Audit Senior Review

I am responsible for completing audits on various clients, working with various EY teams. I will interact with clients to understand their processes and hold meetings/discussions to gain evidence and documents to help with the audit. I'll document these discussions and evidence on excel/word.

I am much better at using the computer, especially excel. I have learnt communication skills within EY teams to coach juniors on the work, and with client teams so that they are keen to help me with the audit, even when I am making difficult or large requests e.g. asking them to dig out 200 invoices.

Sometimes I am alone on client site which can get boring with no EY staff, especially when I am away from home with work staying in a hotel. I didn't expect so much travel which I enjoy overall. The culture is more focussed on hours than output, which makes it difficult to get credit for work that didn't at least seem like it took a lot of time (even if it was complicated or challenging in other ways).

Internal recognition isn't very common as the attitude seems to be that if something goes well it is because the client has made it easy (by helping by providing evidence quickly for example), whereas if something goes badly it's still our responsibility and blame. There are few additional tasks or projects I can get involved with but I believe this is because I am not based in the larger London offices.

Team hierarchy and support on my work are good as I feel I have access to the knowledge and guidance day to day to perform my role. I am the third intake for my programme overall so the programme is still being changed each year to find the best way to do it i.e. when to do exams, what order to do exams, etc

Studying and support seems sufficient as I am given a moderate amount of time off for revision and to learn the courses to sit my exams. Communications on my exams etc can be difficult as the teams dealing with these things are sometimes slow and unknowledgeable.

Depending on the issue I sometimes wouldn't know who to go to for help or guidance, for example I wanted to get unpaid leave and it took weeks to arrange and find the right person to ask about this. Overall most people are looking to help me if they can.

Travel is paid for by my employer and I have been able to afford to move out. Earlier on in previous years my salary would have been too low to move out.

As the Liverpool office is quite small Manchester has occasional events outside of work that are too far to travel to. As I am always travelling with work I can never know where I will be on a certain evening so weekend events are often difficult to attend.

Yes

If they were looking for a careen in finance I believe EY is better than the other big 4 because it is ahead of the other firms on diversity and inclusiveness and flexible working. Furthermore, the business apprenticeship programme is a big head start in a career in finance as it puts you at a very similar level to a graduate.

Learn to drive if you are joining audit as there is a lot of travel. Be yourself on assessment day as they are not looking for a certain type of person, and everyone has strengths that they could bring to the role.