Working student whilst studying Econometrics: the Experiences of Students
Working at EY – From Lecture Hall to Office: Renate Shares Her EY Journey from Student to Employee
Renate de Vries recently took a significant new step in her career at EY, joining as a Staff Auditor. However, her connection with the organization goes back further. With great enthusiasm, she shares her story of transitioning from a student to a professional career at EY. From her initial exposure to the field of accounting to her current position, Renate describes the challenges and opportunities she has encountered along the way. She highlights the importance of practical experience, finding a balance between work and studies, and the supportive role that EY has played in this journey. Additionally, Renate is actively involved in various company activities, including organizing the ski trip and assisting with several recruitment events. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and how your EY adventure began? I’m Renate de Vries, 24 years old, born in Hoek van Holland. After high school, I moved to Tilburg to study Business Economics at Tilburg University. My journey with EY began in the third year of my studies when I got the chance to start an internship. My year as Secretary at Asset | Accounting & Finance had already introduced me to various sectors and companies in the financial world. Ultimately, I decided that accountancy appealed to me the most, so I started at EY in Eindhoven. I enjoyed it so much that, now more than two years later, I’m still here, and last September I started as a Staff Auditor. How was it applying theories from the classroom directly to your internship, and what did it teach you? When I started my internship, it felt as if the theories I’d learned in class weren’t directly applicable to real life. Everything was new and somewhat overwhelming. But as the weeks went by, I started to see connections. The puzzle pieces began to fall into place, and even subjects that I initially thought unrelated to accountancy turned out to be unexpectedly useful. During my internship, I also took two courses from the Accountancy minor, which provided a direct link to my daily work. This experience sped up my learning process and made my time in lectures all the more valuable. Balancing studies and work is a challenge. How did you manage that, and was EY flexible with your study schedule? Combining studies and work was a challenge that I was eager to take on. I had classes on Tuesdays and Fridays, and I worked on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. At first, this was quite an adjustment, and I had to improve my planning skills. Luckily, I received help from my Buddy at EY, and you learn quickly through trial and error. EY also offered a lot of flexibility. If I couldn’t work on a certain day due to my studies, it wasn’t an issue. I could rearrange my hours or take a day off. EY was very supportive, making it much easier to combine my studies with my internship. What advice would you give students considering a post-master RA program after graduation? If you’re considering the RA program, make sure to gain practical experience in the audit department first, for instance, through an internship or a working student position. This program requires a serious commitment and discipline. Also, it’s important to check if you have any prerequisite courses to complete. Sometimes, you can finish these during your master’s, which saves time and stress later on. Finally, don’t be intimidated by the program. Everything you learn in it is highly valuable in practice. Although it’s sometimes demanding, I also enjoy Fridays when we have study sessions. It’s refreshing to return to university after four days of work and listen to lectures again. We wrap up Friday afternoons by celebrating the weekend together at Esplanade, which always gives me a boost. What helped you transition from student to Staff Auditor? The induction process at EY was incredibly valuable for me. In the first two weeks, you get to know all the new starters, the organization, and what’s expected of you. During the day, we had many training sessions, which felt similar to classes, and there were fun activities planned as well. For example, we did an escape room and had a beach BBQ. In the evenings, there was always an activity like a pub quiz or theme night. This made the transition from student life to a full-time job feel much smoother. After the induction, you start working. I received a lot of support from my teams, coach, and mentor. You also still have a lot of training at first, so some workweeks are only three days, which eased my transition to Staff Auditor. You are also part of a “year group”—the cohort with whom you start in September. This group provides a valuable support network, as everyone faces similar challenges while adjusting to a new job and study program. We still get together for social activities, like going to a terrace on Thursdays or attending office gatherings. You had multiple career options. Why did you specifically choose EY, and what set EY apart for you? During my board year with Asset | Accounting & Finance, I’d already been introduced to different accounting firms. I weighed the pros and cons of a smaller firm and the Big Four. I ultimately decided to start at a larger firm and see where things went from there. I joined Asset’s accounting expedition, where you visit Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and EY in two days. EY just felt right to me. After my internship, I had the option to apply elsewhere or do another internship, but I chose to stay. I felt good about it, loved the office and colleagues, and thought, “If it feels right, why look further?” This, of course, varies for everyone, but it worked for me. “The fit with EY felt right from the start, so why look further? When you feel at home and see opportunities for growth, it’s a sign you’ve made the right choice.” Looking ahead, where do you
