Associate Review

My day to day job consists of auditing in general the financial statements of banks and other financial capital markets businesses. We mainly audit and perform tests, inspections over the financial statement balances of the client and the entity controls and perform thorough understanding of our clients before doing so.

I have been studying towards my ACA qualifications and that has been quite rewarding and interesting. I have also performed many internal training courses in regards to audit and the work, how to behave in a corporate professional services company. Personally, I have also learned how to interact with clients and with my colleagues professionally.

I enjoy the structure of the programme and how it has been designed to make us progress. The company culture is very nice but the work is sometimes stressful and requires long hours. It did meet my expectations as I knew before what my graduate program and apprenticeship entailed, and I mostly enjoy it.

My programme is very well structured and the support we get through the firm and the trainers in Kaplan is good. The material is quite content heavy and I feel sometimes the training is quite close to the exam time and more time could be beneficial. But overall, studying and support is good.

My employer does give us time to perform the basic learnings of some of the materials and some revision weeks. I feel it is a bit pressurised in terms of the expectations to pass first time and the fact the job could be at stake, but apart from that the support has been okay.

My training provider has been good in terms of the quality of most of the tutors and the access to the material. The general attitude has been good and there are many tutors available offline to answer your questions via email which I think is really good and has helped me a lot.

I feel my qualifications is quite intense some of the exams but after learning and understanding the content better is actually quite good and I feel it does indeed help in my role. I have put some of the theory to practice in terms of understanding better the work i'm doing and how some of the areas of the financial statements work that form part of our core work.

Yes there are social events and we have social groups and do weekly quizzes and stuff outside work. There are sometimes scheduled HIIT and yoga classes which are available for people to join. When I'm not working I mostly spend time with my friends and exercise by running or doing HIIT workouts.

Yes

I think the programme is well structured and the material and content of the exams are good. The material provided for people to succeed in the exams is not bad and I feel that if someone is interested in accounting or becoming a chartered accountant it is a good programme to join.

I think in the application process just try and stay calm and not overthink too much or stress within stages. The experience is both ways and it is an opportunity for yourself to see if you like the company and the job you are applying to. I would have like to have been told that there's always a place for you and to not give up and keep trying to find the perfect starting career for you.