Our Finance team were recent winners at the 2022 PQ Magazine Awards. PQ is a national magazine aimed at and distributed to all Part-Qualified accountants in the UK containing articles of interest and financial news, career advice and tips. Every year they run awards including categories such as “Best Training Provider”, “Best Lecturer”, “Newly Qualified Accountant of the Year” and the one our very own Katie Harwood won this year – “Part-Qualified Accountant of the Year”. Katie was nominated by CIPFA for the award and we met with her to discuss her fantastic award win and her role at ECC:
Congratulations on your award win, please tell us more about it.
Earlier this year, I was really shocked and delighted to find out I’d been nominated by CIPFA and supported by ECC for PQ Magazine’s “PQ (part-qualified) of the year” for part-qualified accountants, along with 2 other members of the ECC Finance department who were also nominated for awards. We got to attend a wonderful evening in London at Embankment for the awards ceremony which was made even more special when I won my category.
What attracted you to apply for the graduate programme at ECC?
When I stumbled across the advert for the graduate programme at ECC I was working in an admin role with finance tasks and looking for a role that would give me great career development and training. The graduate programme was absolutely perfect – ECC were offering the opportunity to gain experience in all areas of finance whilst paying for and supporting me to complete a professional qualification!
Then during the process I discovered that ECC offered everything my previous employer didn’t – flexibility, support, training and development and was all around a wonderful place to work.
What’s been the most rewarding part of your role & the programme so far?
The most rewarding part of the role has been how much I have been challenged to grow – grads are quickly given real responsibility and interesting projects and I found myself working on projects like our immediate response to the Covid-19 pandemic and most recently supporting our arrangements for Ukrainian refugees – some great opportunities!
What advice would you give to someone considering ECC as a future employer?
Probably that it’s never too late to go for it – it’s a wonderful place to work and the immense size of the organisation truly means there is a role for everyone and fantastic opportunities for development.
To hear more about current vacancies within our finance team, click here.
We also run a number of Entry to Work schemes, including an annual graduate scheme, which you can find out more about here.
