Trainee under pressure.

lennox1

Hi folks,i'm hoping someone can help.A relative of mine is a first year trainee with a very large firm.She has a 1.1 degree and masters and ,in my opinion,is intelligent.Nor is she afraid of long hours and hard work as she worked a job for 32 hours a week right through her degree and masters.She has always wanted to be an accountant.Now however she is seriously doubting herself and whether she is intelligent enough to become one.Problem is this.She is being left to deal with a lot of client work on her own and when she comes across stuff she doesn't know how to do there is little if any support from managers.Some of them become very irritated with her for asking questions and expect her to know everything.She knows that this is the very busy season but there are no seniors on the jobs with her that she could ask,just herself and a manager and sometimes she is expected to do the file and just submit it completed to the manager.She has spoken to other first years and there are more of them together on jobs but she seems to be always on her own with not even a second year!She has become very disillusioned and is considering resigning.Is this the norm for a training contract? Any advice would be appreciated.Thanks

chump

It's not usual to be so isolated from her peers for such an apparently long time. That said, it also is not unusual for a first year to be thrown in the deep end.

She really needs to speak up. From experience the people she works with are just regularly people who are under a lot of pressure, and they don't mean to be rude to her or shrug her off - they are just so consumed in their OWN work. But she really needs to speak to them, or if that isn't possible to speak to someone else - ie. their manager, a supervisor, a mentor, a performance manager, a partner

If she feels she can't speak to these people then she can speak to HR. The worst case scenario is she says she is very stressed and feels under too much pressure - they'll take the breaks off and they WILL realise that they pushed her too far.

Of course it is possible that the people she's working under are awful and that she may want to transfer to a different department etc... - HR should make this possible. She does not need to resign. Nor should she.

eggie

If she has a 1:1 and a masters she is more than capable of becoming a good accountant.

Her seniors at her work place are idiots for ignoring someone who could be a great asset to the company in future. I would simply look for another job in the same field. There are other places to work where you will be given all the necessary advice and opportunities to learn from qualified personnel.

Everyone has to learn the ropes, exams results dont make you know everything right away.

DJ WIPEOUT

A director (a tough one at that) once told me at the beginning of my training contract that in order to gain respect you had to learn how to say 'No.' I have found this to be the case where I've worked weekends in the past to try and learn stuff that no one else had time to teach me and others get away with doing no overtime and just don't worry about these things. The people who get away with it are either lucky, extremely bright or not so lucky when it catches up with them in later years.

Sometimes you need to separate from the mainstream (do the extra bit of working things out for yourself) if you want to win in the long term however there's no excuse for making life miserable for someone if that's not the path they've chosen to go down.

It's a liability risk to let someone loose so early in their training unless the managers / directors / partners are putting in significant review time which I doubt it based on the circumstances you mentioned.

lennox1

Thanks for all the advice.I spoke with her last night and she realises now that she will have to speak to someone about her situation.She went into work at the weekend to try and get on top of the work and to try and figure out some things herself,so that this week would start more positively.But yesterday was just as bad with very long stressful hours that she feels wouldn't be necessary if she was shown,just once,how things should be done and then she would fly at it as she is a very quick learner.
What has really ticked her off is that she spoke to another first year over the weekend who told her that if he comes across something he doesn't know how to do,he just tells a senior person and leaves them to sort it out!!! And he gets away with it!!
She hopes to sort it all out today.