Tax Analyst Review

I am a tax analyst in real estate tax, which involves providing various types of support on deals, such as assisting in the take on procedures required in beginning a new deal, including completing 'conflict checks', 'take on processes', and 'engagement letters'. I also regularly complete fee analyses on ongoing projects in order to monitor the time we are incurring on various deals, so that Directors can ensure that we don't run over the fees.

I have learnt lots of new skills through the various training we have, such as the use of our internal management system, 'SAP'. I have also developed my business writing skills through being responsible for sending out various pieces of client correspondence. Furthermore, I developed my excel skills through the frequent use of excel for various tasks such as creating fee trackers.

I greatly enjoy my programme on account of many aspects of it. One reason I enjoy it is because of my team. My team is full of kind, fun and like minded people who are always happy to help me and many of them have been a mentor to me in my first few months here, despite not having any obligation to. I also enjoy the work itself, since it can be quite interesting when you're not doing the admin side of things. We all work very openly and cohesively with each other in my team and we all work quite closely together.

I feel very valued by Deloitte, because I can see that the work I do is pivotal to the rest of the work carried out by my team. My colleagues show a clear appreciation for the work I do and it is recognised. Deloitte puts me on many various development programmes which help to develop me both as a person, and as an employee, and this too demonstrates the value they place on us, especially with how expensive many of these programmes are to Deloitte. However, on the down side, I do have to do quite a bit of admin type work since it's my first year, which isn't the most exciting work but it is a necessary evil.

The programme is quite well structured, since Deloitte have altered it slightly to reflect feedback received over the past few years of the programme running. The programme is 5 years long, however I become fully qualified in 4 years. I take a number of exams over these four years, which are quite well spaced out, and I am provided college or self study time before each of these exams. I'm also given a time & experience manager and coach, which are colleagues who are quite senior to me, to help me develop over my first year and to ensure that I'm getting the right variety of work. We also have a spreadsheet which is called the 'analyst pathway', which contains various types of work which we should demonstrate so that we become ready for promotion, which is quite helpful. I also have to complete online submissions every month in my first year to my training provider, BPP, which demonstrate a key skill or behaviour from a list which they have. In honesty, these online submissions are quite pointless in my- and many others- opinions, since they're just time consuming and don't offer us anything.

We receive a fair bit of support from our training provider, in that they frequently check up on us and as if there's anything we need help with and we are also given a coach from our training provider as a point of contact. However, I feel the teaching quality isn't excellent, which often results in me having to teach myself some of the content again following college. This may be on account of having to squeeze the content in to a few days of learning, since the courses are quite intensive.

I receive a lot of support from my employer, which is reflected in the fact that all new joiners are allocated a buddy, time & experience manager and coach to help us in different aspects in our first few years at the firm. We're also encouraged to have regular check ins with these mentors of ours to ensure that we're doing fine.

My salary more than meets my costs, considering the fact that I'm still living at home since I'm 18 and thus have very few regular expenses. My main expenses are travel and food, and this takes up a small proportion of my monthly salary, therefore I'm able to save most of my income every month.

There are quite a few opportunities outside work from what I've heard, such as social events and various community events. However, I personally have not seen many of these myself and there seems to be very little advertisement of them, thus I have not been able to get involved in many. One which I have gotten involved in however, is a school mentoring programme, whereby those of us who volunteered were paired up with a year 11 student at an underprivileged school. We meet up with this student once a month to help them with any concerns they have regarding school/exams or just to help them come up with ideas on what they want to do in the future.

Yes

From what I've experienced so far, Deloitte is an excellent employer which places great value on its employees, which it demonstrates in many ways, from the numerous development programmes they put us through to the generous benefits they offer us. There is great prospects for career progression, with most people getting promoted very quickly- the standard time it takes to get to consultant grade is 2 years.

The application process isn't too difficult, it is just a standard set of psychometric tests. If you haven't done any of these before, I would suggest practising some online, and remember that you are not expected to complete every question in these tests and to get them right- you just need to move through the questions quickly and try to answer them to the best of your ability. The assessment centre can be somewhat tough. You have the group exercise, the written assessment, and finally the interview. For the group exercise you just need to make sure you're contributed to the group and not shying away too much- though I admit I accidentally fell into this trap during my exercise, but it still worked out! The written exercise you just need to try to think outside the box and be analytical. For the interview, it's just competency based questions, there's a lot of guidance for these online so just google it. But do remember, that you still must show a passion and desire for the job. All of this is finally followed by the partner interview, which if you've gotten to- you've probably got the job. However, don't get complacent because it's still not guaranteed yet. You have to demonstrate all the passion here again, but there are some competency based questions which come up again at this stage. At the beginning of the partner interview, you must deliver a presentation on a random topic which is given to you a few weeks beforehand, so you have enough time to prepare, but just make sure you do prepare. Just be confident and passionate.