Audit Assistant Review

On a day to day basis, I perform procedures to ascertain if the entity's financial statements provide a true and fair view of the company, by corroborating and vouching information provided by the entity to external documents. My role also includes aspects of coaching, of the more junior members of staff and new starters.

I have mainly developed my coaching skills as this is a newer skill that I have been using. Communication with the entity, junior members of staff and even more senior members of staff has been greatly improved as this is a pivotal aspect of the job in communicating where areas of work are up to, or coaching staff, and discussing with the entities information that is needed to be provided by them.

The programme I am on is fairly enjoyable, however there is a lot of pressure on you at different stages of the programme. Such as during exams, there is not a lot of room for error, therefore putting on more pressure. Also during busy season there is a sense of culture to work much later hours, alongside exams this is not the most enjoyable. However, outside of busy season and at points with no exams (more of these points than not) the atmosphere is enjoyable within the business/ programme.

I believe my programme is not well organised. It is a rotational programme designed to allow apprentices to rotate between different areas of the business such as audit, tax, pensions etc. Although in reality this is not the case as due to staffing issues most people end up in audit which is not their first choice. This is not something advertised with new joiners and therefore comes across very unorganised. There is also little structure to the programme in terms of personnel therefore when trying to have your questions answered it involves asking multiple people before knowing who is the correct person to ask.

I feel the support from the employer in the most part is really good and constantly provided, whether that be with exams or when struggling with areas of work there is always support available to you, to ask questions. However there are instances with a lot of pressure that make you feel as though you are without any support at all such as very close to exams with the time pressures of audits.

I think the support from my training provider, BPP could be a lot more. It feels as though there is only limited ways to contact a tutor outside of tuition hours. Also, knowing who to contact from the BPP team is nearly non existent. There is nothing in place to explain who should be contacted for different queries. There is a forum to ask questions, however I feel these take far too long to be replied to, often over a week later!

The qualification, is definitely relevant to the role I am in. And the skills can therefore be transferred from the learning to the job. However, this is not always straightforward to do as, during the learning for the qualification, very few real life examples are shown more so just the theory.

There are many different extra curricular activities to get involved in at my employer. These could be roles within the office, sports teams(recreational or sometimes inter office events), charity events and social networking events. These are all actively encouraged by everyone in the office. Especially, charity events as the company allow extra days off work for volunteering within the local community.

Yes

Overall, KPMG is a very good place to work. The company has lots of emphasis on work life balance and mental health and wellbeing, which are very important aspects of work. The staff are all very nice and welcoming when joining a new engagement or even just joining the firm as a new starter. There are pressures of working in this industry, however the employer do their upmost to offset this.

When applying for KPMG, I would advise to do research about the company, such as the different services they provide, and possibly some of the different types of clients we provide these services for. It is good to show that you are a team player as within the job you are nearly always working as part of a team.