Taking on an apprentice

Taking on an apprentice

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Hello, I am looking at the option of taking on an apprentice. The key reasons are they would be structured training, moulding the person to our way of working and also growing future talent for the practice. 

I know there is always the risk the person would leave. There is a risk in everything we do. Nothing will get done if  I  think about the risks all the time. 

What are your thoughts and experience of taking on an apprentice? It would be great to hear about people's experience.

EDIT

I am not looking for a critique about me or my practice. If I was, I would ask it as a question.  This is thread is about the concept of taking on an apprentice in any accountancy practice. What is your experience? What are your thoughts about taking on an apprentice in an accountancpractice. Just think OP was from Anon, on reflection, I should have done this.    

Replies (30)

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By cheekychappy
31st Aug 2016 22:31

Given your past history, I'm not sure if that this is a genuine question, or if it is a unusual workplace fantasy.

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Replying to cheekychappy:
FT
By FirstTab
31st Aug 2016 22:57

Give your past history, this is the response that was expected from you.

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Stepurhan
By stepurhan
01st Sep 2016 08:44

An apprentice, starting from scratch, needs a lot of patience at the start. They also need someone who will provide them a consistent framework and support through their apprenticeship.

I don't think you are a person that can provide that. Your past history here shows a lack of patience for dealing with anything that annoys you. You have also shown a habit of jumping on to new things at the drop of a hat. That being the case, I don't think you would get the benefit from having an apprentice, and you would not be helping anyone you took on in the role.

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Replying to stepurhan:
By JCresswellTax
01st Sep 2016 09:13

stepurhan wrote:

An apprentice, starting from scratch, needs a lot of patience at the start. They also need someone who will provide them a consistent framework and support through their apprenticeship.

I don't think you are a person that can provide that. Your past history here shows a lack of patience for dealing with anything that annoys you. You have also shown a habit of jumping on to new things at the drop of a hat. That being the case, I don't think you would get the benefit from having an apprentice, and you would not be helping anyone you took on in the role.

Ouch!

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Replying to JCresswellTax:
FT
By FirstTab
01st Sep 2016 10:20

Not ouch. I just ignore.

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Replying to FirstTab:
Stepurhan
By stepurhan
01st Sep 2016 11:12

FirstTab wrote:

Not ouch. I just ignore.

You are perfectly entitled, as you so often do, to ignore honest advice. In the early stages at least, an apprentice needs a lot of support. I don't think you're prepared to give the level of support needed, and will get frustrated at being expected to do so. That is no good for either you or them.

If you come back complaining about how an apprentice hasn't worked out for you later, I will remind you I warned you against it.

EDIT. I notice that you have now changed your question to say you are not looking for critique of you and your practice. If anything proves you are unsuited to the, sometimes frustrating, process of training an apprentice, that reaction does. YOUR practice and personality are a vital part of whether YOU should take on an apprentice. If you can't cope with the simple frustration of getting some answers you don't like here, you are never going to be able to manage the early frustration of teaching an apprentice.

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Replying to stepurhan:
FT
By FirstTab
01st Sep 2016 11:04

I never listen to you and I never will.

I just do not like your manner.

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Replying to FirstTab:
By cheekychappy
01st Sep 2016 11:09

FirstTab wrote:

I never listen to you and I never will.

I just do not like your manner.

All your threads descend into this.

Have you considered seeking treatment?

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Replying to FirstTab:
By cheekychappy
01st Sep 2016 11:04

FirstTab wrote:

Not ouch. I just ignore some prats.

First Tab. You are the prat.

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Locutus of Borg
By Locutus
01st Sep 2016 09:26

I started in the accountancy profession at 18. I knew nothing about accountancy and business.

For the first 9 months, most of my work consisted of labour intensive, but low skill tasks of casting and cross-casting (checking addition) manual cashbooks, analysing columns in those cashbooks, bank reconciliations, "calling over" (reading out aloud) manually typed accounts and filing.

I worked in a room of 2 very experienced accountants and a floor of 30 or so, which would take on 3 or 4 trainees per year.

