Audit Associate Review

At Grant Thornton my job title is Audit Associate and my daily tasks revolve around assisting with completing annual audits for clients. Each week can vary a lot from the previous one, due to the massive variety of clients we have at Grant Thornton. Each day however, we are required to liase with the client, other audit team members, as well as managers and partners in order to get the audit completed. On an average audit, as an associate, we would be given sections of the audit file to complete, and it will be our responsibility to complete those sections within the time we are given. We also have the opportunity to interact with people outside of the firm, such as sixth form colleges as part of the North West School Liasion team, trying to raise awareness of our School Leaver Programmes and helping others with their application process.

So far during my time at Grant Thornton I have completed three quarters of my AAT qualification, and I hope to complete this and then move onto studying ACA in August. I have also had the opportunity to attend internal training courses held at our internal training centre in High Wycombe. These courses not only help and add to our technical knowledge, but also assist us with our day to day work, and how to improve our performances in work. During my time at Grant Thornton, my confidence has improved massively since I started in 2012, and my knowledge of audit, accountancy in general, and especially how businesses work has grown a lot.

Because of the fact that audit can be so varied, I really am enjoying my work at the moment. In addition to the variety of clients, we also get to work on a wide variety of audit teams, which also makes the days a lot more interesting. I feel that company culture is growing at the minute, with a lot more social events being organised both on an office and a department level. My programme has definitely met my expectations so far, and has probably gone a little bit further too, as if I'm honest, I wasn't entirely sure what I was letting myself in for! However, this programme has definitely been one of the best choices I have made so far.

At Grant Thornton we have a lot of appraisal systems in place which means that there are a lot of opportunities for you to receive appreciation from managers and others that you work for on a regular basis.

The induction process was very well organised, and I thoroughly enjoyed my first few days at Grant Thornton. They let you know everything about your role, and what is expected straight away, which definitely helps with your job. We are very lucky at Grant Thornton that we are able to study on day release, meaning that we get a college timetable, and we attend college during the week, and given plenty of time off work to study.

The support I receive from my training provider is amazing, and all the tutors at college are on hand to answer any questions whatever the time! I look forward to my college days every week, knowing that no question is a stupid question for the guys at college.

I receive excellent support from my manager, and I know that if I have any issues or questions at work, she is generally the first person I would go to. If I do have any queries, my manager sorts everything out straight away for me, and always ensures that I am happy at work. We also have a buddy system in place, which means that all new trainees are assigned a buddy, which is normally an existing trainee that has been with the firm for about a year or so, and they are also on hand to answer any questions, both before and after your start date.

For a school leaver, you can't complain at all about the salary, it definitely covers travel, daily and living costs, and is also altered by location, depending on the average living costs for that location.

As mentioned before there are a lot of sports and social events that are organised throughout the year, for many different occasions. We also do a lot of charity work and there are always lots of opportunities to get involved with this too. As well as the North West School Liasion, we also operate a maths mentoring scheme with local schools as well.

Yes

I would definitely recommend Grant Thornton to a friend as it has been a really great opportunity for me to start my career, and everyone who works here is incredibly friendly and professional, and I have learnt a lot more than I imagined and I'm not even half way through my programme yet. There are also plenty of opportunities to progress through the firm, even after the programme has finished.

I would definitely recommend to do your research before applying for Grant Thornton, and before the interview. You need to make sure that the programme is the right one for you, as there are many different ones within Grant Thornton. I would also try and contact trainees that are currently working for us to get personal experiences, or visit the Spilling the Beans blog that we currently have. One thing that I wish I was told a little bit more about, would be the travel involved, especially within Audit. As we work from clients sites generally, we can be anywhere within the North West! So definitely be prepared to travel.