Team Secretary Review

My job title was a team secretary and this involved doing work for a large variety of departments and grades. Common tasks in this role which I would perform most days would be to raise fees, send out couriers, rolling forward accounts to the new financial year and organising the post each day for the different departments

The title of the qualification I gained from doing this apprenticeship is called the Advanced Level Apprenticeship in Business Administration in the Business Skills Sector. During my time obtaining this qualification I attended webinars every month with a tutor at BPP and they went through the content of the next exam and took time to answer any questions people had at the time. I also attending a training session called personal strengths which was a 2 day course learning about what kind of personality I have and also how to best deal with other personality types in communication. I found this a very interesting and informative training session as it has made me think more deeply about how I interact with different people.

I found this programmed fairly enjoyable as it involved a lot of interaction with different people and it also allowed me to do a large variety of tasks which I think is very useful for a first office job as it gives you a base levels of skills which allowed me to transfer those learnt skills once I had completed the apprenticeship and moved into a new role in the firm.

At KPMG I felt valued by 95% of the people that I worked with. One example is a project which I had undertaken for the enterprise team which took me around 2 months to complete I received internal recognition through KPMGs reward scheme which is given when a colleague believes that someone has gone above and beyond in a certain task. As a result of this I was given praise by the enterprise team, feedback was given to my manager and I received a gift voucher as a thank you. During the project I always had people who I could contact if I had any queries and regular progress catchups to ensure the project was going smoothly.

The programme was fairly well structured as I was always given 3.5 hours of study time a week to use in work. The only issue was that during particularly bust periods this time was sometimes hard to fit in and there were often times where I would not take the study time in order to keep ahead with the job. I was given a mentor who was an experienced member of the secretarial team who supported me by teaching various useful skills and also was available should I have any issues or queries about certain aspects of a job.

I received a very good amount of support from my training provider as I had been allocated a tutor from BPP who I could contact at any time through email or the phone and he would always be happy to guide me if I was having difficulties revising or understanding course work. The webinars provided by the training provider was also very useful as it also allowed you to connect with the other apprentices and get an idea of how they were managing when getting through exam/course work.

I received a good amount of support from my employer as I was given an allocated buddy for my first month who would sit with me every day and teach me everything about the role and answer any questions I had. On top of this I also had my mentor as a second line of support who was also very informative and was happy to listen to when I needed help with anything.

As I live at home I don't have too many outgoings in terms of daily costs and I also live fairly close to Manchester meaning my train fares were not too expensive. Overall the salary package supported me very sufficiently and gave me a good amount of disposable income.

There are plenty of opportunities you can take outside work such as training courses and opportunities to shadow other workers to get a taste of what different roles are like. Each KPMG employee is also given a volunteering allowance of 7 days a year which allow employees to take some time out of work in order to so some volunteer work of their choice.

Yes

Joining KPMG has been a great experience for me and has been a great first step in getting a career. For an apprenticeship the pay is very reasonable and KPMG gives everyone chances to learn and progress as long as you put the work in.

ensure that you use all the allocated study time you are given as the firm wants you to use this time in order to pass your exams. The reason I say this is because at times I had a large workload and this caused me to skip out study time and as a result of this I failed one of the exams and had to resit which in the long run wasted more of my free time than if I had taken study time in the first place and passed first time