Executive Assistant Review

Utilising Microsoft Outlook through the calendar to plan, book/cancel appointments booking and send updates. Booking rooms for directors/partners and filling in room details to their outlook calendar. Looking at schedules and fitting in new meetings, planning around schedules to fit in clients. Resolving conflict of schedules and judge priorities. Preparing documents for meetings in advanced. Liaising with other Executive assistants on the person of interest schedules. Maintaining client contact and relationship databases. Providing support in projects, meet and greeting clients.

My English grammar and punctuation has significantly improved since I have the opportunity to write up emails, travel itineraries and learn more on how others speak via online and on the phone when calling to check availability for work related tasks. I have also become a better multi-tasker over 6 months I have been working.

I enjoy learning new things as the on the job training part can get quite repetitive so its great to change it up every now and then. company culture is quite reserved here but everyone is really nice once you speak to them. Overall, I enjoy the atmosphere as it is perfect to get work done in. You will find the focus booths especially useful if you find it hard to focus around people.

Everything is organised in a way where there is an assignment due every month (BBP training provider) and it progressively builds your portfolio for the big presentations you do near the end of the apprenticeship. I have a weekly meeting with my mentor every week to recap on the new things I have learnt and what I am doing. This helps as the mentor will guide you and explain why certain process are needed. This makes it easier to write up your assignment each month.

My mentor and I have a weekly catch up for an hour and talk about my tasks that I have done this week and she then gives me reasons why these tasks are important. She also makes sure I have an understanding of the company and what my role is.

BBP have responsive teachers that will answer you questions as soon as they can and give guidance if you feel lost on your assignment. I have a 6 weekly catch up with my tutor and mentor together. This allows me and my mentor to see my course progress and see if I have any queries.

Doing the assignments for the course, you will soon realise that a lot of what you are learning is important to know for the job at hand. Learning about policies through the course, you learn how important it is to follow the companies policies and you do so every time you come into work.

yes! you can volunteer to help out at events and there are plenty of fancy networking events that usually always have refreshments. Also there are sports clubs you can join. Usually the big events will take place on the top floor where the view is amazing. The Christmas period was amazing, so many events to attend.

Yes

I recommend EY to everyone as it is a great place to kick start your career, they have other programmes as well so If you wanted to leave your career as an Executive assistant (only on the basis of getting a permanant role as an EA) you could do so and go into other roles within EY. The experience you get is worth doing this apprenticeship programme.

Do your research on the company. I couldn't tell what EY was about just by looking at the website. I just knew it was one of the big 4 accountancy firms. Even having basic knowledge is fine but understanding what they do is key. On the assessment and interview day I had to do two test, a spelling test and a grammar and punctuation test. It is was roughly like GCSE level.