Renate de Vries shares her experiences on working at EY, as a Staff Auditor, combining working with her studies.
8 April, 2020
First, a brief introduction…
My name is Lana Ebergen, 23 years old and I come from a village near Den Bosch. I studied Business Economics at Tilburg University. After completing my bachelor’s, I also followed the Master’s program Information Management. I completed this in January, 2020. I have worked at Joanknecht from September 2019 to January 2020 as a working student in combination with writing my thesis. In February, I started at Joanknecht as a junior IT auditor.
Why did you choose Joanknecht?
I came into contact with Joanknecht through a friend of mine. During the first conversation it immediately felt familiar, which was very nice! I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in terms of work. Given my interest in accountancy from my bachelor’s degree, it made sense for me to take a peek into an accounting organization. What caught my eye was that at Joanknecht they have a large IT department and I wanted to find out what suits me.
What do you do as a junior IT auditor?
In autumn we are mainly involved in IT audits in the context of the audit of the financial statements. We work very closely with the financial auditors at Joanknecht. During spring I am mainly working on ISAE3402 assignments, which are more extensive than IT audits. For this you have to spend one or two weeks with the customer and you also have very intensive contact with the customer, which really suits me! In the coming weeks, I will continue to deal with DigiD assessments. They are new to me, so I am very curious about that.
What do you enjoy about your job?
Several things: customer contact, seeing many different companies from the inside, the interesting material, and learning something new every day. In addition, I am allowed to work very independently, which is something that I really like. My colleagues are very helpful as well. Here, everyone is willing to help me with what I need. My work has many interfaces with the Master’s program which makes it super interesting for me. And of course, the many collaborations with my colleagues at Joanknecht. It is a nice club of enthusiastic, young people.
What does a working day look like?
That of course depends on whether I am at the client or at the office. At clients, I first meet them and go through the assignment and the planning. In between working on the assignments, I often discuss my questions with the customer. At the office I work independently a lot, but of course not without good explanations by colleagues. And in between I also consult a lot with colleagues. For example, on Monday we start the week with an IT team meeting. We discuss details, things we can learn from each other, planning issues and more.
“I got to see everything: not only from the work, but also from Joanknecht itself and the atmosphere in the team. “
How do you like the combination of an internship and studying?
Doing an internship while simultaneously writing the master thesis is easy to combine. I worked with the IT team for two days a week and one day on my thesis. At that time I had no lectures. That combination is very valuable, because I could find out whether I liked the work. I got to see everything: not only from the work, but also from Joanknecht itself and the atmosphere in the team.
Since February, I am following the Executive Program of Digital Auditing at the University of Amsterdam to obtain my RE title. I work at Joanknecht four days a week and I study on Friday. I think it is a good balance between learning and working. Gaining knowledge in the study is really valuable, since I have only just started working. And I also see the things I learn in practice.
What is the working atmosphere at Joanknecht like?
Really great! Everyone is very accessible. It already felt very familiar during the first conversation. My colleagues give me time to learn everything. It is important that you also take the opportunity to learn. I feel like my colleagues are happy to have me. That’s nice!
My advice for students…
Do an internship or work during your study. This will help you to find out whether the job suits you. However, do not conduct this during a busy period of your master’s program. You will quickly feel at home at work, so there is a chance that you will not pay much attention to your studies. That would be a waste.
