Audit Assistant Review

I am in Public sector audit therefore I work on Housing, Health and education clients. During the audit we carry out testing of the account balances e.g. cash, payroll, stock etc. I have regular contact with the managers on the job and the client I am working on at the time.

I have developed lots of skills in my apprenticeship including: communication skills, as I have to communicate professionally with the client; excel skills, as I use these when documenting my testing and carrying out recalculations and collaboration skills as we have to work together as the audit team in order to meet the common goal.

I really enjoy the KPMG 360 program as it has allowed me to try out new areas of the business before committing and specialising in the one. One improvement would be to try more different areas as most of my placements have been within Audit, however I had the great opportunity of being a part of Deal advisory, restructuring for a few months.

The programme is organised well. We have Programme Advisors and Leads who we can contact regarding any issues. There is also a Professional Qualifications central email that we can get in touch with if we have any problems with study or exams. We also have Performance managers within our specific teams who help with work related issues.

I receive a lot of support from my Performance manager within my team. We have catch ups regularly and I can go to her with any issues no matter how small. We also receive good support for our exams, we get study leave days, access to webinars and other study materials.

We receive lots of support from the training provider BPP. We have OCR live classes due to the pandemic and so we have a virtual tutor who we can speak to during the lectures and also can get in touch with after class if we are stuck. They provide lots of practise questions and study materials to help with revision.

My AAT Level 4 qualification has support me in my job role by teaching me the underlying knowledge needed to carry out the audit testing. One module relating purely to audit really solidified my knowledge and gave me examples that helped me when i had to apply them to my own audit clients.

There are lots of social activities to get involved in, before lockdown we would go for food and drinks or do activities such as darts. This year we've done virtual events such as quizzes, cocktail making and escape rooms! There are lots of societies to get involved in too, such as book club, religious societies and sporting ones.

Yes

They are a great company to work for. They offer great working benefits including medical care, dental care etc. They do a jump start working hours in the summer where you can make up the time in the week and then leave earlier on a friday. Also they give 6 CSR days to take part in volunteering events.

I would advice you to be confident and do your research. Make sure you know about the company and can give examples that you can link directly to KPMG. Ensure you promote all your skills and attributes to the full and apply them to different situations. Get stuck in once you start and make as many networks as you can with different departments.