Apprentice Review

Day to day my tasks can vary greatly. some days (especially in busy season in private equity) I had a variety of jobs to do which kept me busy. This also allowed me to be able to develop my skills needed to not only progress further in my career but also help me with my studies. During busy season I completed a lot of audit work (mainly testing) which was really interesting from stuff like testing the profit and loss accounts to drawdowns and distributions. Once busy season is over work is quite quiet so you can get a lot of admin (and revision) done.

Yes, I have learnt a great deal since starting at KPMG. I have only been here for 7 months but my communication skills has definitely developed greatly in this time. I have been on a lot of client sites so I have had to interact closely with clients and by having this opportunity I was able to improve how I should speak and send emails to them. I have also developed my team work and learned how to be adaptive as I worked in teams of different sizes (from 2 people to 40) and learning your role and what you can offer that team is a great skill to have.

I do really enjoy the programme. I loved the first rotation I have and I am sure when work picks up a bit I will also enjoy banking audit. In general the programme itself is set out nicely in terms of exams which is good. Luckily I have passed all my exams so far so have not had to experience a retake but the PQA team are really supportive if you try your hardest. I look forward to starting level 4 in October.

The programme is organised quite well to be able to give you a good amount of time in your placements with also breaks for college, study leave, exams, reflective statements which is nice as it gives you some time to see the rest of your cohort as you are split throughout the different areas of the business.

We do receive a lot of support from our employers and our apprenticeship team in terms of exams and giving us calls on what career paths we could take such as the ACA, CIMA or if we wanted to fast track or go down the actuarial route. We also have regular meetings with our performance managers to see how we are doing and they are always there to talk to.

BPP are very helpful and give us a lot of resources to work with. We have both in college lectures and online webinars (which I was initially worried about as I can get easily distracted but they give you plenty of breaks which is helpful). They provide us with the course materials which has all the information we need aswell as end of topic questions and summary pages. We also receive a question bank with more questions and past papers. Then we also have access to the Virtual learning environment which has copies of the course material in chapters which more end of topic questions and past papers. So in conclusion we get given a lot of support for the exams and we also have catch up calls with them to discuss our progress which is nice and you can see if your on target and if not what you need to do.

I feel it helps me perform better as I can start to link things I have learnt in my level 3 exams to things I have done in my day to day role at KPMG which I found quite exciting. The thing I have seen the most is probably advanced bookkeeping and final accounts prep in terms of journal entry and financial statements.

Yes there is a lot of extra curricular activities to do be able to get involved in. you can even set up one if you wanted to and if there is an interest in it. Also there is a lot of team socials to go to which is a nice way to meet the team

Yes

Its a great company to work for. They have a lot of benefits and reward schemes which is nice and you get recognised for your work which encourages you even more. They give you a phone and a laptop so you can work from home if you need to, they are quite flexible.

Be passionate about what you want to do. Know why you want to come to KPMG rather than the other big 4 and be yourself because KPMG is full of wonderfully different people which is why it is such a good place to work as you get to meet so many different people