Pros
Helps towards gaining a qualification. It's a means to an end
Cons
Management are only focused on cost cutting; their business strategy is to hire graduates, and let their experienced hires leave. What this means is that the quality of work reduces year upon year, training of graduates is haphazard and lower level staff are shouldering responsibilities way above their job descriptions resulting in working in evening and weekends. Lack of team spirit; management provides no funds for team building exercises, away days, or encourages team drinks. We work alone on every audit and can go weeks without seeing anyone from the actual company as we travel to client sites all day every day. Remuneration; This is just... abysmal. Benefits package; You start on 20 annual days leave a year, only increasing once you become qualified or become part of management. Sick leave or study leave COUNT towards your utilization rate, so be careful of taking too many or you'll get a stern talking to. Study package; 90% of my year and the years below have resorted to paying out of pocket for extra resources not provided by the company as what is provided does not produce good pass rates. This equates to approx £140 extra spend PER EXAM. We have spoken to management multiple times, but you know. Cost cutting. No recognition of work; Management are hesitant to put people up for recognition awards, and even when relevant people are nominated, they wont win unless top management favours them. (This was what I was told by my direct manager) Audit quality; Time budgets are laughably tight, and do not account for if your audit is delayed due to client delays. You will have to suck it up and catch up in your own time. If you have a nil assurance audit with 30 recommendations, you can be sure that you'll still get the same amount of time to conduct the audit as you would do if you found 0 recommendations. More seasoned and jaded staff may be inclined to look the other way and hand in a report which they can actually finish on time. There's no way to get a good quality, accurate report if you continue to stick to barebones time constraints.