Working at PwC
Trang Tran Assurance Financial Services – Digital Accelerator For the Dutch version, click here. What exactly do you do at PwC? Besides being an accountant in the Financial Services Business Unit, I am also a Digital Accelerator where I help innovate and digitize the Assurance practice. What does your working day look like? In the morning I start up with the Digital Associates where we discuss the status of the projects and brainstorm where necessary on how we are going to build the digital solutions. We do this by drawing everything out on a jam board and constantly adjusting where necessary. Then the Associates get to work and I have meetings with audit teams to see where I can support them in terms of automating work. I then write out a digital approach per digital solution and guide the Digital Associates with building the digital solutions. When the Digital Associates are done building, I review the digital solutions to ensure we are meeting quality standards and audit guidelines where necessary. Then I schedule meetings with the audit team to hand over the digital solution. There are also major projects in between that I am also involved in. In addition to coming up with new tools that can help the practice, I also help roll out existing tools throughout the practice. And, of course, I also do regular audit work. Depending on the period we are in, I also spend several hours a day on audit work. During busy season then I do work on audits the whole period. Trang Tran | Senior Associate | Digital Accelerator What do you like about your work? That I can let my creative juices flow and that the possibilities are endless. And all within a field where everything seems so rigid. As a Digital Accelerator you are completely let loose within your own audit practice to rethink everything and see how we as accountants can do things differently and thus save time and at the same time increase quality and deliver more added value to the client and society. Tell us something about the Digital Accelerator program. What opportunities do you get here? And how do you apply these in your daily work? After an intensive but fun training where you learn technical skills such as basic coding and data analysis and visualization, you will help the audit teams to digitize. During your training you will also receive soft skills training where you will learn how to ”sell” change and the importance of being agile. These soft skills are very important if you want to bring about change within an audit firm. At my own clients, I try to automate all manual and repetitive work by deploying software that enables automation or by building robots, for example. This leaves more time for the really interesting topics such as fraud, continuity, estimating items and other topics that you as an accountant also want to spend your time on. What role do you think innovation/new technology plays within accountancy? Accountancy is changing and it is only a matter of time before much of our work is fully automated. This does not mean that we as accountants are no longer needed but this means that we as accountants are going to need a different skill-set and add value in a different way. Because of the amount of data that our clients have available today, we as accountants will have to learn how to analyze the data and how we can thereby replace our traditional auditing work by, for example, performing integral data analysis and zooming in on the outliers. This also means that we as accountants will only add more value in the future because by building smart algorithms into our data analyses, for example, we can detect fraud faster and through predictive analytics we can serve clients better. In addition, I also believe that we will move more towards continuous auditing which will allow accountants to actually add value at any time of the day and not just after the financial year. And perhaps soon we will all work on the blockchain and we as accountants will no longer validate the transactions but the blockchain itself. What role do you think innovation/new technology plays within PwC? Innovation is very high on the agenda at PwC and PwC invests a lot in upskilling its people. PwC also invests an awful lot in developing new tooling and making existing tools available. Often people think that innovation is not possible at a Big 4, but precisely because PwC is not a startup and there are sufficient resources available, we can innovate and make the impossible, possible.- Tell us something about your development/coaching/mentoring The way I develop myself is by making mistakes. The skills I need to build digital solutions, I teach myself by just doing it and gradually learning from my mistakes. And the moment I don’t know where to start or if I get stuck then google is my best friend. Google, Youtube tutorials, forums and asking others to think with me. These are the ways to learn the fastest. However, PwC does have enough training courses so that you have at least the basic skills. These are online courses through Udacity and internal courses where you are adequately guided in developing these new skills. “I can let my creative juices flow and the possibilities are endless.” What would you like to say to your future colleagues? We are the future and we are ultimately going to make a difference for generations to come. The world is changing, our clients are changing, and therefore we as a profession need to change as well. The technological revolution is happening right now at this very moment and that’s why it’s just incredibly cool to become part of this change right now.
