EY Degree Placement Student Review

I feel that I learnt an awful lot during my placement year. I was able to become part of multiple teams within the department and enjoyed socialising with these people both within and outside of the office. I was able to develop the theoretical skills I have learnt at uni and put these into practice. My confidence has massively increased due to the responsibility given to me whilst on placement and I feel much better prepared for entering a graduate job, than if I had gone straight from uni.

I got on extremely well with everyone in all of the teams I worked in during the year. Since the nature of audit work means we were working late almost every night during January to March, we ate dinner together in the office daily and became almost like a family. Managers and partners respected me and assigned me jobs which they felt both within my capabilities and that would challenge me.

The managers that I worked with were extremely encouraging and each communicated their preferred style of working with me. For example, some preferred that I collated my questions for each day and discussed these all in one go, and others preferred to sit next to me and provide continuous support as and when I needed it.

Over the whole placement year, I felt there was a good balance in terms of how busy I was. Busy season (January to April) was extremely busy with many late nights and short lunches, however, in the Summer, the work load was far more relaxed and it was even possible to sometimes work from home if agreed.

I was given a lot of responsibility during placement including being in charge of coaching an intern from America and briefing a new first year graduate when they joined the team. I was required to interact with clients by myself, both in person and on the phone. But, the biggest responsibility by far, was ordering dinner every night for 15+ people! Trust me, you don’t want to mess up a hungry partner’s food order!

The skills I developed on placement are definitely transferable to any job I may enter in the future. These included technical IT skills such as loads of excel shortcuts, audit and accounting skills and knowledge which I can apply in my final year of uni, and personal skills such as patience, team work and confidence.

Most days in the office were fun as everyone knows that audit can be dull sometimes and so need to lighten the mood by having general chat and laughter as well as team snacks. Some days, such as financial reporting deadlines, were slightly more stressful but this is only a few days of the year.

Once I was in the department, the placement was excellent, however, I found HR to be quite disorganised and very slow at providing us with the information we needed.

Monthly training sessions were organised by the department to continuously develop our skills and general business knowledge and specific audit knowledge. In addition, we completed two of our professional ICAS exams when on placement. The firm paid for our ICAS membership and the fees for training and exams, which would be a huge expense if we had to fund this ourselves.

I have been offered a further placement with the firm as part of my degree course, and subsequently a graduate job offer, providing I achieve a 2:1 at university. This is great as it takes the pressure away from applying for graduate jobs during my final year of study which is already extremely busy.

The industrial placement students formed a good friendship over the year and organised many events such as socials like meals, Christmas dinner, nights out and meeting up on weekends. Some of the placement students even went on holiday together. It was nice to have a group of peers in the same position at work.

I lived and worked in London. We were able to find a house between four of the placement students which I believed the rent to be fairly reasonable, especially since we had a garage and garden and huge living room! As for socialising, if you get on well with your teams, a lot of time is spent with them and most managers and partners refuse to let you buy your own drinks!

There are plenty of bars and restaurants around Canary Wharf and in other areas of London too. Sometimes we even had drinks in the office itself! Teams organised nights out every so often for people who wanted to go, and it was easy to go out with the other students although it was quite expensive (it was London!)

There are lots of groups within work, such as football and netball teams, and religious or faith groups. Personally, I spent a lot of my free time at weekends exploring London and meeting up with friends at activities organised by my local church. There is always time for non-work if you want there to be!