Company: EY
Date: 2013-07-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Assurance
Pros: Great company to have on your CV, challenging work environment, mostly great colleagues to work with predominately outside this service line. Opportunities exist for secondment into other service lines/other areas of the business on occasions. Great work location over looking Tower Bridge especially in the evenings.
Cons: The company structure, service line and service offerings by EY are confusing despite management explaining that we 'broadly' sit within Advisory, other members of the firm are not quite sure. Salary does not match job role, length of service or breath of technological experience prior or during work at EY. Bonuses only started a couple of years back and despite over exceeding forecasted revenue for the year our department has so far only been rewarded once, the reward was below par. Also the only merit - Instant Rewards of £50 (vouchers) have been cancelled and replaced as of last year. Feedback occurs only in one direction hence from engagement to engagement you work with different managers/senior managers, year end review is based on feedback from these managers yet you do not have the opportunity to feedback upwards hence you could do fantastic work, deliver work of the highest quality, within the budget and on time, manage your activities efficiently, manage internal and external yet at the end of the engagement you can receive feedback and rating of 'unsatisfactory' because as most of your time was spent at the client site you were seen as 'not visible enough' at the office. There are better salaries in industry, pension scheme has just started this June the 1st only driven by regulation, besides all this the business is doing really well and has been engaged in millions pounds of engagements as of early this year alone but the drive to win tenders and provide work at discounted rates to client means that you can end up working inhumane unsociable hours without receiving a 'thank you', reward or extra time pay. Especially during the busy audit season (for example May 2013 - February/March 2014) you are not allowed to take any annual leave, if you wish to take your annual leave you have to plan and put approved space holders on the booking system else if you lose this chance then you have to jump through several hoops to book annual leave which is at the discretion of management.  Promotion is based on years of experience as opposed to how well you do, no advice or information is provided on the characteristics you should display to progress except 'you should be working at the grade above'...which no one clearly understands. HR are useless, be prepared to show them your passport on several occasions after starting your job role.