Auditing Placement Review

I enjoyed my work placement with PwC quite a lot. I gained insight into the various teams at PwC such as tax and deals but I was also able to gain more specific knowledge in the area of work that I was interested in, which was auditing. It was also great to see the interactions between the different departments of work.

I did feel quite valued by my colleagues. Although I was obviously less skilled than them and had a lot less experience, they still trusted me to work alongside them and trusted me to complete tasks with them. Furthermore, I feel like I was mainly able to keep up with them, for majority of the tasks.

I was given quite a lot of support and guidance by the managing team to ensure that I was able to work at a similar level with my colleagues so that we could all be pushing eachother to achieve more and be better. Furthermore, I was given a lot of guidance in terms of what the departments actually did.

I was generally quite busy on a daily basis, particularly towards the end of my placement as at this time, I was doing more work than learning and I was applying what I had already learnt to the tasks happening and the job at hand to help all my colleagues working there.

During my placement, I was given quite a lot of responsibility as I joined my colleagues on many different tasks and nearer to the beginning, I worked in many different lines of work, so I had the responsibility of staying up-to-date with my work so I could help each team and help them effectively.

I think that I developed many different skills during my time there which will help me a lot. Specifically, working with auditing and accounting taught me how to apply my mathematical skills in the real world and will most certainly be helpful as I will probably be looking for a job in these fields.

Generally, the atmosphere was quite dull as everyone was focused on their work and did not really have time to talk. However, at the start of my placement, when I was being given knowledge by my colleagues, everyone was a lot more talkative and I was able to create good bonds with them at this point in the placement.

I think that the work placement was set up quite well overall. It moved from a general placement, working in all the departments to a more specific placement, where I worked in the line of work that I chose. This helped me to see the intersectionality of the business and how all the different departments work to function as one.

I think that the company invested a lot in developing me personally. Alongside the knowledge I gained from working in the different lines of work, I gained greater time-management skills from completing tasks by given deadlines. As well as this, I gained greater teamwork skills from working in different teams within different departments.

I do not think that this placement improved my future employment prospects with them as I would imagine that it is a very competitive industry and many other people would have similar placements. However, it gave me a great insight into auditing that I could talk about at my interview with them so it does provide me with some advantage.

There was quite a good social scene amongst the students and the colleagues. These relationships were mainly formed in the first few weeks of the placement where there was not too much work for us but these relationships remained throughout the entirety of the placement. This made teamwork feel a lot more natural and I felt more comfortable asking for help.

My office was in London so I did not have to move near the office as I could take the tube into work every day. However, the cost of socialising in the area was quite high, as would be expected from London, so it was simply not viable for socialising activities every night.

There was a huge variety of nightlife in the area in which I worked, ranging from bars to clubs. However, the only drawback of these opportunities was the extortionate prices charged, as expected in London. There was always something new to try everytime that we did end up going out so there was in no way a lack of opportunity.

There were indeed many opportunities to get involved in outside of work. As different clients were coming in every day, I got the opportunity to sit in meetings with them and even go to their offices and through this, I really felt the impact of PwC on different businesses and why the firm is so necessary.