Corporate Assistant Review

As a junior in your first/second year, your main role is to assist in fieldwork areas of the audit, working on revenue and expenses, and covering other transversal areas such as board minute reviews and checking Companies House filings. Typically, you would touch base with your client contact to ensure that sufficient and appropriate audit evidence is being provided, and also following up on audit matters that do not align with our expectations.

Most of our work as auditors is done within Excel and therefore, your skills within Excel develop with experience, and finding new and more innovative ways of making some of the mundane tasks a little quicker by using certain functions and formulae to help save time. This is particularly helpful when the audit deadlines are fast approaching and the work needs to be ready for the manager to review.

The programme helps you develop both your technical skills (through studying exams) and soft skills such as communication through to organisation and time management. As you progress, you get given more responsibility and I enjoy that because it gives me an opportunity to expose my learnings from feedback received in prior audit engagements and helps test your understanding of certain audit procedures.

The programme is very structured and gives you a clear pathway from day 1 to when you qualify as an accountant, this helps with staying motivated and shows that there is a clear path to success if you make an effort. The programme gives you enough time to engage in client work, and this helps build confidence in your own work to manage future engagements with the support of others.

Mazars are incredibly supportive, as are the managers, most managers will coach and ensure they support you on an engagement, and no question is too silly. Additionally, during the lead up to your exams, managers are very understanding, and tend to allow you time to study if booked on an engagement. I think these are small things but when you have pressure of work and study, these small things really help to ease the pressure.

The training provider are helpful in getting you exam ready, in particular with the revision sessions they run in the lead up to the exam sitting. The achievement ladder steps are incredibly helpful as it helps you build up to exam standard questions - the first step being multiple choice/tick box questions to the final step being a mock of the actual exam. Additionally, a tutor will have a call with you on the progress made on the apprenticeship, and outline any expectations and a plan going forward. This gives you a list of things to complete before your next progress call and helps give you a structure to follow.

The ACA syllabus is so helpful when performing your day to day role because it helps you understand audit test procedures and the importance of our role, and the impact it can have on stakeholders when making decisions. If you give the exams the necessary time, it makes your job role that little bit easier and you can put your learnings to the test which is always a good method of assessment and basis for comparison on where you were when you first started out.

There are so many social activities to get involved with from charity events to socials within the office. We have monthly socials in our office at month end and its a nice time to catch up with people you may not have seen or just to meet new people within the office.

Yes

Mazars have a great work culture, there are so many things to get involved with and it helps build those work relationships. Mazars is in a great growth phase and it should give you stability and support necessary for you to succeed. If you can show managers that you're capable of tackling work that may not be expected from you, you are rewarded fairly and appreciated by seniors and management. I strongly recommend Mazars.

Firstly, and most importantly, is be yourself. After all, Mazars has to be the right fit for you because they will be your employer for the next 3 years as a minimum, therefore it is vital that you do your research on work cultures and values. Additionally, show Mazars what you can offer as an apprentice, through engaging with extra curricula activities at college/university, any work experiences that may show Mazars the skills that you gained and how that can help within the role you're applying for.