EY Assurance Summer Intern Review

Working in the UK and I Audit line within Assurance at EY involves a lot of excel spreadsheet work. Although you are not expected to know how to use excel before you start. A lot of looking at financial statements and checking that the numbers the client has provided us with match the numbers we have calculated. Also, checking bank statements and BACS. I also have completed some tie throughs which involved looking at the balance sheet.

I have developed my excel skills hugely, I am much more proficient in excel and can use it far more speedily than I did at the start of the internship. I know how to digest financial statements, bank statements, balance sheets, tie through sheets and impairment considerations. I have learnt more about the businesses that EY work with in industry, gaining knowledge about companies I had not heard of before just by working on their audit.

I was given a fair amount of responsibility and trust during my internship. Of course there is only a certain level of responsibility they can give you in regard to very important documents which not only require someone higher up in the firm to deal with them but also someone with far more accounting knowledge. But I was given responsibility in the sense that they trusted me to do the work well which I had been given.

I received huge amounts of support, guidance and training at the start of my internship. The team I was working with for the first two weeks were excellent and offered me a lot of guidance when I was new and getting to grips with everything. Throughout the internship everyone was very friendly and willing to answer an questions I had. The attitude of 'there is no such thing as a stupid question' really came through at EY Manchester. I never felt that I couldn't ask for help or ask a question.

The company culture was very friendly at EY Manchester. Everyone was aware I was new and were very willing to chat to me about any questions I had about the work I was doing. We had an away day/team building day which the Manchester interns attended. On this day in particular I met a lot of people from the Manchester and Liverpool office, in which they were all chatty and friendly as well as informing me of life at EY as a graduate.

I have enjoyed my internship at EY for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the exposure to other industries that I have worked on is outstanding. Overall, I worked on three different clients from three different industries. Additionally, the people (both other interns and EY colleagues) have been very friendly and willing to answer any questions. Also, the opportunity to take part in CSR (charity) days was a positive. As well as this, it was exciting to start the internship in London for two days as well as the final day of the internship taking place in London. The only comment I will add is that the placement was a working from home/office/client site hybrid. I personally found that I learnt more when I was in the office or on client site with my whole team than when I was working from home. However, we were offered a choice of coming into the office or working from home and we could chose differently each day of the program.

Yes

I applied onto the 'Women in Assurance' Insight Day in my first year of university. At the end of this day they offered me a summer internship in my second year of university. Although the applying to the insight day had a lot of assessments to get through to the final offer, it is worth doing in first year when you have more time at university as the work load is less. I would also say do some practice tests before you apply if you have never done one before as they are different to any sort of A-level or university exams.