Working at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen – by Floortje Schroeder
For the Dutch version, click here. Started as a Junior Assistant Accountant at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen in 2016 and never left. How did I end up at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen and what is the reason I stayed after my internship? I am happy to tell you all about it in my story ‘Working At HLB Witlox Van den Boomen’. Who is Floortje Schroeder? First of all, let me introduce myself to you. My name is Floortje Schroeder and I am 25 years old. I was born in Tilburg but have been living in ‘s-Hertogenbosch for 13 years now. I remember very well that during high school I had a guest lecture by an accountant. This caught my attention so after high school I started the HBO course Business Economics/Accountancy at the Avans Hogeschool in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. I completed this course in 2018. I was born and raised in Tilburg, which is why I wanted to study in the city I come from. I then chose to take the pre-master’s degree in Accountancy at Tilburg University. After obtaining the pre-master’s I started the master’s in Accountancy and as of September 2020 I started the post-master’s in Accountancy at Tilburg University. I am now in the third and final year of the post-master Accountancy. My path to HLB Witlox Van den Boomen My path to HLB Witlox Van den Boomen started in 2016. In that year, I signed myself up for the practical route that was offered at Avans University of Applied Sciences at the time. The practice route is a route that gives students the opportunity to get acquainted with practice for 1.5 years. When participating in this practical route, students must choose an accounting firm where the choices included a Big4 firm and HLB Witlox Van den Boomen. My preference went to HLB Witlox Van den Boomen and my choice at the time was substantiated by the fact that I considered myself to fit better within a ‘smaller’ organization where the lines of communication are short, there are sufficient career opportunities, there is close (multidisciplinary) cooperation, an informal atmosphere and a client portfolio that is very diverse. The practical route brought me to HLB Witlox Van den Boomen in 2016 as a Junior Assistant Accountant where I could get acquainted with the practice for 1.5 years 4 days a week. Following the practical route at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen gave me the opportunity as a student to get an idea of how things work in practice and what activities an assistant accountant performs. Besides contributing to the expansion of my practical knowledge, this period has also contributed to my personal development and made it easier for me to make my choices regarding my follow-up studies. Practice versus theory I completed my HBO education in 2018 and after this I immediately started the pre-master and master Accountancy at Tilburg University. During this period, I returned to HLB Witlox Van den Boomen as an Audit work-study student. Because of my positive experiences during the practical work placement, I wanted to continue to expand my practical knowledge and also continue to develop myself during my studies at Tilburg University. As a work-study student you are part of the team just like all the other colleagues and you carry out activities that correspond to those of an assistant accountant. This work mainly involves performing audit assignments for various clients, where we gain insight into the client, processes and risks and, based on this, create our approach to the audit of the financial statements. The only difference between an assistant accountant and work-study student is that as a work-study student, you are likely to work fewer days. As a working student, you can decide how many days you want to work in addition to your studies and can reduce the number of days in busier periods and increase them in quieter periods. This gives you the opportunity to gain practical knowledge on a flexible basis, learn to apply the knowledge from school and go through personal development. After completing my master’s degree in Accountancy, I started working as an assistant accountant at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen. HLB Witlox Van den Boomen gave me the opportunity during both my HBO education and my master’s to gain practical experience and to develop myself personally. Because of this, my decision to start as an assistant accountant at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen was quickly made. Why did I never leave after my internship? Of course I thought about taking a look at another accounting firm. But working at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen gave me more and more feeling for the motto: ‘Never change a winning team’. I’ll explain why. Now that I have been working at HLB Witlox Van den Boomen for a number of years, I have come to realize that my considerations at the time of choosing an accounting organization for the practice route internship correspond with the practice. I was looking for a firm where the