What's your job about?
TPG is the largest property consultancy in New Zealand and places responsibility on its consultants to work on a variety of property developments for private and public clients. As a graduate property consultant, I help facilitate larger jobs that my manager is working on. These are generally in relation to land acquisitions and disposals.
On a day to day basis, I help draft documents for landowners and clients, attend meetings on specific jobs and correspond with others in the office on projects taking place. An example of the type of work I do can be seen in a recent project where we were able to head out to a development site to talk with the landowners, I then had to write a file note on what we talked about, what the landowners’ concerns were and how the development plan affected these. In the following days, we arranged a meeting with Waka Kotahi NZTA to discuss these concerns, potential variations to the development and how they wanted us to proceed with the project. We then went back to the landowners and are now moving forward with arranging for the works to go ahead.
I really enjoyed getting outside of the office to meet with the people involved and understand their concerns and am very interested in seeing the end result of the project, knowing that I have helped with the process.
What's your background?
I grew up and went to school in Christchurch. After high school, I decided to take a gap year and head overseas to Sicily where I worked as an au pair. I had a great time but always knew that I wanted to continue studying. I then went down to Otago University to study law. I really enjoyed my time in Dunedin but decided to get my degree completed in 4 years.
I really enjoyed property law and in my last year, I heard about TPG and applied to their graduate development program to explore this further.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, someone with a different background can do this job. I was slightly concerned that I wouldn’t understand the job as well as someone with a property degree. Once you begin working here you realise that you just need a willingness to understand issues, good analytical skills, and the ability to articulate potential issues to a client when providing advice.
One of the reasons I wanted to join TPG was because of the diverse backgrounds in the company, and I don’t think there is a set background that would know the exact job that we do.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I really enjoy meeting with landowners. This means we go offsite and get to explain to them what the process is with their land and understand their concerns. It helps you to understand a lot of the work that you are doing in the office, and you look forward to seeing the end product.
What are the limitations of your job?
The biggest limitation of the job is probably the time that it takes to learn everything. There is a wide range of work, and you can sometimes learn one thing but then end up with a lot of other work so that when you come back to something you can’t remember how to do it. So that definitely takes time, but it is also completely allowed for.
3 pieces of advice for your university-self?