If you take on trainees with no prior experience, you have to have the infrastructure and time to support them ... and be prepared to pay for their studies.

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By cheekychappy
01st Sep 2016 10:35

.

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
01st Sep 2016 12:49

Firstab for me apprentices will have a place in a small practice to take the sting out any likely cost increases that come with MTD.

IMO their role would initially be more admin related like scanning documents into system/receipt bank moving onto coding bank feeds etc.

As said elsewhere they will need a lot of input in the early days which will draw on you or your staffs time until they can do basic tasks unsupervised.

When I have had apprentices in the past there is certainly a large burn rate with them.

Maybe half will actually last the distance. There is a lot of support with them I think you get £1500 towards wages costs and there will be funding for them to do AAT when you think they are ready.

I would interview a lot to try and get the best or keenest one as I found a lot of youngsters or millenials lacked basic skills like turning up on time and often absent from work a lot which seems to be a generational thing, but there some good ones amongst them and I found they usually have good IT skills so take to things like Xero and other app based add ons very quickly.

If I buy some fees I will be looking to bring in some apprentices in the new year, but I will keen to you read your blogs on the matter in the mean time

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paddle steamer
By DJKL
01st Sep 2016 13:29

I think the initial starting point will be determining under what body you intend your apprentices to study and can your practice meet the requirements of that body re experience/range of work/supervision etc and also meet the aspirations of good candidates.

The sure fire way to later lose all your training efforts is if the individual outgrows the firm re their training/career needs, I have no idea how say CA/ACCA work these days re work experience mix but I do recall that my own training needed breadth; I still have a copy of my training record somewhere in the attic splitting out my work experience into things like Direct Tax/Indirect Tax/Audit/Accounts/Insolvency.

If you get strong candidates who start with say AAT might they not want to progress to say ACCA, could you thenlose them just when they are becoming useful if experience range will be limited/will not meet say ACCA requirements?

Re my own apprenticeship the local office (national firm) took on two a year (about 60-70 total across all UK offices each year) but the firm as a whole was organised to train ( ICAS classes Glasgow and Edinburgh, Warwick University re trainee conferences/training and to Hull and Back regularly for organised training at head office)and even our local office had three partners, office manager, local authority audit manager, tax manager, 3-4 other qualified CAs, 2 final year trainees, 2 middle year trainees and 2 first year trainees) , so we had potentially 9 qualified staff to supervise 6 trainees and could also train them via staff from other offices on larger audits.

My subsequent practice experience was with a smaLler CA practice (2 partners/ 2 qualified/3 QBE) which took on trainees, one every second year. These were graduates and they were high maintenance.

I did a fair bit of supervision (probably very badly) but it was difficult to see them adding any profit to the firm within the first 12-15 months (they certainly wrecked my recovery rates re chargeable hours on my client list)

In effect the firm was not organised /set up to train and it showed,the work variety was more limited . (after a few years we gave up as a training office)

So, I would think very carefully about how this will be structured, if you are successful it could work but imho if you do have trainees have more than one at a time, structure the training and ensure you will meet their current and future aspirations.

(p.s. most CA apprentices back them left as soon as they qualified, few stayed with the firms with which they trained, so assume you are getting 4 years max from each.)

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Stepurhan
By stepurhan
01st Sep 2016 14:07

Since I still think this would be an enormous mistake for you, I will make one last try to dissuade you. If you wish to ignore advice simply because you don't like the person giving it, more fool you.

In the blog you posted less than a week ago, you talked about not having enough time. Let me be clear that the one thing an apprentice WON'T do (at least at first) is free up time. It is far more likely that they will add to your time pressures considerably at the start. For the first few weeks and months they will need supervision and support. Long-term, with the right training, they will prove an asset. If you don't have the time to support them to that stage, apprentices are not for you.

The blog post I am referring to is this one by the way. https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/community/blogs/firsttab/my-week-the-bes...

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Replying to stepurhan:
FT
By FirstTab
01st Sep 2016 17:51

Not interested

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
01st Sep 2016 14:18

Those that cant, teach, springs to mind.

Albeit I know some excellent teachers who most certainly can.

