What are the main skills you look for when hire a candidate?

Hi Yeaz,

I hope all is well your end

This is a good question- personally I feel that the most important skills are the softer ones. I am looking for someone with excellent interpersonal skills i.e. someone who can interact and communicate effectively, both within the team and with our clients. As a service business, our employees are our biggest asset. So in order to deliver quality our candidates need to be able to demonstrate such attributes.

Naturally someone with an analytical and inquisitive mind is also important given the nature of our work, which involves understanding the information provided to us, to assess whether this information is appropriate.

Whilst EY provides amazing training, an ability to demonstrate strong IT skills will also help differentiate you in any interview. As Audit and assurance continue to evolve, the ability to handle data, understand trends and then communicate findings will become more and more important. In my role I use data analytics heavily, for example we use this audit technique to understand how Revenue journals interact with Debtors, we can then identify anomalies (journals that are posted to revenue but not posted to debtors) and direct our audit effort towards these riskier transactions. This helps make the work more interesting and deliver better audit assurance at the same time.

The above needs to be underpinned by someone with a thirst for knowledge. Understanding how our client’s businesses work, how its internal and external environment operates are critical to understanding what risks may impact the business. Only then can we be in a position to effectively address the risks in place.

In summary then, I am looking for someone who has a passion for working with people, someone who has an inquisitive mind and someone with an eagerness to learn.

Yeaz, good luck with your final exams and your final year of Uni. If you planned to join a graduate scheme prior experience is not a pre-requisite so that is not a problem. Plus fear not …… you have a very long career ahead of you given the UK retirement age continues to get higher and higher!!!!!!

In terms of being 26…… recently we had someone join our school leaver program age 31 ……!!!!! So in summary you are not behind at all, if you have the skills detailed above I am sure you will have a very successful career as a chartered accountant (ideally with EY)!!!

Hope this helps!

Rich! Thank you very much for your very resourceful and inspiring reply.