Experienced hire

Transcript

In terms of being able to move your career on, there are lots of different opportunities that are offered at Ernst & Young, and one in particular that I’ve been able to take up is to be on the Accelerate to Leadership programme. I know a lot of firms have different leadership programmes in place, but I think the one that’s in place at Ernst & Young is absolutely fantastic. It’s quite difficult to get on in the first instance. You have to go through an assessment centre day as if you were an external hire, actually, do group exercises and interviews. So it’s quite tough to get on there, but once you are, it’s really interesting how it can play out. It’s a three-year programme, and it’s structured as a 70/20/10 split between 10 percent enablers and your supports, which is more mentors, more counsellors, more people who buy into your career; 20 percent with formal learning events that you do over three years. But the big focus, the 70, is on how you can drive your career forward, and it really therefore is up to you, and encourages you to think on a day-to-day basis what things you can do to put yourself outside your comfort zone and improve yourself. And that is something I’ve therefore got a lot out of being on that programme; having that push to think about those things that I can do has really helped me move my career on.

I’ve been with the firm for five years. The first couple of years was on a graduate programme where I rotated amongst different transaction departments; then chose one full time and qualified as an accountant around that same time, and have been in that team for about two and a half years now, and have moved through a couple of grades there as well. So I’ve been lucky enough to have been promoted quite quickly in that team. One of the most important things for me in a job is that I’m impressed by people above me. I don’t think you can be motivated personally on a day to day basis if you don’t aspire to be like something that your leaders are; and every one of the leaders in my team impressed me, and I’d love to be able to do the kind of thing that they do in the fullness of time.

The Accelerate to Leadership programme provides lots of different opportunities, but some of the opportunities are around formal learning events, and one of the formal learning events that we have done recently is one on personal impact and influence, and really thinking about yourself and what impact you do give people. So it was a really interesting course; it was a day in kind of an office environment, where you had a lot of time being filmed and watching that back – quite uncomfortable, but you start to understand your own style a bit more. And that was all considered to be the rehearsal day for the next day, which was in the West End Theatre, and you had to perform pieces on stage, which for a group of accountants is probably quite new, quite different, but there were definitely some budding actors by the end of the day, and it was an interesting couple of days.