Team Spotlight - Luke Tipper
Our graduate scheme has been running for 5 years and has proven to be fantastic in identifying rising stars of the future of the business and well as supporting our graduates through their professional qualifications. We spoke to one of the team - Luke Tipper - about what his experience has been like as part of his training contract with BSN
What has your experience been with our company culture?
I have really enjoyed the start to my BSN career over the past 1 to 2 years with the culture being very friendly at BSN. The team is very close which makes teamworking on projects and engagements a lot smoother.
There is also a culture of ensuring that everyone is professionally developing by having regular meetings in relation to career progression. This gives you confidence over the future of your career and how you can shape it.
What is your team like?
BSN actively encourages socials which has helped the team get very close despite various different backgrounds/cultures. This has led to much better co-operation on jobs and tasks we perform at work. Furthermore, it has also led to a very welcoming environment for new members of the team which allow them to settle quickly.
What are some things you’ve noticed about our leadership team?
The leadership team at BSN is very experienced and will offer help to less experienced members of the team that require it. They are also very good at ensuring that you are developing an understanding over why you are performing certain tasks on jobs (e.g. audit tests).
What parts of our mission do you connect with?
I connect with the nurturing side of BSN’s mission as I feel I have experienced growth both in my confidence and knowledge of audit and accounting. BSN has enabled this by slowly giving me more responsibility on engagements and helping to support me with both internal and external training.
What have been your biggest accomplishments on our team?
My biggest accomplishment so far has been becoming part-qualified after passing all the first 12 exams of the ACA qualification first time.
Who are some of your biggest inspirations within the company?
My biggest inspirations are the managers and directors and how they would have started in a similar position to me. They are now very experienced with knowledge in various areas of accounting and are helping to grow BSN as business. This inspires me to work towards developing myself so that I can play a larger role at BSN in the future.
What kinds of resources have you taken advantage of while on our team?
I have taken advantage of the study support resources that BSN offers when completing my ACA qualification. BSN provides external study support though Kaplan. They also offer flexibility when choosing your study days and aim to help with your studies in a practical sense by setting tasks that are applicable to your current exam.
What’s the most unique part about working here?
One of the unique parts about BSN is how the directors and managers are enthusiastically involved in helping you choose the direction of your career through regular careers progressions meetings.
Furthermore, they will actively strive to ensure that you are professionally developing by gaining experience on all parts of the job whether that would be different types of clients or engagements.
How have you grown professionally while on our team?
I moved to BSN after graduating from University of Birmingham. I studied accounting and finance so already had knowledge of accounting and auditing. However, BSN has enabled me to apply my studies in a practical sense and have actively encouraged me to think critically about business when working on engagements such as thinking about the key value drivers of a business.
Both this and setting 6 monthly targets in the performance appraisal has enabled me to grow professionally over the last 1-2 years a BSN.