Career Development – Ernst & Young Experience

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You’ve found Fleur

Transcript

Yes, I’m a qualified auditor and I qualified with a small firm, so I did my three years’ practice at my small firm, and after the three years I’d kind of had enough. As most people do, they qualify and then they decide that practice isn’t for them any more. So I did the common thing and I went off into industry, thinking that was great; and I went to IBM and I worked there for two-and-a-half years, and I enjoyed my time, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for – it wasn’t quite what I thought I wanted to do. So I guess if you’re an accountant and you go into a big corporate like that, quite often you are very back office, whereas you don’t realise it until you, I guess, now get back into practice, but you are actually client-facing, so the people I work with could be all internal, and I would never really see the light of day or meet a supplier or a customer or anything like that. So I guess that’s what started to make me look around.

So I had a friend that worked at Ernst & Young, and she recommended me to Ernst & Young, and I thought Big Four firm – yeah – wasn’t that fussed actually, but I thought I’d give it a go. So I went to an interview – it was actually in our Southampton office, and I walked into the room – I didn’t really know, I didn’t have any expectations – sat down for a formal interview, and it actually turned out to be quite a friendly chat, and I found the people that I was talking with I really, really liked, and I thought, hey, actually I might quite like this!

So I came in – when I was recruited as an experienced hire, I came in as assistant manager, and I was assistant manager for six months while I just got up to speed, and promoted to manager within six months of being here, and then another 18 months, promoted to senior manager. I’m ambitious and worked hard for that, but equally, you know, my contribution was recognised, and I guess what I think from that is, because of my experienced hire, I did have some managerial experience coming in – not necessarily the technical skills, because I was out of practice, I’d been in audit for about three years – but coming back in to Ernst & Young, they’ve got the training and support for you, so you can quickly get back up to speed, and then the skills that you’ve got you’ve brought in from your old job actually help you progress quicker, I think.

“I am a qualified Auditor, I qualified with a small firm.”

Transcript

Why did you join EY?

“That’s simple: opportunity and variety. After I qualified, I spent 2 ½ years at a large technology company but it became clear very quickly that we were seen primarily as a back office function. There certainly weren’t many routes up the business. A friend recommended EY and quite soon during the very first interview I thought to myself ‘These are my kind of people – I can work with them.’

“I work with a lot of different clients – the UK’s biggest port operator for example, a manufacturer who specialises in cash-sorting machines and another who makes digital billboards. And even though this past year has been the most challenging audit season I’ve experienced, I’m enjoying it more than ever, outside the office as well at work. There’s lots of time to sail so that keeps me happy.”

Opportunity in adversity

“A lot of our clients are having difficult times and that brings plenty of challenges. Some firms are cost-cutting so they don’t have the staff there that you might expect. Others are undergoing changes in management so we sometimes have to bring them up to speed in terms of what’s required. There maybe issues around financing – will they survive the next 12 months?

“But being part of a global network, I’ve no doubt about my future. My career has moved on fast since I joined the firm and being ambitious, I’m keen to push it on at the same speed. I’d like to go on secondment to another country and to basically get as much out of my career as possible. I know I can do that here. In fact, it’s expected!”