PwC Nigeria tax consultant launches WhatsApp groups for professional mentoring
Manager for Tax Reporting & Strategy at global professional services firm PwC Nigeria Oluseun Akinrinoye doubles up as a career coach, and has launched a set of four WhatsApp groups to get in touch with young professionals and mentor them through the development and growth of their career.
Akinrinoye holds a BSc in Accounting from the Obafemi Awolowo University, and began his professional career as an associate for Financial Control at CardinalStone Partners in Lagos. He then shifted to Carter Biggs Investment, where he took up the role of Senior Accountant for 2 years.
Following nearly two years as a Finance Manager for Phillips Outsourcing, Akinrinoye joined Big Four accounting and advisory firm PwC Nigeria, where he moved up the ranks as Senior Associate and then Assistant Manager in the firm’s Tax & Reporting Strategy division.
He had a brief one-year hiatus from PwC, when he was the Advisory Lead and Finance Manager for Kenndia Consulting, following which he rejoined PwC, where he was then appointed Manager in the Tax & Reporting Strategy domain. Alongside his career in financial advisory services, Akinrinoye is an accomplished career coach and mentor.
He responds top questions, offers guidance to and coaches talented young professionals for interviews, in addition to writing a motivational blog on career development, personal development, entrepreneurship and technology. His efforts are particularly relevant in the contemporary Nigerian context.
Despite being on a growth trajectory, Nigeria is currently suffering from a major problem of unemployment, which is perpetuating greater income inequality in the country. As a result, training young professionals has become an essential task, one that several organisations are taking up.
“In the past two to three years, I have been doing a lot of mentoring and coaching for young professionals and different categories of people. I also write a lot about careers and personal development and I felt there’s a limit to how many people I can mentor individually,” said Akinrinoye.
“For instance, I have almost 30,000 followers, I have people looking forward to what I write, and feel if I can’t mentor them individually, I can put them in groupings; people that are on similar stages of their career like corps members and fresh graduates. I can mentor them collectively, that's the motive behind the groups. The long term goal is to have a platform but at least before then, we can leverage on Whatsapp where they can talk about different topics and ask career questions,” he added.