lines are short, there are sufficient opportunities for advancement, there is close (multidisciplinary) cooperation, an informal atmosphere and a client portfolio that is very diverse. My client portfolio is very diverse and ranges from Retail companies and manufacturing companies to property developers. This diversity ensures that I get to take a look behind the scenes at all types of companies. This keeps my work diverse and challenging. In addition, every year I have influence on my client portfolio because I can indicate which clients I like to work for the most! The advantage of working with our clients is that you often sit at the table with the entrepreneur himself and therefore the relevance of your work is immediately tangible. I work in Rosmalen and our audit department consists of about 30/35 colleagues. This ensures close cooperation on a daily basis, as well as sufficient room to take and receive responsibilities, and to grow and develop. Because of the close cooperation, there
CV building: working students
For the Dutch version, click here In your student days you are in the prime time of your life, in which you progress towards your future. During this time, you might be building up a nice resume. Over the last couple of years, however, many things are expected from you. In 2015, the standard scholarship was abolished, which caused us to build up debt along the way to our graduation (see article Uncle Duo). Besides this, firms expect more often from students to build up a resume of a certain level. Therefore, the Faces editors did some research by interviewing various working students. Dennis Smulders – working student at PwC Dennis Smulders is a third year student Business Economics at Tilburg University. Dennis has been working at PwC in Eindhoven for more than a year now, at the department Assurance. Being a working student provided Dennis with personal growth, but also growth in the academic area. “You learn how to handle things professionally and besides that, you learn how the job as an accountant looks like. In my case, PwC offered me a coach. This coach helped me to develop my professional skills and helped me with my questions in general. I have experienced this as a very positive aspect of being a working student, because someone who has already done this for a few years can provide you with meaningful insights.” Dennis was also directly involved in the audit process. The direct contact with different customers makes the job extra diverse. “It is nice to discuss directly with the customer, and look for solutions to accountancy questions. By doing this, you obtain a good image of firms within different sectors.” Having a good schedule while studying and working is crucial according to Dennis: “By doing this, you avoid having extra work when the studyload is more intensive. Fortunately, your coach helps you with this as well.” Dennis recommends talking to as many recruiters as you can at the events of Asset. “They are open to inform you about the firm and the possibilities. I would say: Give it a chance!” Ella Boerkamp – working student at BDO Ella Boerkamp is currently studying MSc Accountancy at Tilburg University and is a working student at the Audit & Assurance department at BDO. Furthermore, Ella has worked as a working student at ‘Bureau Vak Techniek’ (BVT) at BDO. She started with this in the second year of her bachelors and sees this as the perfect opportunity to start: “It is easy to combine the job with your studies. You choose which days you work and whether you work 4 or 8 hours. Besides that, BDO is located next to the university. So even on days that I had lectures, I could work 4 hours that day, before or after the lecture”. After this, Ella switched to the A&A department at the start of her masters. “This switch felt good to me. At A&A I had the opportunity to perform full control activities that a starting accountant does as well. It is a perfect opportunity to gain experience in practice next to your bachelors or masters. Being a working student can also help you choose whether you want to do the Post-Master Accountancy or not” As a tip for current students, Ella says the following: “Being a working student provides you with much knowledge and you get to know the business life at an early stage in your life. Therefore you are ahead of your fellow students if you have been a working student!” “The knowledge that you gain as a working student cannot be described in academic format which leads to a mutual effect as motivation for your studies.” Luc van den Tillaart – working student at Deloitte Luc van den Tillaart shares his experiences as Staff Audit at Deloitte. In february 2019 he started as a working student at his current employer Deloitte. “I worked three days a week in the audit practice. I performed the same working activities as a starter and had the possibility to look at different types of firms, which made my job very diverse. By working you gain a good image of what an accountant does, rather than just following your colleagues. You are a fulfilled member of the team.” Luc started as a working student during his master and