Audit Placement Student Review

As an audit placement student (11 months), we have the exact same role as first year graduate joiners at PwC. We work as part of different teams dependent on the client and test each financial statement line item of the client's financial statements to ensure that any material misstatements are corrected.

Being in a working environment daily definitely helps with gaining confidence and learning how to carry yourself in a professional environment. Also, working with excel daily had helped to better my excel skills especially with the frequency of using Vlookup and pivot tables etc. Also, it has teached me to time manage a lot better.

I really enjoyed my programme. I found that working for a year in the industry before going back to university for my final year has helped massively with allowing me to be sure if Audit is the avenue that i want to go down once i have graduated. Also, if you do well in your placement year, it helps with receiving a possibly job offer for once you have graduated and this can take away the stress of having to apply for jobs in final year of uni.

The programme is really well organised. As placement students, we have exactly the same programme as first year graduate joiners. This includes us sitting our ACA certificate and some professional level exams alongside gaining work experience by working on a wide range of clients. Also, if a placement student comes back to work for PwC in the same office as where their placement took place, they will re-join as an associate 2, meaning their placement year counted as a first year associate year!

We receive a lot of support from our employer. Each new joiner has a buddy who is assigned to them from the first start date, buddies are there as a friendly point of contact for any work or non-work related queries. Also, we get assigned a career coach who is a manager or above who is their to help with work related questions or any wellbeing issues etc. It feels like there is always some support system you can turn to.

Kaplan is a great training provider, we were lucky with the tutor that we got assigned as he was a great teacher and helpful! Kaplan also do provide good reading materials and online videos to watch to learn the content. However, it must be stressed that the ACA examinations are very challenging and the turnaround time from studying to sitting the exams are very short, so it's a very intense process.

The ACA qualification directly helps our day to day work on audits. Especially the audit and FAR examinations. They provide us with the knowledge needed to understand how to tackle our testing, the reason behind the work we carry out and how to deal with issues we might face during out day to day auditing.

Yes, PwC has many different societies that can be joined freely. Examples include sports societies such as football, touch rugby etc. Also, there are LGBTQ+ societies and clubs called ColourBrave for ethnic minorities and allies. Often there are talks carried out by these societies to share about different cultures and experiences, this makes the conversation open and therefore creating a more inclusive workplace.

Yes

Overall, it has been a great working experience at PwC. Most seniors are friendly and helpful. As a new joiner, you are given a lot of responsibility and you carry out proper audit work daily. Furthermore, PwC Bristol has a welcoming environment and the work life balance so far has been great.

I would say throughout the application process, just be yourself. PwC like to employ people who get along easily with others, is a team player and one who will take the initiative. As long as you truly do have a passion to work for PwC and in the line of service that you are applying for, let that shine through!