Free consultancy with Ernst & Young - Manchester

Each year, Ernst & Young, a global firm of professional advisers with approximately 10,000 employees in the UK, recruits a number of graduates to train as accountants, tax advisers or corporate finance specialists.

Two independent HR / Management Consultants who work with Ernst & Young to support the learning and development initiatives and help maximise the potential of their people are running approximately 45 two day programmes involving workshiops to develop the personal skills of the Ernst & Young second year trainees.

Ernst & Young graduates need to develop a number of skills to enable them to provide high quality professional services to a broad range of clients.

In order to make the workshops as 'real life' as possible the consultants provide the participants with the opportunity to work with different 'clients'.

Typically there are approximately 16-18 people on a workshop, split into groups of 5-6 people. The projects must be non-technical.

The benefit to the charity/Social Enterprise is that they will have a group of highly motivated, talented graduates (average age 24) who will take the project brief and using their extensive resources will come up with a series of recommendations to assist the charity with taking their 'issue' forwards.

Participants meet on day one and are usually provided with the project brief at lunchtime and then a representative from the charity will meet with them in the afternoon for up to an hour to explain their requirements in more detail.

The participants have to use their skills to question the 'client' (representative from the charity), in order to gain clarity on what they can do in the time available to add value to the client. It provides participants with something that feels real and worthwhile and gives them the opportunity to practise building rapport, developing relationships, managing expectations, carrying out presentations etc.

On day two, the 'client' will return for a second meeting to hear the presentation and outputs from the project. On completion of the project the client will then provide feedback to the group in terms of how well their expectations were met, what they did particularly well, development points and overall impression.

If you are interested in taking part, contact Martin Codrington, on 0779 305 6298.