Clare Kelly is a senior tax manager at KPMG in the Isle of Man. She was born and bred on the rugged, green island so has a unique perspective on life and work there.
What do you like most about your job?
I really like dealing with clients and I really like working with them to create solutions and to help them. You don’t just see them once a year, you’re working with them all year round so you create more of a relationship.
Do you get a more personal client relationship on the Isle of Man than in other places?
If I go out at the weekends it’s quite normal that you’ll see clients in the pub, or you’ll go to Tesco’s and meet clients there. Your job isn’t just your job – you’re not always working but you’re always in contact with people.
How do you think you’ve benefited from your experience of getting to know so much about business on the island?
From really early on in my career I was out there, I wanted to meet people, I wanted to get to know people in the business community. So whenever there was any sort of networking opportunity I was like, ‘I’ll go to that, I’ll try that, I’ll have a go at that, I’ll meet those people!’ I think that’s really helped me now.
If I’m in something I really want to be good at it and make sure I take every opportunity. I guess pushing myself to do that is easier here because it’s a smaller community. People are really interested in developing others and bringing them up through the ranks, so it’s not just that you have to be a certain level of seniority to go to events.
What are some myths about the Isle of Man that you would like to dispel?
The Isle of Man is easier to do business with [than people think] because you can see people face to face, they’re two minutes down the road, you can go and chat to them, which is obviously different if you’re in a bigger country.
It’s just a lot more personable. If you need to get somewhere someone will know the person you need to approach, you don’t need to ring a call centre to find a generic response, you can speak to the person you need to speak to.
How do you find your work/life balance at KPMG?
I think it’s really good, obviously I do work in a client-facing industry, there will be client demands we have to meet but [out-of-hours demands] are very much the exception rather than the norm. 31st December is the tax return filing deadline for corporates, so you know it’s going to be a bit busier, but ‘a bit busier’ isn’t working until midnight, you’re still going home at seven or eight o’clock, to eat, sleep, see your friends and family.
Is there flexible working and do you use it?
It is encouraged because you want happy staff, because they work better for you. But people just need to get used to asking.
What would you say are the key skills and traits you look for when you’re hiring someone?
People being engaged, interested, motivated, and being super organised, because for a lot of things if you’re organised and you’re motivated and you want to do a good job, the technical side will follow.
Do you think that introduction of technology has meant a wider variety of people with different skills have been able to come into the industry?
I think soft skills are just so much more important now than they were. We’ve got a 50/50 split between accountants in our tax department and non-accountants.
Tax is so technical nowadays you have to be able to explain to people what is happening and why, so a lot of it is about the soft skills and how do you get your point across so they understand it, in a friendly way.
What is it like trying to encourage young people to come in to work from outside the Isle of Man?
KPMG has a huge amount of non-local recruitment. We’ve got quite a lot of South Africans, probably Filipino predominantly at the moment I would say, and a couple of Indians. They come over here to work and they absolutely love it because everyone’s friendly to them and they live quite close, there’s bits going on and they’re allowed to be part of whatever they’d like to be part of. Our Facebook is fantastic, you just go, ‘I’m interested in ‘x,’’ and everyone posts comments on how to join clubs in those type of things, everyone comes to help.