emphasizes that this is the best period to start a working student: “At the end of your bachelors or during your masters is the best period to start. At that moment you get a really good picture of the activities of the job and you can see whether it is your cup of tea.” Although working besides your studies may be time consuming, Luc would definitely do it again. As a tip for other students he says: “Try to orientate during your studies what you want to do. This is the easiest to achieve by going to different events. Via these events you get in touch with employees of accountancy firms. However, do not forget to enjoy your time as a student as well!” Stan Paau – working student at Rabobank As a working student at the headquarters of Rabobank in Utrecht, Stan Paau gained his first experience within the banking sector. He worked in the department Wholesale in the co-operative Rabobank. “The knowledge that you gain as a working student cannot be described in academic format which leads to a mutual effect as motivation for your studies. Besides this, you can use your knowledge that you have gained as a student, to implement this and learn more about the recent developments within the capital markets and the different ways of financing.” Other benefits mentioned by Stan are the significant enlargement of your network and the good orientation on how the function of a starter may look like. A disadvantage according to Stan is the combination of work and studies, what might be difficult for some people. “It is though. However, I personally had a
Working At Van Oers
WHO AM I? My name is Max van Loon, 23 years old and I live in Prinsenbeek. At this point in time I’m doing my last period of the MSc Accountancy at Tilburg University. By now, I’ve been around Van Oers Accountancy & Advies, first as a working student and now as a thesis intern. Van Oers is a large regional office with five offices in Western-Brabant, with about 325 employees and aimed at small and medium sized companies. Beside my study I enjoy drinking a beer with friends, playing soccer and going to the gym a few times a week. CAREER After having worked a couple of years at a supermarket, I was ready to do something new. I wanted a job that was more connected to my study. I knew that I wanted to study for a Master’s degree in Accountancy, which turned my focus towards accountancy offices quickly. I made the choice for a smaller office as opposed to a Big-4 office entirely intuitively, and it ended up being the right one. After an open solicitation for a working-student function, a recruiter of Van Oers approached me. After this, it all moved quickly. MY FIRST WEEKS My first two weeks at Van Oers were very diverse. I started as a working-student for two days a week. The first week was themed around becoming more known around the organization, getting to know the different systems, programs and colleagues. The week after this I got to start doing my first assignments for a customer, which immediately gave me a good image of what my work entails. This was especially true because I also got to tag along at an appointment with said customer. WHAT DO I DO AT VAN OERS? When I was still employed as a working student at Van Oers my assignments were mainly things normally done by junior staff and staff. Think of checking the easier balance sheet entries and list checks. Momentarily I’m writing my thesis at Van Oers. For Van Oers I’m the first thesis-intern they ever took in. This internship gives me the opportunity to fully focus on my thesis whilst simultaneously getting to know my co-workers better. During my time as a working student, I worked for different customers. These customers were ranged between a mussel farm and a kitchen counter producer. The diversity of my portfolio made for a lot of variety in my tasks. The enjoyable thing about Van Oers’ customers is that they are generally smaller than the customers of big-4 offices. This makes for more personal contact with clients, which I have experienced as very pleasant. VAN OERS The first word that pops up when I’m asked to describe Van Oers is ‘warm’. From the moment I started working at Van Oers, I was taken in by my co-workers. I can direct my questions towards everybody in the organization and my colleagues really took time to help me along. Besides work at Van Oers there are additional activities like informal drinks and other events. From my own experience I can conclude that these additional activities can be super enjoyable! MY AMBITIONS My ambitions momentarily are to finish my Master’s degree in Accountancy. After that, I will travel for two months before I start to working full-time at Van Oers. In September I want to start my post-master and build my career from there. MY ADVICE If you are having trouble making a choice between big-4 offices there is only one solution and that is to visit a lot of events. If you are in doubt between a smaller office or a big-4 office, it is a clever move to visit events where both small and big companies are present. This way, you get a better feeling for the differences and from there you can make a more thoughtful decision.
