Accountancy offers ‘work experience by video’ to help school leavers

MHA Moore and Smalley has a long tradition of inviting school and college leavers into its offices for a week or two of work experience over the summer holidays.

Due to social distancing measures, the work experience placements couldn’t happen this year. Instead it invited school and college leavers from across the region to take part in a virtual work experience session, chatting to employees at different stages of their career and quizzing them about what working life at the firm is like.

Rebecca Coombes, HR director at MHA Moore and Smalley, said: “Work experience is a vital part of preparing young people for the world of work. For our firm, it has helped many people to decide whether a career in accounting and finance is right for them.

“And it’s a great opportunity for the work experience candidates to impress and potentially secure an interview to be on our training programme which starts each autumn.

“We’ve been using video conferencing in our business for the last few years and we’ve all seen how quickly the workplace has adjusted to online meetings in recent months, so we decided to take our work experience offering online for the day.

“It’s been a great initiative, not just for the young people themselves, but also an enjoyable experience for our team members who were once in their shoes and got the chance to give something back. We’re hopeful of being able to offer work experience in an office setting again in the not too distant future, but we also intend to make online work experience a wider part of our recruitment process.”

Candidates for the online work experience opportunity were selected from the hundreds of CVs and letters the firm receives each year from school leavers, as well as additional applications for the online event.

During the session, participants got to hear from current trainees, and other staff members, about the different study routes available in the profession, as well as the different services and sectors that employees of the firm can specialise in to progress their career.

“Working in a professional firm like ours is all about interacting with people,” added Rebecca. “So, being able to ask questions of our team, it was also a great opportunity for the candidates to develop their communication skills and confidence of speaking in front of others.”

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