Apprentice Review

I am on a rotational programme. I have been in different areas of KPMG, such as audit, tax and advisory. The role depends on the team and department. As you have limited experience, you mainly do admin or very basic work although some departments can be very interesting chargeable work. The reason why I gave 4/10 is because most of the work is very technical and the team only give you the admin jobs or nothing some days.

I have learnt a lot of new skills and developed plenty. This may sound very basic but my typing skills and the speed and errors have improved a lot. You have to send a lot of emails to clients and senior members of the team, and therefore have to very formal and help to develop your writing skills. I have been on excel and audit training which I thought was beneficial to me. The reason why I gave 8/10 is because I think the management are great with helping the apprentices develop our skills but the individual departments don't really care about your skills, very rarely do i get members from my team helping me develop any skills.

I think mainly enjoy this programme is because of the other apprentices. There are over 70 of us in each year. You can meet with them at lunch time, share ideas, have a laugh and work as well. Personally the management are good too with helping apprentices out( depends on the situation). I like coming to work, having something to do and increase my knowledge. I have given 4/10 this is mainly because of the workload.

This totally depends which team you are in, some teams are absolutely brilliant to work with whilst others really don't care about you. Sometimes i feel like other people in the firm look down at apprentices because we are not "educated" as they are. This can be a good as they give you more help but mainly bad as you feel isolated within your team/ firm. I am going to give 3/10.

This a new programme which started in 2015. My year is the "guinea pigs" of this programme and so it is not organised at all. The management are still developing the programme each day. The rotational departments are unsystematic. Some apprentice are told couple of days before the move to a new department which means that they have no time to prepare to move to the new team. The management are saying different things compared to what they said a year ago. This rotational programme looks brilliant on paper but chaotic in existence.

The training provider are BPP. They don't really communicate with the apprentice nor reach out to us. Compared to sixth form or college, there is no personal communication between apprentices and the tutors. Its like university where you sit down, your just a random person and listen to them speak and take the information into your brain. I gave them 4/10 because personally i have had experiences where BPP where very unorganised,

Again this depends in the department you are in. Currently i am not receiving much support as i expected and what i was promised. Everyone is very busy with their client work they forget about me. Some people are brilliant with supporting you but it depends who you go for support. My Performance manager in the 360 team is great. She is always there to support me but current team are like the random people you see on the train - you don't have a conversation with nor smile, This is why i gave 1/10

In comparison to other big 4's KPMG does not pay well. The work we do are grad level but we get 2/3 of their salary. I understand that they have been to university, but they have got as much as experience as we have (I am in my second year). The grads chose to go university and when they chose to university they had complete awareness that they will be in debt of 27k. Us apprentices didn't choose to go university, we chose to invest our time to KPMG instead but still don't get appreciated as much as the grads which is disheartening. In few years’ time (having 3-5 years of experience) the firm believes we should get lower than the new grads who will step in the firm with very limited experience, this is why I am giving 1/10.

You have 6 days of volunteering which is great! There is plenty of events, socials, activities and clubs - this makes the culture of KPMG is great. There are BPP events, TEDX, and other training. The volunteering options are very limited, its mainly just promoting the programme and not actually doing anything with the community (from personal experience)

Yes

To put it on your CV, anyone will hire you. It looks great to have KPMG on your CV because then its easy to move around to the other big 4. Once you have KPMG on your CV, its as if you have stepped in the house of business. Other than that's KPMG is ok to work win as an apprentice, this is because you are the youngest in the firm and others tend to think they are smart and more experienced than you are.

Research what departments you would like to go into. Network with your team and make links because they can help you go far. Know what you want to achieve in life and what your end goal is. Is it to be promoted quickly? Salary? Location? Other life goals? Attend the workshops held by KPMG as this way you can come into KPMG and see what it looks like and capture how everyone is by observing. This review is me being completing honest. I do not want to sell you dreams and make you miss out university.