Audit Analytics Associate Review

Within my role (the digital apprenticeship), I rotate between audit work and analytics work (more so in the former than it should be considering I am supposed to be training to become a data analyst). When in audit I perform the same work as a business apprentice (perform walkthroughs of accounting procedures, rollforward prior year working papers, ticking and tying etc). When in analytics I process raw client data (journal entries and trial balances) to produce general ledger analysers for audit teams to use during their audits.

I have learned a great deal about auditing and accounting (more so through being thrown in the deep end rather than training/learning). I have learned how to perform walkthrough of accounting procedures with clients which has helped my communication skills. I have also become very competent using excel as it is used a lot during audit work.

As frustrating as it can be, I do actually enjoy the programme. I am proud to tell people I work for EY and they provide a lot of resources it develop my learning in my own time. However, I do not enjoy doing audit work as I am considered a second year and when I am put into an audit team they're expecting some with the experience of a second year business apprentice. This often leads to times to me feeling totally out of my depth when performing audit procedures.

As this is a new(ish) programme some of the details of the programme have not been made clear and the business apprenticeship seems to lot more settled and rewarding (although it does seem more stressful). It feels that EY wanted to train data analysts before anyone else and their making up the programme as they go along despite being in this role for 2 years now.

In terms of study days towards my degree, EY (or my office anyway) is great for providing support. I have had no issues or disputes over study leave. When performing audit work however, the support is minimal at best. This can depend on the senior on your audit team but 9 times out of 10, the advice you receive is either copy what was done in prior year or refer to GAM (EY's Global Audit Methodology).

This has been the most frustrating part of my programme, the support from the training provider has been shocking! This can depend on the tutor but overall, the structure is appalling. They have a site to access textbooks, but they will then recommend textbooks for you to read which are not available on this site. When it comes to getting feedback from the tutors for a draft submission for an assignment, you are required to provide your draft 11 days before the deadline. The tutors won't give you feedback until 3/4 days before the deadline, even then the feedback is useless and asking for clarification on feedback is like getting blood out of a stone, they won't respond for another day or two leaving you no time to action the feedback. I have also lost marks on my assignments because of unclear assignment briefs (for example, one question asked me to discuss three options before recommending one, I then lost marks because I was told only to talk about my one recommendation!).

What I have learned through my training provider has not helped me in my role one bit. Whilst I have found what I have learned interesting, I have not used it in my day-to-day role. This partially due to the programme also being catered to software engineers and developers and lack of exposure to analytics.

There are plenty of extra-curricular activities to get involved with that have helped me settle into EY. These have understandably not been happening due to covid, but before then there was five-a-side football, pub quizes and I also signed up to trek the Sahara desert to raise money for EY foundation.

No

Good way to start your career and develop your own personal brand, but I feel I would have learned more earning the same qualification with another company. Whilst EY are pushing for more data driven audits and automation, we as apprentices have not been involved unless we have had prior experience with things such as python scripting.

Check you can't get the same apprenticeship with another company. Whilst EY is a great company to work for you may get more out of your career going to a more technologically established firm. If you do apply to EY, try and learn as much as you can about; python/javascript programming languages, excel, data science etc.