associate Review

I am an audit associate and so I work on supporting the audit of various high profile and listed clients. I am responsible for leading the team and ensuring important and mandatory deadlines are met. Day to day life involves liasing and communicating with clients and auditing the financial statements.

I have developed my communication skills as you have to communicate with clients via email, in person and over virtual calls. I have developed my leadership and organisational skills as I am responsible for organising the work of a large team as well as our virtual teams which are based in India.

I found the exam process very difficult and felt I had limited support from my employer. There were times when I was a couple of weeks out from exams and I was still expected to perform a large amount of overtime including working weekends. This gave me a huge amount of stress and worry.

I would say the program is very well organised and structured. It is clear and easy to see when college dates are and how far in advanced they are. The only thing unorganised was when deciding if we were in person or virtual for college time but this was tricky due to covid restrictions.

As mentioned above I have had little support from my employer around exams. They try to say that exams come first however this is not the case and most managers prioritise work over exams. I found this especially difficult as I have a mortgage and so losing my job would mean risking not making my payments

I felt i had good support from my training provider when working towards my qualification. I didn't really require their support for much but I found the tutors extremely helpful and they were always willing to give up their time in order to help me with any queries or questions.

I think that my qualification helped me to perform better in my role as I gained a lot of confidence. The knowledge and experience that i gained through my studies was reflected in my work and allowed me to perform better and this meant i could lead a team better.

There are various sports teams such as netball, cricket and football 5 a side. There is a social committee which organises events such as the summer ball, the winter ball (at christmas) and monthly socials. Although there has been questions about their inclusivity a they all involve going out for drinks

Yes

I think the ACA qualification gives you such a broad range of knowledge and will set me up well for a career in finance. Also as pwc is such a large and well known name, it looks great on a cv, even if you dont decide to work there long term.

I would say to do your research and make sure that your personal values match the value of the company. They place a large importnace on team first, take pride and challenge and be open to challenge (the pwc values) and so it is vital that you can display their values.