Assistant tax advisor Review

Mainly consists of admin tasks to do with client onboarding, limited technical work so far in the apprenticeship. Hopefully more of this will come as the apprenticeship progresses. Start of an apprenticeship is an office is always going to be quite admin orientated though. Have been to a few client meetings now and then.

Yes I have developed plenty of new skills, developed my IT skills among others. Perhaps the most important new skill I have developed has been my ability to work with different people. Coming straight out of school you have to quickly adjust to working with a variety of people which has really helped benefit my communication skills.

I would say it is mainly alright. I have not worked with one unpleasant person at EY, in fact everyone is lovely. However, I would say that the work has been pretty menial at times and basic. At some points I have actually had nothing to do. Those have been low points of the experience and have affected my enjoyment of the program. From my understanding this has been similar for the other apprentices I know as well.

Badly. I have just transferred to a new team in Bristol at EY so everything I am about to mention is to do with the experience with my old team in London. EY as a company is great as a whole but my experience of the school leaver program is not a good one. In my old team there was no impression of salary progression or role impression which makes it difficult to remain motivated for me personally. There was no structure for being given interesting client work and was difficult to improve your tax knowledge when you are not involved with anything. So you kind of just end up as a glorified admin assistant. The dates we are attending college was only given to us in February and the whole communication on that side of things (education) has been poor as well. I would not put the blame on a single person in my old team/EY, but I would say that the program was not properly thought through before they began hiring school leavers.

EY as a whole has been good so far with this. You are given a counsellor and a buddy when you first join. Your counsellor helps with promotions, salary, moving offices etc. Your buddy is there to help you day-to-day with tasks and are another low-level of your team. This creates a great support system if you have a problem and want to raise it up with someone. I would say that EY are helpful with your problems overall but the process of getting something sorted can be slow at times. This is understandable thought as EY are a huge company.

This is very hard for me to judge as I have not even gone to college yet. From what I can tell the support is good, BPP are a widely recognised training provider so I do not have any worries in terms of support from them but I will see once my training starts!

Again, I still not have been to college so this is impossible to know. I can see how going to college will definitely help me in my role and maybe help me get involved in more technical work as my knowledge will be increased. I have no doubt that it will help.

I have just started in a new office so am just starting to find out these things. But in the London office I believe there were some things to get involved with. I went to 1/2 professional networking drinks. There was no sport that I was aware of. There is also nothing I am aware of that links all of the apprentices together which I wish they had.

No

Lack of structure, poor decision making from higher-levels over how course should be run. General just lack of thinking it through really. I don't want to moan too much as I am still working here and have moved to a new office and team which I hope will help sort these things out, but I can only speak on the majority of my experience.

In the application process I would say don't be afraid to get involved with things. Be the boldest one in the room, you need to make yourself stand out but also make time for others and get others involved in the team tasks. Just be genuine, friendly and sociable and EY should like you. Same goes for any interviews you do.