Assurance Associate Review

I'm part of teams that do statutory external audits for a variety of companies both private and public. Day to day this involves performing audit testing on their financial statements to ensure they provide accurate and reliable information, and it means a lot of client contact time and working on client site (not during covid though)

As this is my 3rd placement, I have learned to take greater responsibility for my own work and help out less experienced members of the teams, meaning coaching of those members. My general IT skills including greater proficiency of excel and excel function, and have also improved along with my technical understanding of accounting and audit.

The programme is very challenging and so has improved my problem solving skills and resilience, especially during lockdown and the audit 'busy season' which has meant much longer hours of work. I have enjoyed working with a range of different people within PwC on a range of different clients across different sectors as well.

Over the 4 years we do 3 placements with PwC while based in the same office through, and a complete a full year then 3 half years at university (in academia). At time I felt it would be better to just complete a full year in industry rather than a placement every year.

5. Over my placement during lockdown, I have not felt the need to receive support, but there are support systems in place. Personal buddies (other employees) help monitor wellbeing occasionally and there a various other support teams such as the designated student well-being team that are meant to monitor the welfare of placement students.

All our exams are completed at university. University lecturers offer a reasonable amount of support, but students have to be more proactive in reaching out with issues and queries, as is with a normal university experience. There is no additional support provided to us at all, but it is always there should be need it.

Some university modules are directly related to work I perform in my role and are professionally accredited (count towards ACA qual) so they have helped to a significant degree. The general processes of self sustained learning within University has helped massively with coping with the large work load in my working role as well.

There are some social groups to get involved in with PwC such as a couple of sports teams, and team socials but as my placement has occurred over lockdown there hasn't been much scope for participation. At university there are a whole host of different societies to take part in as well.

No

I have learned a lot from my placements however it has been very tough and long hours. Sometimes I don't feel like the value I bring is reflected in the various aspects such as compensation, although I recognise that the value of PwC is the experiences of working with a top range of clients and with teams who are experts are what they do.

Really think hard as to whether audit and assurance is for you. It is a really demanding field and for me I have had to sacrifice a lot of personal time in order to keep up with the workload. However I have built up great experiences which would be applicable to a lot of other jobs in different industries so there is great value in it too.