Consultant Review

Day to day role varies greatly, generally I will be on client site interacting with senior clients and working in large Deloitte teams that span the entire business. My role varies from purely business facing to more technical, understanding the whole system infrastructure and working directly with business analysts to ensure any data mapping is correct. From this I will then either work directly on a new implementation, testing the software, or managing a team to do this, whether it be with clients or other Deloitte testers. This requires me to do daily / weekly reporting to senior stakeholders and take ownership for a section of testing. I have also had the opportunity to work in India with the clients testers to ensure the quality of the implementation was as expected by the users.

Deloitte has supported me to complete lots of external qualifications relevant to my role as well as having lots of on the job training. I have developed lots of soft skills, around stakeholder management and relationship building as well as more technical skills like daily status reporting and writing test approaches. Linked to this, I have done lots of test specific training courses to allow me to advance my skills as well as internal courses, such as project management essentials, to understand the entire project lifecycle more and what is required to make a good project manager.

I have really enjoyed the work aspect of my programme, I have worked with multiple big Deloitte teams which has meant there's been a great community of support and has allowed me to understand what other teams across Deloitte do. The area I sit within in Deloitte also has a great sense of community, so you always have someone to chat to in the office and turn to when you need assistance with something. Deloitte are always reviewing the education offering alongside the work aspect of the apprenticeship and taking our feedback onboard. The current education offering is equivalent to a degree and relevant to your day to day work so is a good option.

My programme was well structed as we were given college dates well in advance and could make our team leads aware in good time, allowing for any coverage needed on your project to be covered. If you're struggling with anything in the education side of your programme, Deloitte are all very supportive in getting you extra tuition or time off project to study yourself. The programme also has a lot of structured re-grouping sessions, especially during your first year, to ensure you're settled and can re-group with the people you joined with and reflect on your experiences. Pre-joining, Deloitte also has a buddy scheme, allowing you to ask all the questions you need as well as pre-joining events where you get more of an idea of what your time at Deloitte will be like and can meet some of the others in your cohort.

Deloitte are really supportive as an employer across both your apprenticeship needs as well as supporting your interests outside of the immediate apprenticeships. When I was struggling with a module that was part of my qualification for my apprenticeship my area lead gave me extra tuition and supported me in extra time off to study pre the exam. They are also supportive in any interests you may have in doing other qualifications or if you're struggling with something on project. There is always people to speak to and often someone else has been through that and will help you on how to deal with it.

Training provider were fairly helpful and gave lots of instructions however we did sometimes recieve mixed messages as it felt like people won't speaking to each other - this definitely made things more challenging at times. Deloitte now use a different training provider so I can't comment on current levels of support.

The qualification I completed was accounting based and my role a more technical one, so the qualification didn't always align completely. It was sometimes useful as my first role including testing accounting strings but the lack of alignment made it challenging at time. Deloitte have taken this on board and a different provider and qualification are now undertaken by apprentices.

There are a lot of opportunities to get involved in things that interest you. I found this especially to be true when working outside of London, we would go out as a team at least once a week and had a weekly badminton session and weekly 5-a-side football session that was sponsored by the partners. Also, when you join there is lots of social activities to get to know the people you joined with.

Yes

It has been the best start to my career, I've met so many great people and it's opened my eyes to all of the roles available to me in both consultancy and if I were to go and work in industry - a lot of things I'd never have known about without this experience. I've also had the opportunity to work with many high profile clients on huge implementations, presenting to board members, allowing me to develop as a person in a huge way!

My advice would be take all opportunities you're given with both hands and don't be afraid to try something new - everyone will be supportive of you in this. Also, when you first join, don't have tunnel vision on only wanting to do one thing, almost everyone I joined with has ended up loving something then didn't necessarily want to do when they first joined Deloitte.