Associate Review

Auditing the financial statements of various companies. Using different approaches to test the clients accounts. Holding meetings with clients to discuss issues found. Understanding client processes and assessing their effectiveness and the effectiveness of their systems and staff to fulfill their responsibilities. Most of my job is using sampling based testing to find out if the balances they say they have are actually true and fair.

External training I am doing working towards my ACA, which I will complete in 4.5 years and doing a level 7 government apprenticeship in accounting and taxation. Internal training is often held in London and can be anywhere from a days training, to a full weeks where I would stay in a hotel and go out to dinner with my other apprentices in the evenings. The quality of training is, overall, very high. Though sometimes it can be harder to apply to my day to day roles. Personally and professional I feel like I've learned so much. Apart from learning to think more critically about whats presented to me and the more mundane hard skills that go with the role (Audit and accounting methodology), the biggest improvement I've noticed is with my interpersonal skills. Due to the nature of my job in which I have to go up to and talk with clients regularly social anxiety that I used to have doesn't nearly impact me as much. The on the job learning is the biggest strength of this program

Overall I do enjoy my program. I'm now 6 months into it and still think I made the right decision. It is however, the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It does make A-Levels look easy in comparison and If you would prefer to relax for a few years going to Uni and doing a graduate program would be the right choice. During 'Busy season' my hours would vary from 45 - 60 chargeable hours a week + 5 hours of work on the weekend. I would say that on average I'm working for 55 hours a week at the moment + doing a small amount of work on Saturday. Despite all of this I still still enjoy my program. I enjoy being challenged daily but the stress is very high and my job can make me quite anxious. However this is mainly when there is a peak in my workload and I feel like I would have felt stress at some point no matter what I was doing. E.g. exam season at uni

My program is very well structured, all the way from my induction, to time at college and the buddy and councilor system that my work has. A buddy is someone who you can ask the day to day questions that you would have during your first year (e.g. how to set yourself up on the printers, advice on studying in college etc). I feel like the relationship with my buddy could have been improved, as they were on clients that were in the other end of the country I didn't actually see them until I had been working for 3 months, at which point all of my day to day questions had been answered by someone else. My councilor is basically responsible for my career and what we have instead of a line manager. Any queries that I have which I can't go to my buddy for I would go to my councilor for instead. (e.g. discussing how i was getting on and managing work etc) Task delegation and team hierarchy can vary from team to team. In my experience it has been very good but some of my friends on different clients have not had as good of a team structure as the clients I have been working on.

I feel like I receive excellent support from my employer. In terms of the more soft skills of support such as guidance with any problems that I'm having. I haven't really been able to fault it at this point. One thing to note though is that you have to reach out for help yourself if you need it. No one is going to come to you but if you seek out someone for help I've always gotten it. This would normally be your counselor but depending on the quality of your counselor depends on the quality of the support you receive. For me It's been very good, but other colleagues have experienced different.

The support I receive from my training provider meets my expectations. All the resources are there if i need them. Although having not sat my exams yet I can't really comment on the effectiveness of it. I feel like the learning support and materials we receive properly prepares us for our professional qualifications.

Once again this one is hard for me to comment on as I have only studied for one exam at the moment, as most of ours are done in the summer. I feel like the accountancy exam I have studied for has given me knowledge of basic accounting principles that I do apply when working with the client. Though most of my learning is done on the job and that is the learning I have used the most

As I am in a smaller office outside of London I am not involved in any extra-curricular activities, the ones that I would want to go to are based in London and it is unrealistic for me to travel to them. The ones that are there in my area are not ones that I would enjoy (football etc) and I haven't had the chance to go to any professional networking events yet, although they are there for when I am more senior.

Yes

I'd recommend EY to a friend because there is a broad range of clients to work on and it is genuinely interesting. Furthermore, this program in my opinion provides an alternative to Uni that I believe gives better opportunities for development that a Big 4 company provides, and the level 7 apprenticeship (masters degree equiv) and ACA gives many exit opportunities when you want to leave the big 4. All this while being paid in year 1 (£17,200 outside of london or roughly £21,000 in London) and being debt free makes it a very attractive program.

The application process consists of a few steps. Step one is an online application which is fairly easy - and just requires you to fill out some basic information. If you meet the minimum requirements you will be invited to the next step. Step 2 - Online assessment. For the school leavers program you need to complete a Maths, comprehension and English test. The best way to practice these is by doing sample tests online. I do not know the % of people who move on to the next step of the application process as this is not released to candidates. Step 4 - Assessment center. This step has changed since I applied as they are now held in a couple big sessions in London. These are different every year but there is some great advise on the student room on how to succeed in assessment centers. Some good advise is to not be overbearing on other people, these are all about seeing how you work with others so if you're only pushing your opinion forward rather than helping the team as a whole and helping everyone to contribute it won't reflect well on you. Step 4 - Partner interview, I think these are now held on the same day as the assessment center but I am unsure as I don't have anything to do with recruitment. These are the interviews you have after you have passed the assessment center. You normally have to give a presentation on a specific topic, and will then have a discussion about it with the partner. These interviews are more like a conversation rather that a throwing questions at you kind of interview. This is because as you will be working under these partners who interview you, they more want to see if you would be a good fit for their firm. My advise for this step would be to practice your presentation with family, friends and teachers/tutors at school. For example I practiced with my tutor at school and my economics teacher as my parents did have experience that would have helped me. The main thing I would have liked to be more clear is the pay. As said above this is (17.2k outside of London and around 21k in london) In my offer letter it said that I would earn 16.5k but when I got my contract this had increased to 17.2k.