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Worm
By TheLambtonWorm
01st Sep 2016 14:31

Like all humans, they have varying degrees of ability.

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Richard Hattersley
By Richard Hattersley
01st Sep 2016 14:39

I've had to remove some inappropriate comments from this thread. Debates and opinions are what makes Any Answers interesting, but schoolboy insults don't add anything to the discussion.

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FT
By FirstTab
01st Sep 2016 18:08

stepurhan - Your words below. You have changed now, logging in more. Both eyes on AW now, no doubt. I wish, you kept up with half an eye, better still no eye at all. Have to bear with your usual you know what! Can't stand you.

PLEASE DON'T GIVE ME ADVICE. Help others who appreciate you. I am NOT one of them.

"I have only logged in to respond to this idiocy. Having vacated the site I had been keeping a half eye (as ordinary member of the public) hoping for improvement. This post proves to me once and for all that this will never happen. It is possible this post will see me banned. I can honestly say I no longer care. (It's not like there isn't a long history of bans being circumvented anyway). AccountingWeb is dead, and the world is a poorer place for the loss of such a valuable resource."

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Replying to FirstTab:
By cheekychappy
01st Sep 2016 20:16

FirstTab wrote:

stepurhan - Your words below. You have changed now, logging in more. Both eyes on AW now, no doubt. I wish, you kept up with half an eye, better still no eye at all. Have to bear with your usual you know what! Can't stand you.

PLEASE DON'T GIVE ME ADVICE. Help others who appreciate you. I am NOT one of them.

"I have only logged in to respond to this idiocy. Having vacated the site I had been keeping a half eye (as ordinary member of the public) hoping for improvement. This post proves to me once and for all that this will never happen. It is possible this post will see me banned. I can honestly say I no longer care. (It's not like there isn't a long history of bans being circumvented anyway). AccountingWeb is dead, and the world is a poorer place for the loss of such a valuable resource."

When you post a question, anybody can answer.

You do understand how a forum works, don't you?

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Replying to FirstTab:
Stepurhan
By stepurhan
02nd Sep 2016 09:59

FirstTab wrote:

stepurhan - Your words below. You have changed now, logging in more. Both eyes on AW now, no doubt. I wish, you kept up with half an eye, better still no eye at all. Have to bear with your usual you know what! Can't stand you.

PLEASE DON'T GIVE ME ADVICE. Help others who appreciate you. I am NOT one of them.

"I have only logged in to respond to this idiocy. Having vacated the site I had been keeping a half eye (as ordinary member of the public) hoping for improvement. This post proves to me once and for all that this will never happen. It is possible this post will see me banned. I can honestly say I no longer care. (It's not like there isn't a long history of bans being circumvented anyway). AccountingWeb is dead, and the world is a poorer place for the loss of such a valuable resource."

My words indeed. Unlike you, I am capable of changing my opinion. It's still not what it was (and I still believe the post that prompted that outburst was a foolish one for site staff to make at the time) but AW has improved enough recently that I am willing to give it another go.

Ignoring advice because you don't like the source is just foolish. If Hitler told you not to jump off a building, would you do so just because you wouldn't want to take Hitler's advice? If you take on an apprentice and it is, as I suspect it will be, an unmitigated disaster, then it will be your own fault for ignoring advice against it.

Regardless, I will keep responding to your questions for one simple reason. Questions on this site can serve to inform people other than the original questioner. Even if you don't take any notice of my comments, others forewarned about the need for time and patience may still find them useful. Any Answers is not your personal advice service where you can dictate who answers and who reads those answers.

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Replying to stepurhan:
FT
By FirstTab
02nd Sep 2016 10:10

In that case please do NOT refer to my circumstances in your response. Start a blog and share your advice that way.

I DO NOT VALUE ANYTHING YOU SAY.

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Replying to stepurhan:
FT
By FirstTab
02nd Sep 2016 13:12

deleted duplicate.

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Replying to stepurhan:
FT
By FirstTab
02nd Sep 2016 13:13

deleted duplicate.

