Last week the annual ‘jamboree’ was held to coincide with the return of the new trainee intake from their first stint in college. The jamboree allows the new intake to sample what is on offer across the office both socially (e.g. pop quiz and film quiz); sportingly (e.g. football, netball, darts); in the form of staff networks (e.g. religion and belief and disAbility network); corporate services (e.g. IT and Executive Assistants) and many other societies and groups.
The event is set up in the style of a University freshers’ fair with stalls laid out around the sides of the auditorium enabling colleagues to come over and discuss with the stall organisers what they do and how to get involved.
The first hour is run solely for the new intake and then the event is opened up in its second hour to all other existing staff who can remind themselves of what is available and sign up to mailing lists. For many colleagues it is an opportunity to meet the new intake of colleagues in an informal setting. For me personally it was also a reminder of the equivalent jamboree I attended two years ago as a new starter. I was maybe too enthusiastic when I attended and signed up to every possible group and society, which is something I somewhat regretted the following morning when my inbox was overflowing with calendar invites for meetings and matches!
During the event this year I was manning the ‘Student Rep’ stall as I am the representative for the trainees now entering their third year. It was a great chance to share with the new intake what work the student reps do and the outcomes of our work and meetings with the senior management. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of interest which the new trainees showed and on the basis of this I’m expected a significant number of them will be submitting manifestos for election as the representative of the 2013 intake.
Undoubtedly, some extra interest was drawn to our stall by our generous supply of sweeties and also by our ‘Audit Fortunes’ game (based on the Family Fortunes game-show). We had surveyed 75 trainees and collated the responses to see what the most popular answers were, before getting the new trainees to guess them. To give you a flavour, our survey said…
- The trainees’ favourite accounting standard is IAS16 (Property, Plant and Equipment).
- The trainees’ favourite food to eat when working away on audit is Indian food.
The jamboree was great fun and a reminder of the many opportunities beyond those of day-to-day work available across our office.
Join our Twitter Q&A session on 7 October 2013
Have you got any questions around applying for our graduate scheme (which is now open for applications until 31 December 2013)?
Rob from our recruitment team and Hannah, one of our trainee bloggers, will be available on Monday, 7 October 2013, from 4-5pm on Twitter (@naograduatejobs). Post your questions during the event and get an answer straight away.
If you cannot make the event, please tweet us beforehand @naograduatejobs and we will make sure to answer your questions during the live session.
Hashtag: #AskNAOgrads