Audit Associate Review

Overall, I really enjoyed my placement at EY. Although expectations and work load are high, it is an environment that really allows you to flourish and develop your professional skills quickly.

A part of the EY placement scheme that surprised me was that Placement students are treated the same as Graduates. This made me feel a greater sense of value and responsibility.

Within the majority of services lines within EY, there is a natural progression as you complete your chosen qualification (Mine was ICAS). This therefore means that there are endless amounts of people you can use as support who are more senior to you. It is the nature of the organisation to look out for each other and this is something that I felt was extremely apparent during my year there.

As I mentioned previously, the work load is high. This placement is definitely not a 9-5.30 everyday job and will vary client to client. However, I personally thrived in this environment and found that the days would pass quickly because I was always involved in something.

EY has an environment that allows people to ask for more responsibility and seek chances to receive it. During my year I was able to build up confidence quickly and found that after Christmas I was able to take on added responsibility that would be expected of people much more senior than me.

I was doing an Audit placement and my degree is Accounting so my awareness of how a Balance sheet and P&L operate has greatly improved. Also working in a professional environment has resulted in me changing my habits whilst I work. I used to be in environments that had many distractions but I now make sure I am fully focused whilst I am studying.

The atmosphere in the office was very friendly. As you work with different teams client to client, you get to know a lot of people very quickly. This then allows you have a very large network throughout the office.

The work placement was very well organised from start to finish. EY has many offices across the UK and at various times of the year we would all meet up in London for a training event and social in the evening. These were a big highlight and something that all the students looked forward to.

EY put you through your first two professional ICAS or ICAEW exams whilst you complete your placement. If you decide to go back as a graduate then you are able to continue ahead of the graduates.

EY offers great future prospects because of the natural progression within the organisation. It is an industry that is growing and more and more people are needed to help cope with this growth. Each person is assessed out of 5 during there placement with all people scoring a 3 or above tending to receive a job offer. I was someone who got offered a graduate job so will be returning next year.

The placement students would go out very regularly and would often mix with the graduates as well. As mentioned before, you quickly get to know all levels of staff very quickly and there are always people out socialising.

I lived in Reading which means my salary had an element of London weighting. Reading is not a cheap area to live but is not as expensive as London. It has a university so socialising can be very cheap and there are a lot of options of different things to do.

As mentioned above, with there being a University in the town, there are lots of nightclubs and bars in the city centre which tend to get very busy.

There are a few different types of activities you can do that are outside of work. EY have different charity events and expeditions that they get behind which can be very interesting.