Audit Associate Review

I have thoroughly enjoyed my Placement Year with Grant Thornton. The team in the North West is incredibly supportive and I found everyone I came into contact with to be friendly and welcoming, regardless of seniority. Right from the start I have been trusted with a large level of responsibility and this has only increased as the year has gone on and I have gained the trust of my colleagues. Grant Thornton has a culture which is people focused, and I have loved the high level of team spirit among audit teams and I have truly found everyone so lovely which made me feel at ease right from the start.

The team spirit and supportive culture at Grant Thornton is one of the things that stood out to me and is one that I have not experienced in any other firm. Every person I met was willing to help no matter how busy they were and valued me as a colleague. I was trusted with responsibility and left to complete work according to my own work plan. I cannot express enough how friendly, welcoming and happy to help everyone at Grant Thornton is, and I have made friends during my year I will stay in touch with for life.

Grant Thornton has a buddy system in place, whereby before you start you will be assigned a buddy who is someone of a similar level to you who will get in touch with you before you start the job. They are there to answer any questions, no matter how silly, and give you the opportunity to go for lunch so that you know a familiar face in the office on your first day. Additionally to this you will have a people manager who is there to have regular catch ups with and who is there to talk to if any issues arise. I found the level of support in place to be brilliant, and although I fortunately didn't particularly have any problems it was nice to know that the support was there regardless.

After the first few weeks of finding my feet and understanding the basics of auditing, I was constantly busy out on site with clients as part of a larger audit team. To begin with there were times where I felt at a bit of a loose end, however after a few weeks this soon changed as my knowledge developed and I was able to help out with more on each audit. A good thing about Grant Thornton is that overtime can be claimed back as holiday and so at times when I was working 8:00-18:30 the days felt quite long, but I was always busy and interested in the work I was doing and knew that I would be able to get rewarded for the over time I was working.

Looking back over the year I have been given a huge amount of responsibility. I have found this to be one of the best things about the Placement Schemes at Grant Thornton as it makes you truly feel a valued member of the audit team and enables you to learn so much from different client situations. From my experiences, managers have been willing to give me increased responsibility as I have asked for it. As a result I have been out to visit clients alone and also had the opportunity to attend audit planning and close meetings with the client. I have been trusted with increasing amounts of responsibility as the year has gone on and have learnt so much as a result. Managers have pushed my capabilities and encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, but never without providing the necessary support alongside.

It has been an incredible experience to be able to put the knowledge gained from my first 2 years of studying Accounting and Finance at university into practice at Grant Thornton. I have had the chance to develop my technical accounting knowledge hugely and understand how theory works in reality. I have gained skills during my year which will not only be relevant for my final year at University, but also when I return to Grant Thornton in the graduate role I have been offered I will already understand how the firm works and will be one step ahead of other new starters. I believe this year to have been an invaluable investment into my career.

The Liverpool office has a particularly young culture, which meant there were always social events taking place for anyone who wished to get involved in. The office definitely has a work hard play hard culture, where everyone will work extremely hard especially during busy season, but not without a laugh and belief that employees should be rewarded for hard work. Socials are really valued, as due to the nature of the role with everyone being out at clients and on different clients it gives everyone the opportunity to catch up will people they haven't seen in a while.

I found everything to run smoothly from finding out I had the placement to my last day. There were special events run just for placement students and this was a good chance to meet up with all the other placement students in the country and hear about their experiences. Training courses in Bradenham Manor (Grant Thornton's training center near London) were set up to teach us the technical side of audit and I also attended some courses aimed at the development of soft skills. Whenever I had a question about any of the process I just asked my people manager who always made the effort to find out and come back to me with an answer.

The firm offers many different workshops that anyone can book onto as they wish to, and these are aimed at developing different skills and areas of audit knowledge. However other than formal training, one of the largest investments by Grant Thornton was the on the job informal style training I received. Over the course of the year, hours of time has been invested in my development by those I have worked on audits with to explain technicalities to me. As a result I was then able to become more independent on future jobs where the same scenario arose again, and was able to learn from prior mistakes.

The offer of a graduate role in the firm is an excellent goal to work for during the year. The work is interesting and the graduate scheme is well rounded and engaging.

Yes, there were 4 of us placement students in the Liverpool Office. Although I would say that it was more of a good social scene among the whole office rather than just between placement students.

Relatively cheap. Liverpool has a fantastic variety of accommodation, bars and restaurants to cater for any budget.

Fantastic - the office is on the docks in Liverpool so right near to many bars in town.

Yes - there are always events going on to get involved in. Anything from charity days helping out at food banks to nights out,cocktail making, dragon boat racing, tag rugby and playing in the annual Grant Thornton football tournament just to name a few!