Business Apprentice Review

I am part of the Restructuring team. This involved helping distressed companies to improve their financial performance. This also included working as Administrators on insolvent companies. This can include dealing with creditor correspondence, dealing with utility companies, liaising with the tax colleagues to understand the tax position of the company and numerous reports to be written. This requires a significant amount of work within your teams.

Before starting, I hardly understood how insolvencies work. However, after a year and a half of working I significantly better understand how insolvencies work. Also, by studying towards the ICAS exams I am getting a really good knowledge of accounting and basic business principles, such as financial accounting, management accounting amongst others.

I really enjoy the work that I do. In my opinion, the work varies on a day-to-day basis which keeps me interested. Also, there will be a group of you all studying towards the exams at the same time, which means you become good friends with the group, which means you can help each other if you're struggling.

There is definitely room for improvement in regards to how well organized the programme is. The communication we receive from ICAS about training is not very good. On numerous occasions, myself or my colleagues have been left unsure about when we're next in college, or we're having difficulties contacting ICAS asking about our exams.

The support I get from the team is very good. I get good amounts of support from the team when I'm struggling on certain tasks. Also, the team are very understanding of the exam situation and fully understand that when I need to focus on exams, they can reduce my workload accordingly.

From a training point of view, I think ICAS do a good job. They provide a good network of support, and the tutors are normally fairly quick to respond to any questions I have over email. However, as I mentioned in an earlier questions ICAS can be difficult to get support with for the more administration type tasks relating to my qualification, such as exams.

I think that from an insolvency point of view, the ICAS qualification is not 100% relevant. There is no part of ICAS which has a direct link to my job. However the qualifications do cover a broad basis of understanding which various parts relate to the work that I do.

Due to working in one of the regional offices of about 600 people, there is not a huge amount of extra-curricular activities which interest me. However, due to being in the city with ICAS' head office, there are numerous activities which you can get involved in, from Burn's Night Suppers to golfing events.

Yes

In my opinion, EY are an excellent place to work. The people who work for them are extremely knowledgeable and great people. As part of my training, I will study towards a world class qualification which puts me in a great position for my future. There are very few issues with EY in my opinion.

I would advise to research EY and the service line you are heading into before you're interviews. This will help a lot with convincing the people you are interested. Also, show off all the extra-curricular activities you've completed so far, this will give you a better chance of getting into EY.