Associate Review

I am an accounting associate within the BCM sub-sector of EY. I work on two main clients and have ownership of my own work, covering subsections of the process from beginning to end and testing procedures around the process. I also have to give work to the off-shore team/ more junior team members.

Yes - I have learnt a number of new skills. On the more technical side, I have been able to work on a range of clients and so have learnt about different type of audits and have been given a wide range of experience. For example, I have one client, who is a large bank and i just look at a sub-section of the audit thus I have been able to learn a lot about a particular accounting standard. I also have a smaller client where i look at the whole process from beginning to end. This experience has enabled me to get a good understanding of the technical process from beginning to end. Additionally, I have improved on my inter-personal skills - I have been able to give and oversee work to more junior team members with my managers being very supportive and helpful in advising me how to act in the more tricky situations.

I really enjoy my program. The people i work with on a daily basis are amazing and I feel they give me a lot of support and coaching when they give me a piece of work. I also think they really care about pushing me and helping that i get as much from this experience as possible.

I feel that the course is fairly well structured with us having to do a number of trainings alongside the mandatory college classes. I feel like the trainings are well organized although sometimes not particularly interactive. I feel that all training requirements (both college and internally created training) are not very well communicated to us and i often have to rely on more senior apprentices going through the course to understand what a training is going to be about/ what is required of me. I feel like a summary of what is required before the training eould be really helpful.

I feel the support i receive from my team is really excellent with them working with me to ensure i learn as much as possible and get as much out from my time at EY as possible. I do however feel like the apprenticeship and qualifications team is not that supportive. I have gone to them a couple of times with questions and often they take a long time to answer/ don't answer at all and the answers are not particularly helpful.

I think the work and support we get from Kaplan is really good. The way in which the notes are given is concise and clearly demonstrates the key learning points. I think that both the tutor led and self-taught modules are effectively set-up with them often able to explain some tricky accounting policies really effectively. I think the only thing that i struggle with is the amount of course content that we are required to get through in a day!!

It provides a background to a lot of the work i do. We do college quite slowly and as such I have often come across some of the content we learn about however i like this as it gives me a broader understanding of how what i do fits in to the bigger "audit picture". I often am able to go back and look at work and see how what we put into practice ties to what i learnt at college.

Yeah - there are a wide range of social networks (e.g Womans Network/ EY Cricket team) alongside this you can do extra-curricular learning to get an EY Badge which is well recognized within the firm. Finally, we get have regular team socials where we do little quizzes and games to help us feel more involved within the team.

Yes

I think you get to work with some really amazing people from all areas of life and learn a lot about both accounting but also how to deal with people. I think its an environment that really encourages people to think differently and suggest ideas no matter what level and you make some great friends!! :)

I think just simply be yourself. The EY hiring process is really good and tries to make it as fair as possible for everyone and when i was going through it I felt they cared mostly about who i was and what i thought rather than my academic experience and my grades.