Assistant Executive Review

I joined the EY School Leaver Programme in October 2012. I work in Assurance and focus on clients in the Banking and Capital Markets sector. Assurance involves making enquiries and reviewing a client's financial statements to ensure that they are accurately reported. A large part of my day-to-day job involves interacting with both the client and colleagues. On the client side, I often send out requests for information and also arrange and attend meetings to ask questions and make enquiries. One of things that I enjoy about working in Assurance is that it is very team-based with different members of the team taking responsibility for different aspects of the audit; every day I will have interactions with colleagues to assign tasks among ourselves and understand the current status of work.

I've been on the EY School Leaver Programme for nearly 4 years and during this time I've learnt a huge amount, both in terms of technical knowledge as well as practical skills which I hope will stand me in good stead going forwards. I have been studying towards the ACA qualification with the ICAEW and have completed 12 out of the 15 exams so far. On top of this, I have also attended a number of internal training courses on a range of topics including Auditing, Client Asset Audits, Microsoft Excel and people skills. I also feel like I have significantly developed a number of softer skills such as my ability to work in a team, communication and time management. I certainly feel that this is one of the most beneficial aspects of the School Leaver Programme.

I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed every aspect of working in Audit. Like most jobs, there are parts which I enjoy and parts which I don't enjoy doing. I really like managing a team, working with other people and holding meetings with the client but certainly don't look forward to some of the more manual tasks like agreeing numbers in the financial statements to the individual invoices! I really enjoy the culture within EY; my Department is filled with intelligent and motivated people who are more than happy to take time to help develop my understanding and the understanding of others and I have certainly learnt a huge amount from colleagues during my time at EY.

This certainly varies depending on the manager which I'm working for. Certain managers are far more forthcoming and open in showing their appreciation for my hard work and when working for these managers, I certainly feel like my contribution is valued. Unfortunately, there have been a couple of managers who are less outright in showing their appreciation and when working on these teams, I often feel undervalued and not appreciated. However, this is more related to particular individuals rather than EY as a whole. In fact, I feel that EY as a whole has a good culture of recognising hard work and achievements. The year-end assessment process is very good at recognising contributions and hard-work which certainly makes me feel more valued as an employee. We are required to receive written feedback from all of our managers and I think that this is a great way for managers to show their appreciation for the hard work over the course of the year. Recently, EY made some changes to the exam schedule for the School Leaver Programme following a number of requests made by my colleagues. This really made me feel valued because a number of Partners had taken the time to discuss the Programme and make changes in response to requests and suggestions.

Overall, I would say that the programme is well-structured, however I also feel that there is some room for improvement. Upon joining EY, we had a 2 week induction. This included an induction into how to use each of the IT systems as well as internal training on audit. Each year, we are given our exam timetable. This outlines all of the dates when we will be studying at college as well as the dates of our exams. While it is very useful to receive this timetable, I feel that EY could certainly improve in this regard by distributing this timetable earlier. Often the timetable is sent round with only a couple of months notice which makes it challenging when balancing client commitments and booking holidays. The study periods are very well organised. We are booked onto a tuition course where a tutor will cover the exam content and then we have a revision course where tutors help to prepare us for the exam by setting us mock exams and looking at previous exam questions.

Our exam training is provided by Kaplan Financial who have been excellent in preparing me for exams. The tutors are very good at explaining the content in a way that is easy to understand and are always available to answer questions. Kaplan also have a revision course which we attend; this is really useful as it allows us to look through past exam questions and improve our exam technique.

I feel that EY has a really strong culture of supporting and helping other people's development. Colleagues always find time to explain things to me and help to develop my understanding. We are also given a counselling manager which I have found really useful. The counselling manager is the first port of call for any problems and also help with the year-end assessment process.

I am very fortunate in that I am able to commute into work from my family home. As a result, my salary package covers all of my costs while leaving me with some disposable income to spend. However, I do feel that my salary does not reflect the level of responsibility and level of performance that is expected of me especially when compared with colleagues on the graduate programme. There are often times when I am responsible for over-seeing the work of a graduate yet this is not reflected in salary.

EY are very strong in this regard. We have quarterly departmental events which involve receiving an update on the performance of the business as well as a social activity. I really enjoy these events and think they provide a great opportunity to socialise with colleagues. During my time at EY, I have also played football with members of the department outside of work.

Yes

I think EY has a really good culture and is a great environment to work in. The people are really friendly and more than happy to take the time to explain things and develop your understanding. I have found that EY provide a lot of support to people on the School Leaver Programme particularly with the challenging set of exams. I also feel that EY provides a number of challenges and opportunities which help to develop your skills and knowledge which will certainly stand you in good stead going forwards.

The EY Careers YouTube page has videos which explain the application process in detail and give insights into the best way to prepare. I would certainly recommend any applicants to watch these videos before applying to EY as it will definitely stand you in good stead. My top tip for the interview is to try and remain as calm as possible. I know this might sound like a cliché and is certainly easier said than done, but it does make a big difference. The interviewer is not trying to catch you out, they just want to know more about you and the skills/experiences you have,so try and keep that in mind. For the assessment days, my best piece of advice is to try and strike a balance between getting involved in group discussions while not becoming too dominant. It's important that you can work in a team so you need to make sure that your thoughts are heard but you also need to make sure everyone else gets involved as well.