Associate Review

I worked as an associate in Audit, specifically Insurance audit. I performed lots of testing work on a day-to-day basis and greatly improved my accounting knowledge and skills in a client-facing role. This meant that we, as a team, would have to travel to different locations to perform work, whether that be in the office, or on client site if we need to discuss work through with them.

Yes, I have developed a much greater understanding of Audit, in both improving my capabilities to perform testing and understand the whole process. However, I have also learnt a lot of soft skills through building relationships within the team I worked in, and also the client we worked with to provide our service.

I greatly enjoy it, there is a lot of good people on my course, and PwC do a great job in providing us with lots of benefits, such as accomodations/pay/reduced university tuition fees. However, I would say that I would like to be more integrated with others our age in the company.

I would say that this is an area where the programme can improve. I came into PwC feeling a little disheartened due to the on boarding experience leaving me unsure as to where I needed to be for my first day of work. However, as you start to do more jobs, you start to understand better how it all works and from then on the structure of the programme is good.

You receive a lot of support, since the employer coaches you and doesn't expect you to be an expert from the start. This was comforting since this is one of the areas that worries you the most when arriving to the first job. Also, from the teams I worked on, they were all very supporting and very nice people.

My training provider, The University of Nottingham, is alright, however, I often feel like their lectures are a quite boring, therefore, I find it hard to engage in them. I much prefer the approach of Lecture Capture, this is a great resource, however, some lecturers decide not to record and upload their lectures which is irritating.

There are quite a lot of modules that deal with areas of the job that I have been undertaking, therefore, the knowledge I have gained from these I have been able to employ in the jobs I have performed on placement. This has been very helpful, as a result, and I'm glad that my course is well aligned for the job we do.

There are extra-curricular activities to get involved in. There are social groups that everyone gets made part of, and with these groups there are events to go to and activities to do. For example, there's five a side football that is set up, in which the social groups play against each other.

Yes

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time her, the staff all seem very friendly from the ones that I met, with many of my in-charges being very focused on well-being. I also feel like the opportunities provided from them are massive, you can take secondments, improve your skills hugely, within a company that seems to support you very well along the way.

Make sure you are able to demonstrate how you have performed and developed yourself in regards to the five competencies that are part of the PwC professional framework. Think about this will allow you to show why you deserve to work at PwC in the interview and group activity which is performed on the assessment day.