Business Support & Outsourcing - Trainee Review

My daily work at BDO consists of helping clients keep their accounts upto date on a monthly basis. This involves using a variety of accounting softwares and packages such as Xero and Quickbooks to process business activity and their transactions. I do regular bookkeeping of invoices, import bank statements, reconciling, creating journals, making bank payments and updating working papers.

My overall use of technology has drastically improved since being here and new skills are picked up everyday. The main thing that i've learnt is the more advanced functions of excel, which I usually use on a daily basis, and my knowledge of data handling has improved massively through this. I would also say that I've developed my communication skills as i've begun communicating through clients via emails and my confidence of doing this has gone up.

I thoroughly enjoy my time here at BDO doing my course, there is a great balance between learning skills and knowledge and also putting that into practice in the real world and using live data. I am given more responsibilities as I progress and this is rewarding and also motivating as I take on more work once I have the confidence to achieve and complete certain jobs

I would say that the Learning and Development team here at BDO are great in setting out everyone's individual educational paths. My course tuition is booked far in advance and so are my exams so that I can plan my work load and my personal time for the months to come.

The team here are brilliant with supporting me during the time I have been here. Everyone is always happy to help and I feel more than comfortable speaking to my manager about any issues or queries that I may have. There is also a lot of guidance in place to ensure that I am progressing as I should be.

BPP have great facilities and course content. They have a variety of revision and study materials to equip you with the confidence you need to get through your exams. You are always encouraged to contact your tutor for any guidance and help that you may need, so there is a great support network there to utilise

Learning the theory behind the daily role that I undertake at work helps to solidify my knowledge. It is also useful because you can see how the theory to accounting applies in the real world as you come across various tasks at work. I have also noticed that when I come across a new piece of work or challenge, I may already know a little bit about it as I've come across it in studies.

The firm is really encouraging on networking between offices and between teams in offices. There is a huge effort made to organise team building events and networking events so that different teams can mingle and find out more about the work that goes on in other parts of the firm

Yes

There is a great atmosphere at BDO, and the culture here encourages everyone to be themselves. There is huge opportunity to learn and develop yourself whilst working with a huge mix and variety of clients. Your knowledge base is always developing and improving as you are given new responsibilities as you progress and this is really rewarding as a young apprentice in a large firm.

Be yourself and ensure that the role you are applying to is fit for you. Do your research on the type of work that you would be doing on a daily basis to get a feel of whether that position is right for you. Look into some informaton on the firm itself as well to understand the culture.