Right, it is my 5th weeks in Deloitte already and I can finally get myself settled down to written something about what has happened and what I have learned in my first ever proper internship.

Deloitte is one of the biggest and most prestigious accounting firms in the world, it's also known as one of the Big Fours, together with PWC, E&Y and KPMG. I choose to join Deloitte owing to its reputation, both as a firm and as an employer, and its global presence. Deloitte crafts itself as the central of excellence and offers those who perform well the chance of taking on huge responsibility at an early stage.

I spent my first week here together with 70+ other interns on an extensive training program. This program enables me to review all the useful accounting concepts that I've done in my A-Level which I have almost forgotten, in addition to that we have learned the unique Deloitte auditing approach and their general methodology. More importantly, it provides me a chance to meet some really motivated and talent peers from Chinese top universities such as Tsinghua and PKU. It's been a fun and enjoyable week I would say.

On my first day of the 2nd week, I was assigned to a team of Auditing department and was sent to the client, Agricultural Bank of China. I was in the Debt investment team and I don't even know what Debt Investment means then! Luckily my job was just to take random sample from a large amount of bonds invoices and check with their system to confirm that all the data was correct and well written. Admittedly, working in such a big and prestigious firm should be challenging and exciting, but not as an auditor in my opinion! It seems that most of time we just repeat ourselves and buried by a large amount of data provided by the client and spreadsheets (may be just me), despite the fact that all the works need one to be highly IT literate and a real team player. After I've done a bit of sampling, my job got upgraded a bit. I'm asked to study the theories behind some evaluation model   and their mathematical nature, and then present them to the rest of the team. I was quite happy doing that since that seems the only thing that I'm able to do well and what I have done in my first year course seems relevant all over a sudden. In my 4th week I'm even asked to prepare the worksheet for the client and I have experienced my first ever Over Time.

That is enough of narration of my job. Now a little summary of what I have learned as I like it:

1 Team working, in a team you need to push yourselves hard but so is everyone around you. It's important to pull your weight, for the sake of the team and for your own sense of professional satisfaction.

2 Coping with schedule and deadlines, to be a successful banker, my to-do list needs to be growing constantly, and I have to be efficient with my time in order to plan ahead around meetings and other commitments, making every minutes count. When working under pressure, don't panic if you got stuck at certain point, talk to your seniors to see if you are on the right track, show your humility and ask for help.

3 Keep updated with current economical and financial affairs, it is vital to be familiar with the current economic affairs and financial market situation. An typical day of a successful banker always begin with reading the FT( or equivalents). Reading papers and reviews would improve your familiarity with the financial market and analytical skills, enables you to have a better understanding of your work and extensive knowledge of how industries and companies function and how they can maximize value in relation to the financial market.  

4 Communication skills: It is not only about understand your seniors and clients' needs deliver and present the work in a client-friendly way, but also about networking with people and learn from the others quickly. Also we need to be clever to deal with our seniors and clients, try to think ahead of your seniors and get prepared for their queries!  If you don't understand their needs then NEVER pretend that you do! 

5 Spirit:  it is a soul of keeping the fight no matter what happens, and no matter how nasty work looks and a belief that hard work pays off; also hatred towards the idea of giving up. I've learned that from my colleagues in my team, in countless occasions that they have given up their free time for work without any complaint. It's also important to recognize the sacrifices that have to be made at certain points. However, these scarifies are rewarded by the quality of the experience and the opportunities it offers. Anyway, one needs to be a man before he/she becomes a banker.

That's it then. My mentor has finally returned to Beijing office last weekend which means I will be leaving this lovely audit team and joining him shortly, working in the Actuarial and Insurance team. I'm looking forward to it and hopefully it is going to be another 2 weeks of excitements and challenges.