ASSOCIATE Review

On a day to day basis I manage the first year grads and school leavers with their fieldwork, providing feedback where necessary. I also am responsible for client and team communications which involves circulating and managing work status update trackers. I also arrange any team or client meetings where required.

My confidence has grown massively since starting the programme as I have become a part of many different work based teams as well as being a member of the social committee an EY hockey team. I have also improved on my communication skills via email, phone and face to face.

I enjoy my job but it is the people that make the experience for me. The EY culture is one which makes everyone feel welcomed, it is a very diverse and flexible workplace which is accommodating to everyone's individual needs. Recently there has been a real push on managing a work life balance which I have had the chance to get involved with.

The programme is well structured with EY managing the work side and Kaplan managing the education aspect with the EY ACA Team coordinating the two. I think there is a good support network which encourages people to be the best at what they do. We are each given a buddy and counsellor within our first week on the job and so we have continuous formal and informal support where needed.

We are each given a buddy and counsellor within our first week on the job and so we have continuous formal and informal support where needed. We are given excused leave for exams and there is rarely a push back on this, teams tend to be supportive of studying as everyone has had to pass the exams in order to work at EY.

Kaplan offer both physical classroom study as well as online resources. You are well equipped with learning materials either way which are very clearly laid out however I do feel the study manual is not necessarily required as the Kaplan workbook provides more than enough information for your certificate level exams.

I think the 14 exams we are required to sit on the school leaver programme give you a good overall understanding of the role however you are not required to use the skills you learn from the exams until you are of a much higher level when you are required to assess the reasons behind problems rather than just identify the problems as you would do at the start of your programme.

My confidence has grown massively since starting the programme as I have become a part of many different work based teams as well as being a member of the social committee an EY hockey team. There is also a women's network that I am a part of which is just one of many networks available to employees.

Yes

I think EY is a good company to work for, they offer many opportunities such as secondments and working abroad. Within my first year at EY I had already travelled to Poland and I am travelling to Amsterdam this year with Singapore and India on the horizon. The people and culture is second to none and so I would definitely recommend.

I would advise students to research EY as a company and all they have to offer to ensure that you start in a department that you can see yourself in for the long term however that being said there are always opportunities to move internally and so this is not necessarily required but I think doing your research is definitely a good idea.