Consulting Associate Review

I work in Consulting Service Delivery (CSD) where I complete regulatory work for our clients ranging from Anti-Money Laundering, Anti Terrorist Financing and reviewing a banks response to customers in financial difficulty. On a day-to-day basis I complete case work where we review the processes of our clients in order to make sure they meet regulatory requirements.

I have developed more social skills, where I have become part of an integrated team building business relationships with colleagues. I have also been able to learn how to develop myself in a corporate environment understanding the requirements from myself and the amount of work required in order to keep up with the organizations expectations.

The work I complete can be very repetitive making it hard to feel motivated on the day to day workings. I am sometimes able to decision making skills to provide an outcome to the cases and understand whether the client has completed their process correctly however for the style of work I enjoy, this is not it.

The programme is well structured allowing communication between the apprentice cohort inside and outside of the office however the programme does lack some organization as the general consensus is that the senior management team do not communicate effectively with the university in order to provide us with the most detailed understanding of what is required

We receive a large amount of support from our employer as we are all individually allocated a workplace mentor that can guide and assist us through the programme and provide us with vital organizational knowledge that we need to succeed within the workplace and use this to develop our skills within our learning

We receive a good amount of support from the university as we are provided with a university mentor, a dissertation tutor and lots of communications about the course however there is sometimes a lack of communication and a large amount of strikes that affect the amount of learning time that we do receive.

We are conducting a Business Leadership and Management Degree where we also work towards the Chartered Managers Institute qualification. Within the workplace we do complete a very minimal amount of management and leadership therefore making it difficult to use the majority of our university knowledge in the workplace to develop us as employees to the firm.

Yes, within the workplace we have a sports and social team that is constantly arranging activities for people to get involved in for example I play 7 a-side football with others in the office. The only issue with this is that it is currently not subsidized by the office and the employees have to pay the full amount towards this.

Yes

I would recommend the firm to a friend if they were looking to accelerate their skillset and looking for a flexible and inclusive workplace however I would recommend that they join a service line and sector that they think they may enjoy or know they will enjoy otherwise they may lose enjoyment in the firm and this can slow their career progression.

It is important to be yourself within the process because authenticity is one of the biggest factors when integrating into the team. I would also strongly advise that people do research into the service line they want to join to make sure that they will enjoy the work being completed and that they understand the career path they are looking to take or the knowledge they are looking to gain.