Trainee Accountant Review

Every day I have different tasks to work on as part of my work in audit. I normally spend around 3 weeks working with one team to complete a phase in the audit work, which involves lots of visiting and speaking to clients, and lots of staring at excel spreadsheets. I am responsible for getting the tasks that I am assigned completed, but the most important job I have is to learn as much as I can by asking questions to my team.

My communication skills have improved dramatically, since I went from being very nervous about the job and having to talk to people to feeling much more confident. This has been a big help in my day to day life too. I've also improved my excel skills a lot, which is a key part of being efficient with the job.

Personally I find the job itself pretty boring, although that's because my interests lie somewhere else entirely and there's not much room for creativity in audit. The enjoyment for me comes from the people I work with, so being in a friendly team who set reasonable expectations and are easy to talk to makes all the difference.

The programme so far hasn't been very structured, most days are spent working like a normal full time job and so far we haven't had more than a few days of formal training. Most of the training is done on the job, and its your job as an apprentice to log your hours of training while you are at work.

Financially it just about works out, I have been able to live away from home in a city that I really love. I have a councillor who I can easily get in contact with to get advice on anything to do with work and how to cope with the big step up to working full time.

Our training provider offers classes leading up to each of our exams, with plenty of revision materials so there's no real excuse to fail. They are easily contactable with any questions we may have about topics or questions that we struggle with. So far I have not experienced exams.

So far it hasn't made much difference because I have only had 5 days of teaching from ICAEW in the beginning of September, and I haven't used much of the knowledge until very recently (and I have almost forgotten it by now). Since I am on the school leaver programme our first exams are in May which is why we haven't had much time with our training provider.

There are sports and social networks that you can join, although I find that they aren't really a big focus in our office since it's quite small. People often host team meals to give everyone a chance to get to know each other and as a reward for putting in hard work.

No

It's not the field that most of my friends would want to go into, and while the apprenticeship itself has no problems I get the feeling that it isn't always the best workplace. It can be very stressful around busy season and I wouldn't want to be held responsible for them having a hard time!

Be ready to commit yourself to the programme, since it is a long time and a lot of hard work to balance your studies with a full time and high workload job. When you apply they don't expect you to have much if any previous knowledge of the work, they are more interested in your personality and whether you would work well in a team.