Public Sector Audit Associate Review

I genuinely enjoyed my placement so much. It was definitely the best 13 months of my life! I was treated as a graduate would be treated and was given the same the opportunities as a graduate. I had the freedom to change my work plan so that the employer and I can both make the best of my time.

Since day one, I felt valued by my colleagues. I was given work that would contribute to the objective of the audit and I was shown how the work I did fed through till the end. I was constantly challenged and had the freedom to ask for challenging tasks of the audit so that I could develop myself further.

All interns/placement students/graduates are assigned a buddy at the beginning of your role and a people manager, who is your contact throughout your placement. I was supported greatly by both of them; they asked me what I wanted out of my placement and we had regular chats about how to achieve the goals I had set out in my first week.

In the beginning, I had enough work to get me by but after a few months of settling in, there was a good work/life balance that I really enjoyed. They were also very flexible on how I wanted to work or where I wanted to work from so that I could shift my hours when needed.

In my first month, I was asked to lead a small project, where I was the main point of contact with the client and was reporting directly to the manager and director. It gave me a sense of purpose. In my day to day work in audit teams, I was always given a good chunk of the testing and was given the freedom to manipulate the work I produce to what I believed good work should look like.

I developed a huge number of skills; to name a few, prioritization, time management, team work, ownership, initiative. And I believe that all of these skills will help me in my final year.

Very light-hearted and friendly. It was hot desks so you could potentially be sitting next to a Partner. You would usually do rounds of drinks for everyone in your bank of desks - which is generally the time you would make conversation with your colleagues (not that you're not allowed to speak the rest of the time) and catch up with what everyone's been doing since you saw them last. Mostly because I was in client site a lot. I think in my 13 months, I was in the office for about 10%. Your audit teams at the client is also very friendly. You would have chunks of your day where you're all intensely working and there'll be times where you just chill and catch up. It's a very nice environment from what I've experienced.

I had no problems with it since my work plan was set up for 3 months when I joined and since then, I was able to ask to be on different jobs or jobs that seemed interesting to me. It is really encouraged that you have a conversation with your manager about the clients that you want to be on and let them know early on if you're considering transferring to a different department or location after you graduate. They'll start to look into it then and you will have opportunities to set up some kind of shadowing or something similar so you can experience what it will be like.

For my first month or so, I was in training at Bradenham manor, which is the training location at the firm, learning various soft skills, as well as learning how to audit. I believe it helped me quite a bit as I was able to apply the knowledge I learnt to my actual jobs. There were also online training where you could learn about the auditing standards as well as mandatory ethics trainings. Also, you are encouraged to ask if you would like training on something and they will try to set it up.

Majority of the interns/ placement students are offered a full time role after you graduate. Unless you do something drastic or you want to move to a different department/ location, you're pretty much guaranteed a role considering that you contributed really well to the firm during your time.

I was in the Manchester office and lived quite close to the central so it was quite expensive.

It was really good! There's the Northern quarter if you would like reasonably priced drinks and the environment is quite lovely as well.