (or Meta I guess) earning the attention of younger users through increasingly immersive experiences quite interesting.
There’s also a strong precedent of gamers, for instance, spending exorbitant amounts of money on digital assets that only have value within that specific digital economy. So I think Meta really has a chance, through the creation of its digital ecosystem and through it’s diversification into hardware, as you mentioned, at finding solid new revenue streams and shifting away from their heavy reliance on the ad service, recently hit by Apple’s privacy policies and the like.

A troubling realisation is that people are often willing to sacrifice their privacy for convenience. So if Meta manages to integrate itself well enough into people’s lives, it may be able to continue brushing off various scandals.
They also get an opportunity to use the environmental card in the marketing campaign, advertising the metaverse as saving people travel, for example.

On the other hand, still lots of potential issues and liabilities, from child safety to financial fraud concerns.

[avlasova]

For sure! There are some ‘blended’ initiatives coming through as well, like blockchain-backed art funds, where shares themselves are NFTs, but the art being invested in is, for the lack of a better word, real, and these are quite popular with young investors, as you said!

[avlasova]

A great overview of NFTs! Coming from an art world perspective, subjective and sometimes inflated value has been assigned to items (or ideas of items) before and isn’t anything new (see Salvador Garau’s “invisible sculpture” being sold for €15k or the infamous banana taped to a wall for $120k). I believe the ownership of “things” has expanded beyond the material world a while ago into the conceptual realm.
My concern with NFTs is the level of trust/mistrust consumers have in the underlying technology, its security, and the uncertain regulatory landscape regarding copyright and ownership. I believe this, together with the NFT market’s inherent volatility at this formative stage, may put off some more risk-averse investors/collectors. It would be interesting to see whether NFTs start further inhabiting the truly common everyday life or stay in the collectors’ bubble.

[avlasova]

I don’t think this is a serious threat to Facebook in its current form. However, with its plans for expansion from anywhere like the metaverse to smart glasses to Facebook pay, the reputational damage and increasing lack of trust might present a significant roadblock to such ambitions, especially coupled with its history of sketchy data use. And now with the outage – imagine most of your online life depends on Facebook’s functionality, say, in its VR space, and that just switches off for an unspecified amount of time!

Several of my friends downloaded Telegram after the outage (whose user base increased by 25% in less than a year to over 500 million, not least due to WhatsApp-related concerns mentioned by Xenia). The platform undoubtedly has some blatant criminal activity and cyber security issues that may warrant attention from regulators, but seems to be a popular alternative.
Certainly an interesting landscape to watch.

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