Audit Associate Review

My placement has been full of learning opportunities. I had equal opportunities to graduate student working for PwC. I have had the pleasure of working for prestigious companies and alongside collaborative teams, who encouraged my development and growth within the firm. Overall it has been a great experience to work here.

During my placement, I had a buddy allocated to me and a career coach. I built a good relationship with both and they have been constantly tracking my work and performance. Even within the teams I have worked with, I was respected and treated fairly and more often appreciated for the work I have done.

Management would always send emails with relevant information we need to know. Meetings were organised for us placement students to relate our queries and difficulties. Within our teams as well, additional support is provided and one-to-one coaching is given so that we know what job we have to do and we deliver it to an acceptable level.

As a placement student, you get to be on one job at a time, one team at a time. However, there might be times where you find yourself working on two teams because the work was not completed before signing off. The daily working hours vary to the engagement. There are times you do work long hours, especially during busy season (January to March).

During the placement, my responsibilities grew as I began to understand the procedures and developed in my abilities to conduct assignments efficiently. Especially during busy season, I had been given extra workload during the course of the Audit, as I was in a better position than the others in my team.

Undoubtedly, I have learnt so much from this journey: from the interview phase to carrying out my daily working activities. I have become more independent, structured, organised, and also I have developed my communication and written skills. These are definitely qualities that would help me succeed in my final year at the university.

The atmosphere is great. My office especially is full of colours. the chairs are tables are very comfortable for working effectively and efficiently. The people around the office are very friendly and welcoming with each other, even if working on different lines of service. The coffee stations are usually a great spot to meet new people to start a conversation with.

Being on a placement in PwC is like being on a graduate programme. We placement students are treated same way as the graduates as we all started on the same day as them. No one will guess you are a placement student unless u tell them so. Also, there were things that weren't made very clear to us, such as how to certain things.

Personal training and development has been the key of PwC success. Every now and then new courses will be made available to us to complete on specified time, which are made to be compulsory. We also have to complete the ICAEW professional qualifications to become qualified Accountants, to ensure quality work.

I have heard that there is a good potential for retention of placement students in PwC as long as they pass their exams, their compliance training and do well on their day to day job (this is monitored by feedback received by the team in which you have worked for). I have not yet completed my placement but hopefully good news!

We are all just so friendly to each other. We have organised meals, meeting and hangouts to relate to one another. There are a lot of placement students of different lines of service and we all hang out together. This is also not limited to placement students only, but all my colleagues have been cordial and nice.

Well the branch I worked for is in Central London and it wasn't cheap. Around the office there are a lot of restaurants and bars as it is located next to Charing Cross. Colleagues like hanging out in the evenings and trust me if you do every night, you will be broke before the end of the month.

Central London nightlife is always on!

There are lots of opportunities, depending on what you are looking for: from being involved in the choir, to promoting the firm as a Student Ambassador, or volunteering . This is all possible at Pwc. An app has also been developed to let us know what activities are available and when, and entering in this (alongside working) will also boost your changes to promotion.