Audit Associate Review

My job title was an Audit Associate within the office. My daily tasks involved going to different client sites where I would undertake a variety of different activities; ranging from interactions with client personnel whilst performing audit testing, internal staff meetings to doing work on excel. I was given a range of responsibilities, and got the opportunity to work in a number of different sized teams where I was allocated different parts of the financial statements to perform audit testing on.

It has provided an invaluable opportunity for me to build up my confidence levels and people skills due to the vast amount of interaction with client personnel and also people within the PwC office. In addition, it has helped develop my Microsoft excel skills. PwC provided a huge amount of support and internal training, and more senior team members were always on hand and willing to coach me through work I had little experience on. This support network helped me get the most from my placement by developing a number of new skills.

I really enjoy my programme - the combination of paid work placements and studying at university has proved a great way to develop my practical skills and put in to practice what I have learnt at university. The programme has exceeded my expectations.

PwC has made me feel very valued as an employee. My peoples manager provided me with a large amount of support and other staff members would check up on me to ensure I was settling into the company without any issues. On the jobs that I worked on, other team members and the manager on each job provided me with feedback on how I performed and it was great to receive internal recognition. This made me feel very much valued and kept me motivated at all times.

My programme thus far has been very well organised and structured. Before my first placement, I was provided with a week long training course at the university followed by 2 induction days when I started within the PwC office. This helped me settle into working life very easily. I was allocated a PwC buddy in addition to my people manager who both set up meetings with me at multiple points during my placement.

My training providers provided me with a large amount of support. In addition, PwC has an online network which helps provide guidance with any problems we many encounter. During my experience on placement, I felt that there was a very positive attitude towards supporting me and that the support network was very accessible.

I received a large amount of support from my employer - as previously mentioned, my peoples manager was always on hand if I encountered any problems and he regularly arranged meetings with me to ensure that I was settling in without any problems. I was also provided with a PwC buddy which was a great way to mingle and meet other people within the office.

As my accommodation and living costs are met by the company, my salary meets my costs very well. It has helped fund my daily and social costs very well and has allowed me to put some of it into savings.

PwC provided a number of outside of work social opportunities - there was a variety of sports teams in the office including football. The Christmas party was great and there were usually socials every couple of weeks. The office is located near to a number of restaurants, bars and the train station meaning that it was easy to access opportunities to do a variety of things outside of work.

Yes

It is a highly reputable company which has ranked No.1 student employed for a number of years - during my work placement it became very evident why this was. The support and training provided by the company was to a very high standard and the client nature of my job provided a variety of different tasks to do which made it really interesting.

The application process did involve an assessment day at the university - during the day I had to do a numerical test as well as an interview and group task. In addition to this, there were certain grade requirements.