Off to Work Placement in my 3rd Year

30th Jun 2017

Mohammed Murtaza | Accounting and Finance Contact Mohammed

Anything!

London Underground commutes in the rush hour, a more structured 9 to 5 week and donning the formal attire 5 days a week. These all sound the daunting aspects of my next academic year. However, I am very excited to tell that I am taking an year out from my course and will be completing a Work Placement in the Industry for 12 months beginning this July. After completing two years at Warwick, in my third year, I will now work for one year under an Industrial Placement and come back to University for my final year to complete my course. This industrial placement will form a part of my degree. The UPP program agreement signed by WBS with ICAEW allowed me to undertake a work placement while studying ‘Accounting and Finance’.

The placement role that I have secured is with EY ( Ernst and Young) in their London Office for ‘Audit’. External Audit mainly involves assessing the trueness and fairness of various companies’ financial statements (Disclaimer: You can get good understanding of what audit is about by visiting any of the Big 4’s websites or YouTube videos). Meanwhile, in this role, I will also begin my journey towards the Chartered Accountancy Qualification- ”ACA” offered by the ICAEW and sponsored by EY. My year’s experience auditing EY’s clients will also count towards the mandatory training period requirement set by ICAEW. Hopefully, this means that once I graduate, it will take me lesser time to qualify as an ACA than if I had graduated straight out of the University without this placement.

Industrial Placements offered in the UK by Top Firms are within various roles- from Finance, Marketing, Operations, HR, Banking, Retail, Research to Asset Management- in fact you name it! My interest lied in the Financial Services sector and I particularly opted to apply for a few Audit Placements.

Placements allows you to gain an year’s worth experience and can allow you to assess better if you ‘actually’ enjoy a particular profession. Furthermore, this probably improves graduate employability prospects as graduating with 12 months of experience is certainly a bonus. Aside from that, some of the firms usually offer their Placement Students- a Graduate role as it makes more sense for them to do so since they have invested for 10-12 months in you!

Moreover, working for a year means you can also save some for yourself and actually start earning. Since a few students of WBS have opted for a Placement in the past, I got a chance to ask them about their experiences to help me choose between doing an Internship or a Placement. Almost all of them had a positive experience with most sharing their thoughts that it actually makes your final year at University easier, sometimes academically and usually non academically as you are more used to an organized 9 to 5 routine. Lastly, they also said it helped them grow in terms of work knowledge, gain good networks and lots of self confidence.

Here lies the million dollar question. However, before you begin in the pursue of your dream placement, make sure you research what role or which firms do you really want to apply in. Securing an Internship or a Placement with a Top Firm is a highly competitive process. However, considering if you are a WBS student and/ or excited about the role- this is not an impossible peak to conquer!

Most of the firms nowadays- small or large typically have a 4-5 step process: Online Application form, Online Tests, a First Interview and finally an Assessment Centre. Applying to quite a few places this year for Internships/ Placements and securing two roles- I will aim to cover Application Tips in my next few blogs.

This is all for today! Seems like I have marketed the Placement too well. However, this was just based on my research on this topic and talking to people who actually did one. We will have to see, if all this holds true in an year’s time.

Until then, see who my valentine was earlier this year: