Apprentice Review

My day to day role is within personal tax advisory. Within this role we prepare the tax returns for our clients and provide advice on any queries that they come to us with. Previously I worked in audit for 9 months which involved going out to clients to check their financial statements along with conducting stock counts as a part of the audit process.

Within audit I extensively developed my excel skills, I had a solid foundation level of excel knowledge coming into my placement. However through using excel all day everyday for 9 months I was able to develop these skills to allow me to use many of the more advanced features that excel has to offer.

I very much enjoy my programme. The main draw of this programme for me was the fact that it allows me to move around the business to find a sector that I really enjoy. Whilst audit has provided valuable experience, I did not enjoy it very much due to the level of travelling. However thanks to the structure of the KPMG 360 programme I have been able to move to Private Client Tax Advisory which I really enjoy and plan to specialise in.

The KPMG 360 programme is very well structured, with there being set placement and rotation dates so you know exactly where you will be for the next 6 months. Additionally, we have quarterly forums where the entire cohort is brought together, which helps to keep everybody up to date with ongoing matters regarding the apprenticeship.

We receive a lot of support, there are key contacts all around the business who we can contact at any time with any queries that we may have. All of the placement teams are very friendly and are happy to help. Everybody is understanding that we are inexperienced and are happy to answer our questions.

The training provider supplies us with high quality learning content in order to prepare us for our exams. The delivery of the content for our courses comes in three forms; classroom tuition, live online courses and recorded online courses. All of these teach the content in a very clear any concise manner which makes it much easier to learn. The only complaint would be that there isn't much time between tuition and the exam, typically ~4 weeks.

Our qualification (AAT level 3 & 4) helps us to perform better in our role as it gives us the background knowledge that helps everything click when we perform our day to day roles. We pick up a lot of knowledge on how to do things through work, but our studies help to clarify why we do them.

At KPMG there are many different extra - curricular activities to get involved with. Nottingham is a relatively small office, therefore most of these are social activities such as monthly drinks and the Christmas party. We are also encouraged to go to networking events which we are invited to fairly often. At larger offices there are also often different 'clubs' and sports teams.

Yes

In particular I would recommend the KPMG 360 programme as it allows us to gain experience in a variety of different areas before making a decision as to where you want to focus your career path. Everybody within the firm is very welcoming and friendly and the experience of working within a Big 4 firm will always stand you in good stead for the future.

The biggest piece of advice for somebody applying to KPMG would be to learn about KPMG's 9 key capabilities and think about how these apply to you. This will (hopefully) ensure that during the assessment centre/interview stage you should be prepared for anything that may be thrown at you. It also gives you the opportunity to ensure that you are going to be a good fit for KPMG.