Assurance associate Review

I enjoyed the vast majority of my time spent working for PwC for a number of reasons including the people that I worked with as well as the responsibilities I was given. The work was however a lot more difficult and time intense than I had expected, some days working up to twelve hour days (including travel time) and then being expected to study for my professional examinations around these working hours.

As a placement student, I was given the same role as a first year graduate student. This meant I had the same responsibilities as the large graduate intake of over thirty people. Although I was only with the business for one year, I felt they were as willing to take time to teach me how to progress as they were with the graduates, who sign a three year contract with the business. I felt they valued the work that I did and this was reflected in a number of feedback assessments that were completed on my performance.

As a member of audit, I worked with different teams every week. This meant I tended to have a different manager for every job I worked on throughout the year as well as my own line manager. They were all very approachable and willing to answer and questions should any issues arise in my daily work.

This varied throughout the year as all audit companies have a 'busy season' which tends to fall in the months from January to April, due to a number of clients having a time within this period as their financial statement 'year end' date. I found that during this period I was working long hours and was very busy but then at other times of the year, there was much less work to do so there was no overall balance.

I was given responsibilities over certain parts of the audit process which tended to stay the same from client to client so I got very good at carrying out work over these particular areas. As a second year employee you tend to expand your knowledge and learning in order to work on other audit areas but as I was leaving before this, I was given little responsibility over other areas and was not encouraged as much as others to progress into more difficult audit topics.

As I am doing a relevant course (accounting and financial management), the placement will link very closely to the work that I will be doing on my return to university, especially as I was given the opportunity to choose an 'audit' module for my final year of study.

Office atmosphere was always very positive with most employees knowing each other by name. This meant it was a nice place to work and I enjoyed days spent in the office but many days were actually spent within the clients office worked as a member of a team. There was often a strong bond built between individual team members which meant this was also an enjoyable atmosphere.

As PwC are well known for thier use of placement students and have used them for a number of years previously, this was well set up and organised meaning I knew well in advance what was expected of me and when, especially as it was the same as what was required for the first year graduate starters.

The company put me through all necessary training courses as well as the first year of professional accounting examinations. This will be beneficial to me if I decide to return to the company after university.

Having been offered a job with them, I am looking to return to the company in the future.

With most employees having finished university within the past three years, many members of the business vey very similar and looked forward to weekend social events. In addition to this, there were also a number of different company socials organised including a Christmas social and 'end of busy season social' as well as a number of accounting balls/events with subsidised ticket prices being made available to staff members.

Cost of living and socialising was about as expected given the area I worked. However, I did not expect to attend as many social events as I did but this changed due to getting on so well as being so similar as a number of my colleagues.

Nightlife was better than expected as I worked and lived in a busy town which in comparison to the university I attend was roughly 10 times the size.

There was a netball team which I joined as well as a social committe within the business that was available to join. There were other options within the business but these were not advertised so well. There were many other opportunities in the city I lived in but not linked to PwC.