#GradStories Aisling Branigan, Audit Assistant, Deloitte

What is your name, job title and employer?

My name is Aisling Branigan and I'm an audit associate in Deloitte.

What are the main tasks you do in your job in a normal week?

The normal week for me would be really to just carry out various audit procedures so we do a lot of tests and analysis on different balances and to check that the financial statements are free from material misstatement. A lot of that would be engaging with the client a lot so we would do a lot of conference calls, on site visits or via email and then we do a lot of team planning. We do daily planning so we would all meet together as a team and discuss what the tasks for the day are and if there's any blockers or if anyone has any issues and we all try to help each other out with those on a daily basis.

What skills do you need to be successful in your role?

I definitely think the skills that you need to be successful in this role would be organisation skills because you could be working across a number of different engagements or you could be assigned a number of different tasks within that engagement so it's definitely learning how to plan like your day, your month, your week and to prioritise the tasks that need to be done straight away. You're constantly communicating with your team, reporting back to your managers, or else on the phone to the client or even face-to-face meetings with clients so communication skills are definitely a big one.

What do you love about your job?

I definitely like the variety of the job. You could be working across different companies and different industries, so you're definitely exposed to a lot of different variety and you're constantly learning. I also like the people that we work with so it's a very collaborative environment, everyone's very approachable and it's just easy whenever you have a question to just rock up to anyone and they're always willing to help.

What did you do as a student that has helped you most in your career?

We did a lot of presentations during college and that really helped I think enhance my communication skills and that's definitely a key part of my role. I also would have played a lot of team sports throughout college. We work in teams the whole time so that definitely helped the team dynamic and how to work effectively in the team and how to use people's strengths and weaknesses appropriately.

What was your career break?

As soon as the applications opened online, I applied, and my application was successful. I went in for an interview and then I was lucky enough to land the job. It is quite challenging but there's so many people there to help you all the time so it's definitely an environment where there's so many people around to help so you're never struggling on your own.