Audit Associate Review

My day to day role involved travelling to client sites, working alongside fellow assurance colleagues & carrying out tests on your clients financial statements to enhance their reliability.

I have learnt a lot of new skills, which are mainly technical. For example, a lot more about accounting/auditing. Furthermore, my existing skills have been developed. This includes confidence, excel, punctuality & communication.

I enjoy the travelling aspects of my programme, always meeting new people, working with other people, working with clients with different sectors and gaining insights into how they operate, as well as learning a lot about these industries. However, the actual work I have been carrying out has not lived up to what I expected.

I feel valued as I am given a lot of responsibility and thus I feel like I am empowered and trusted. Furthermore, a lot of time is put in to training programmes for new joiners to up skill staff. My managers/seniors I have interacted with have been very helpful and are attempting to contribute to my development.

The programme is not structured very well. We attended college in September for an exam we are sitting in June. Furthermore, we will be going to college for 3 days for one of our exams. One we are finished with college, we're not given any time off to study. Once you have worked all day it's very hard to go home and be productive in terms of revision, especially when you have travelled from far and went sleep late the night before. Finally, I am not aware of the actual structure of the whole programme. I only know when my first batch of exams are so I don't feel I am informed or kept in the loop really well.

We received a lot of support from our training provider. They offer podcasts and revision advice. tutors are accessible if you need them. this is usually via email. I enjoy college as I feel the tutors are very knowledgeable.

I receive a lot of support from my employers. However, this is dependent on how the people I work with manage their stress. Due to there being a large amount of work on each audit, usually seniors are very busy and do not provide excellent coaching. On the other hand, there are exceptions where seniors provide excellent coaching and give advice. Ultimately, this support varies on the individual.

I feel the salary offered to the school leavers it too low. This is due to the fact we carry out the same work as the graduates and we're on more chargeable work than them, so technically we have more experience than them in terms of on the job exposure. Furthermore, most of the year you start before 09:00 and finish after 17:30. If I was to divide my net salary by the number of hours I was doing over a whole year, it would come out to a very low figure.

There are a lot of opportunities. However, I live in a different city to the office and the city where the office is located is where most of the events/social meetings/sports events occur so I'm usually unable to attend.

Yes

I feel that at EY, you meet a lot of individuals who are like-minded, have a drive and are very social/easy to get along with. The culture is good & the skills you acquire in your time at EY will be very transferable to a number of roles within the future. Furthermore, once qualified, promotions occur very often so if you work hard you can be promoted.

I'd assess all of my options in detail. If you're a school leaver, make sure you're ready to make the commitment to full-time work, alongside independent studying which can be very difficult, especially when your university friends are off during summer and you're revising. In terms of the application process, I feel EY care very much more about you as a person and the type of personality you bring in to the firm. This personality will have to be able to fit in to the EY ethos. My first stage was an online application, here you just list details about your self and motivation behind applying. Next, I was invited to sit psychometric tests. To prepare for these, go over basic GCSE maths; including percentage increases/decreases, ratios, fractions, conversion rates & basic rearrangement of formulas and you will be fine (I got a grade B in GCSE Maths and did not take it at A Level.) The other 2 tests I sat were critical thinking and verbal reasoning. My advice for these would read the scenario or questions properly and forget your own knowledge as some answers are literally based on the passages presented to you. Next comes the Assessment Centre. this is usually the most daunting part of the process as you feel like you're competing with all of the other candidates. Do not feel like you're competing, EY will assess you as an individual, if every one who attends the AC meets the criteria, they will all be hired (as long as all of the vacancies haven't been filled.) My AC consisted of a group exercise and a written exercise. My advice for the group exercise would be to highlight your social skills alongside the standard technical skills you will have to show by analysing the date set in front of you and making your arguments. For example, offer to be the spokesperson, the scribe, the time-keeper, if no-one speaks take the lead, include everyone in your team, call people by their names, don't talk too much & be a good listener & finally try and make one distinct points yourself and add some sort of contribution to other points if you feel you have relevant points. My written exercise was reading a circa 12 page case study about a new joiner in EY & then writing 2 emails in response to this, as well as 2 400 word reports. My advice for the written exercise would be to finish it. I remember when doing mine, I was the only person who finished the actual task. Moreover, don't try and complicate things, be explicit and concise when answering the questions or responding to the emails. You don't need to try and make it sound fancy, use good English, be logical, respond to what you have been asked to respond to. This is a very important test as a lot of emailing clients is involved in the day-to-day-role. The onboarding process was pretty smooth, this just involved giving your GCSE certificates if you didn't give them in at the AC, going through a CRB check and having your references checked. You will then be assigned a body who will communicate with you prior to joining the firm to ask if you have any queries or need anything in the meantime. I wish I had been told that I had no time off to revise for my exams apart from the time in college, it's very difficult to balance the revision, work and being social, however it can be done!