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By petersaxton
02nd Sep 2016 09:11

I trained with a large international firm of accountants. They took on 100s of trainees every year in London alone. We were very committed. The personnel department chose well. The vast majority stayed the course. I worked for six months in an eight partner firm in the West End. The quality and work ethic of the juniors was incredibly poor. The smaller the firm the harder it will be to get a good quality junior. You would need to spend a lot of time nurturing them. I can't see you wanting to do that given your desire to "work on the business".

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By mrme89
02nd Sep 2016 09:31

I don’t know why FT continues to blog or ask questions. He doesn’t want advice from those he doesn’t like – which is pretty much anyone that has commented on previous questions and answers that doesn’t agree with his viewpoint.

His desire to recruit free and cheap labour will be more than his desire to work on the business.

I already feel sorry for the potential apprentice. They will experience:
(1) An employer that turns up late to work because they are ‘tired’.
(2) An employer that doesn’t want to mentor them. He will pass the mentoring to the interns that doing the actual work.
(3) An employer thinks gadgets, marketing and anything other than accountancy is more important when running an accountancy practice.
(4) An employer that is easily frustrated and bad tempered.
(5) An employer that tries it on with clients and lusts over employees (the one he thought was smelly).
(6) An employer that sees a relatively high turnover of staff for such a small practice due to their reluctance to invest in their workforce.
(7) An employer that can change their mind about anything and everything on an hourly basis.
(8) An employer that can never be humble enough to acknowledge that they were wrong about something.

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FT
By FirstTab
02nd Sep 2016 10:16

I am out of this thread. Enough.

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paddle steamer
By DJKL
02nd Sep 2016 11:35

Deleted as duplicate post.

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paddle steamer
By DJKL
02nd Sep 2016 11:31

Irrespective of anyone's past history, this was a topic that was worth discussing; in effect should smaller practices take on apprentices, how should such apprenticeships be structured etc.etc.

It is a shame, given the paucity of questions of interest on Any Answers these days, that the discussion was not pursued without point scoring,

Examples of how the discussion could have expanded are:

1. Can a small practice offer a broad enough range of work that equips the apprentice for the future and satisfies the apprentice post training? i.e. is retention, for the good candidates, a forlorn hope?

2. How much teaching/mentoring ought to be done in house or should employer more be leaving apprentice to get on with it via a training provider? How much planning is needed re work experience to avoid the trainee merely doing the same sort of work week in week out?

3. How does one accommodate study release/course costs etc into the structure/reward system?

4. Does salary increase as exams passed as well as with increased experience? The dichotomy for the small firm; the trainee doing productive work is more important to the firm (financially) than the trainee passing exams, but to the trainee (long term) both are important.

5. Should clawbacks re course/exam costs be incorporated?

6. Given effort to train for a smaller practice is likely a greater percentage of time commitment than for a large practice, is staff retention post training nearly essential in order to make training financially worthwhile for the practice? If it it how is it achieved?

It is an interesting topic when addressed ,presumably, at a level below training for one of the chartered institutes, their training is well defined but I am not sure ( very out of date) if there is the same rigour/structure surrounding AAT training or similar.

Does anyone want to ignore the particulars re individuals and discuss the ideas or am I wasting my breath (well fingers really)?

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Worm
By TheLambtonWorm
02nd Sep 2016 12:03

In my experience working for a small practice, there are 3 types of trainees:

1) The good. These ones tend to be ambitious and are great to have for the first few years, but beyond those first few years, you'll have to choose between losing them and giving them the opportunity to study something like ACA/ACCA.

2) The bad. These will stick around until you boot them out, but they'll take forever to get to a decent standard, and you'll always have to check their work thoroughly.

3) The mediocre. Somewhere between 1 and 2.

And the solution: As with any recruitment, before you take them on, work out what you want them to do and for how long and then choose the type of person accordingly.

Personally I think it's best to take on good people and stick them through their AAT on day release. Once they have finished it in a few years, you can decide whether the business needs them to further their studies or not.

If not, just let them go and be happy that you've had a good worker for 3 years. If you do want them to further their studies, then great - you already have a member of staff you know you can rely on.

But as others have said, it takes a great deal of time and effort to train people. The better the trainee, the less time it takes.

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