Business Associate Review

I am an audit associate, within a department that primarily deals with retail clients. I am responsible for audit work assigned to me, which primarily involves testing the companies balance sheet and profit and loss general ledger accounts. I am out at the client site most of the time so have lots of interaction with both my colleagues at EY and the client contacts. I would like to do some different work where i currently however i am overall happy with my programme.

I have learnt to deal with difference types of clients, and different personalities both within my own teams and clients. This has improved my communication skills greatly, and has given me more confidence in different situations, including team and client meetings and calls. I am on a programme that enable me to study for the ACA qualification at the same time as my on the job work. I have currently gained a CFAB qualification for completing 6 of the 15 ACA exams.

Whilst the job can be challenging at times, mainly due to the long hours duing busy season and other year end audits, I get a feeling of achievement everytime you complete an audit. The culture at EY is good, with lots of team events at the end of the audit, to make it feel as though your time and effort was worthwhile. EY is also fleexible with its working environment, enabling people to work at client site, in the office, and occasionally at home if required. Whilst th job was not entirely what I was expecting, it exceeded my expectations in terms of how interesting the job is. I enjoy understanding how my clients business works.

Despite the size of the company, it does feel as though you are in the companies minds, and this has been proven by the fact that we have recently been put into department families, where we can discuss any maters we may want to raise. The freedom to have a voice within specific groups within the organisation is really motivating too as i feel now we are listened to more than ever and that we are valued and heard by the heads of the company in terms of what we can do to improve parts of it.

As we are the first year of school leavers at EY, it has been hard to establish what the structure of our programme is going to look like over the 5 years. Whilst this has been a negative, the programme structure so far has been effective, with both the support I get on the job and through training, as well as the college support for exams. I think there is definitely room to improve but overall no major problems so far so i can't fault it too much.

When at college and during exams, the training team (Kaplan) supported me efficently. I think that the tutors were quite nice and friendly and gave us the support we need. Unfortunately we were not at the training centre much and sometimes this felt like we were different to the other students however we had access online to their website and we were able to email our tutors when we wanted too so this was really helpful if we were stuck on some work during the week and really needed the help for this too.

EY provides me with both a councillor and a department family, where I can discuss any issues or thoughts about work. The managers and the teams I have worked on have also been very supportive throughout my programme and i definitely would praise them quite a lot as it's not their job to help us and support us as much as they did. I think there could be a few tweaks to the programme but we definitely got the support from a lot of specific people within the company for sure.

Due to the costs of living in London, the majority of my salary immediately gets sacrificed on rent and bills. Whilst the salary for my age is satisfying, it would be nice to have a salary more in line with the grads, who arrive at EY a year after us (and therefore the year below). As we are the ones coaching these less experienced grads, it would be nice to have a salary closer to theirs as it can be a real struggle to have a social life as well as pay off expenses every month for a lot of us.

There are EY clubs including sporting clubs, however due to my personal commitments elsewhere I am not a member of any. We are imformed about the clubs and any offers or events going on in the local area and it is always nice to hear about these. I think that most events are put on by staff so it's difficult to answer this question in terms of the business and what they do for us but there are certainly opportunities outside to meet up with other employees and have a chat in a casual environment.

Yes

Overall, its a great experience that you could not experience anywhere else, at such a young age. I think that you may get a better wage elsewhere but minimum wage for a school leaver or apprentice is a lot lower than you think. Eventually if you stick to it you will meet a lot of new and friendly people, have work experience and also gained a lot of new sckills to you learn from working within the company. I would highly reccomend anyone to go for it especially if they are unsure what their future is.

Be yourself during your interview and aplication and dont get too nervous, as all interviewers and assessors are helpful and friendly. Also research the role you are applying for, as accountancy has many areas and it's nice to put the effort in and then show this is you're lucky enough to get an interview and talk to a couple members of staff. Ensure you actually enjoy the process and learn from the application and interview process as if you are unlucky getting in you can use this for your next application somewhere anyway.