The value of career mentors

Many successful people have sought out mentors to show them how to reach the top.

A mentor can be viewed as a kind of workplace parent-figure – someone who can warn you against making short-sighted moves that could damage your career. They will, instead, encourage you to do those things that may be uncomfortable at first but will reap great rewards in the long term.

Experience is a valuable thing. And while there’s no substitute for learning the hard way, there’s also no rule against leveraging the wisdom of others.

A true mentor will provide honest feedback on how you’re performing and offer suggestions on how to improve your performance. They may also introduce you to people in their own network who can help you further your career.

Score maximum marks for class participation

University isn't just about acing your exams and carving out a career path. Don’t forget the ‘here and now’, which includes participation in weekly classes – an important element in most university curriculums.

Believe it or not, there once was a time when students at tertiary institutions would meet regularly with their lecturers on a one-to-one basis or, at most, alongside just one or two classmates. After tutorial groups expanded to accommodate anywhere up to 20 people, universities looked for ways to encourage everyone in these groups to prepare for and participate in discussions. They did this by setting aside a certain allocation of marks for ‘classroom participation’.

Here are five tips that will help you earn maximum marks for this part of your course assessment.

2016 duces share their experience of learning with The Tax Institute

Here at The Tax Institute, we’ve always been confident about the quality and value of our education programs.

For additional feedback, we spoke with two of our highest-performing students from study period 3, 2016 - Kelly Venhuizen and Terry Gan.

Four qualities of effective leaders

Do you see yourself as a future leader in your profession?

Becoming a great leader calls for a complex suite of skills. Although we recognise that talented bosses need to be equipped to rise to challenges and make tough decisions, we sometimes forget that the ability to communicate, delegate, remain positive and be creative are equally intrinsic to leadership success.

Whether you dream of heading up an accounting or law firm or serving as a tax adviser to large corporations, there are ways to hone your leadership credentials now.

Here are four attributes of great leaders, along with fail-safe tips for acquiring them.

When an interviewer asks about your weaknesses ...

For some graduates, it's the toughest question in a job interview:

Tell me, what is your biggest weakness?

How should you answer? And what do potential employers really want to hear?

There was a time when saying you were a perfectionist or a workaholic were the only acceptable answers to the question about professional weaknesses. However, unless you really are a perfectionist or a workaholic (and have supporting evidence), those answers are now considered insincere.

We asked employers in the tax profession to explain what they really want to learn when they ask this question.