Flying Start Degree Programme - Flying Start 1 - Leeds Review

My role has been a trainee within the assurance department, doing mostly external audits as part of the flying start degree programme. When I am not in the office my day-to-day would tend to be going to a client's site for the job I was on and performing an audit work on the specific client as part of a team.

Yes I have learnt a vast number of skills. The main skill I have learnt is the basics of a PwC audit and now have key groundwork for auditing knowledge and skills and already feel confident as part of an audit team. Other skills that come to mind are communication, creating relationships with co-workers/clients, leadership and business skills such as being a professional.

The programme itself has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and as a result look forward to what the rest of it brings. The placement has provided me with key skills both in life and in the assurance profession and has challenged me to become a better professional and person overall.

The programme is incredibly well structured, it provides a very good work to uni balance and as a result provides the best route to becoming a chartered accountant. The programme gives you many people to talk to and ask questions to from people within your audit team to older and past flying starts

PwC is a very large company and as a result has many support outlets from people managers to flying start champions to buddies, issues can be raised to any of these people. There is an easy to use communication system through the use of hangouts and other systems making contacting people very easy to do.

At the university support from tutors and lecturers is plentiful with them being very easy to contact and talk to. With the course only comprising of about 50 people the teaching feels very similar to school so can easily provide help to individuals throughout lectures. Along with this backboard is a great tool to provide documents for external learning/revision

The university and ICAEW provide the theory knowledge behind almost everything that has been done on my placement. Having the first principles knowledge allows you to better understand how and/or why you are doing something on placement. Without the training provider placement could feel like blindly following instructions rather than having an understanding of the things you are doing

There have been a few external social events I have taken part in and have been offered to take part in such as the end of busy season social and pub quizzes and these have been very well done and very enjoyable. Beyond this with it being busy season it's very difficult to get involved with regular external activities and am unaware how much (sports wise) actually goes on

Yes

I would recommend this company to a friend that is looking to get into the world of assurance/accounting. The company provides a great working and professional experience and provides you with many key attributes an skills which you could use in many other financial related jobs in the future

A key tip for this programme is make sure that audit/accounting is definitely the field you want to go into before applying, the degree itself is very focused - which was very good for me but might not be for others. My other tip would be prepare to work very hard but get a big reward out of all of your hard work