Assistant Senior Review

Assistant Senior - On a daily basis I am in charge of the day to day running of the audit, this involves coaching staff below me as well as feeding any issues up to managers. There is a lot of responsibility involved in making sure that the audit is progressing in time to meet deadlines. In addition it is your responsibility to ensure that the work performed by the staff working on your team is to a high quality. Day to day I really enjoy the work that I do the only criticism is that due to tight deadlines and a lack of staff it is very difficult to really achieve your best and actually enjoy the role.

Training courses are run every year and are always great. Not only do you learn a lot about the role but you also get the opportunity to meet with a number of people from across the country.

Going into the programme I had no idea on how it was going to work or what role I will be performing and given I was in the first year intake there was no body that was able to give any insight. Although this was the case I thought I was coming in and would be given more admin roles however this was not the case. From the outset we have been treated in line with the graduates that started in the same year. I really enjoyed my first few years with the firm my only reservations being in relation to the fact that we are expected to perform the same work as graduates even though we are given a lesser job title thus pay and are not recognised for performing above our level as it is 'expected'. Going into 3rd and 4th year you are expected to take on executive roles and often find yourself coaching people that are on £4k more than you and when questioning about this we are always given the same reasoning 'they went to university'.

In my first two years of the scheme I received amazing feedback and achieved the highest year end rating possible. Although this was great at the time I feel like this hindered me going forward as managers 'expect' me to be performing well above my role without recognising that although it is expected it is still an achievement. This has really disheartened me in the last year. In addition to this although we are expected to perform these roles we do not receive the pay to reflect the additional work.

Given I was part of the first year intake there was a number of areas that had not been thought about such as job titles progression of pay etc. but that was to be expected. From what I have seen they have made conscience efforts to improve the scheme for the 2nd and 3rd lot of intake

We study with Kaplan financial and they are a great help, tutors are available on email or after class to help with any queries.

You receive very little support, due to the way our college is set up we have a week of college followed by a week of work up until the exams. In the times between college no consideration is given that we are having to go home to revise as the job role remains exactly the same thus does expectations. 2 weeks before the exams we have 8 days in college and rather than giving us off the additional 2 days we have to use holiday. Given that these 2 weeks are not normally long enough to revise additional holiday is usually used.

Although the pay isn't bad for my age the responsibilities and long hours is not reflected in the amount of pay. For example in the month of February, due to being in busy season, I worked out I was paid less than £5 an hour. In addition to this we are expected to coach and lead teams where members of that team are on £4k more than you which is extremely difficult.

Due to the long hours it is very hard to manage much outside of the normal course of business.

Yes

The scheme is extremely good in regards to training and qualifications.

I would only apply to join the EY school leaver scheme is this is 100% the career you would like as the hours are very long and the work is demanding.