EY Amsterdam · Technology Risk · Thesis internship 2023/2024
Productive sooner
in assurance.
Six months of thesis internship at EY in IT Risk, at the intersection of technology, data and assurance. Alongside working in audits, I researched the onboarding process: new joiners became productive later than the process on paper suggested.
Period
Terms 3 & 4 Academic year 2023/2024Department
Technology Risk IT, processes and financeDuration
Six months Graduation project, 30 ECTSSubject
Onboarding Productivity of new joinersAssurance runs on hours, and on people who can keep up quickly.
Technology Risk combines IT, processes and finance: controls over systems and data that ultimately underpin the reliability of the financial statements. The work is driven by process and detail, and every week a new joiner cannot contribute independently is a week the team has to absorb elsewhere.
Execution
Working in audits
Checking data, preparing and reviewing files, and testing whether documentation and evidence line up with EY procedures and with the work of the audit teams.
Environment
A Big Four practice
Planning, tools such as Atlas and Canvas, and tight procedures come together in large assurance teams. Absorbing peak workload and deadlines without losing the quality of the documentation.
Research
Onboarding from the inside
Close contact with HR, planning, managers and new joiners, which made visible how people actually land in practice, separate from how the process is designed on paper.
What I learned here.
- Research in a corporate
Getting interviews and a survey off the ground inside a large organisation: getting people to the table, staying diplomatic and remaining sharp on assumptions and conclusions.
- Theory as a tool
Used ADKAR, Social Learning and the four C's of onboarding to name the real bottlenecks: waiting times, information gaps and an introduction that sat too far from the daily work.
- Data and stories
Putting survey results, interview quotes and process descriptions side by side, so a number gains meaning and an anecdote gains evidence.
- Reducing complexity
Onboarding touches HR, IT, planning and the business. Reduced that chain to a single account with concrete choices and scenarios, and an improvement concept resting on it.
- Creating your own structure
In a hybrid practice nobody waits to bring you up to speed: scheduling meetings, asking questions and collecting feedback yourself, precisely the behaviour my research also found among new joiners.