EY Women in Tax Insight Programme Review

An introduction from a senior parter in indirect tax, followed by a graduate panel, a diversity and inclusion talk, a teamwork exercise running through a pitch to a client, and two talks by inspiring female speakers on personal branding and women in business. There were plenty of opportunities to ask questions and the task mimicked a business pitch that might happen on a day to day basis and involved synthesising information and feeding back to the client.

I developed a new understanding of the world of direct and indirect tax and the types of clients and business areas that EY operates in. I learnt about the skills of personal branding and how to cultivate a personal brand through networking and daily habits as well as how to conduct myself in business and in interviews. It helped with the skills of teamwork and communication with a team and a client both in speaking and writing, and develop the skill of synthesising information.

I learnt about the different roles available in both the direct and the indirect tax team, and what the daily routines of each type of work involve. We heard from a senior partner and what her day is like, as well as information about the progression up through the company from EY. We also heard from recent graduates about how they got into EY, why they chose their service line and what their days are like.

It seemed very friendly and professional. There were many different diversity and inclusion networks to join and meet new people and all of the graduates said they felt very welcomed and included from the very beginning. There was the chance to ask lots of questions and get insightful answers and to anything we were curious about. As we were also offered a summer internship I felt very welcomed immediately. There was also a follow up session to get to know everyone else on the programme.

I enjoyed it a lot, and felt very welcomed and valued despite only being an undergraduate. The follow up session was incredibly fun and the insight was useful in shaping my opinion of the culture, type of work, and daily life at EY. However, it was a very full-on and tiring day and was quite hard to keep up with some of it. There were also a few technical difficulties but these were solved quickly.

Yes

Be yourself and try and show your personal values when you have to record your answers and how you would react to the different scenarios. Also try some psychometric tests before starting and try and come up with ways that you would solve common problems and communicate information if you were in a job situation. Relax and try and let your personality come through - even if you don't know much about the industry try and research the company a bit so you know what values they're looking for.