Hi, my name is Anna.
I joined Deloitte New Zealand this year as a grad. I am based in the Auckland office and am part of a corporate team in Tax. I’m looking forward to sharing my experience and giving you an insight into my life as a tax grad at Deloitte.
Induction, tax training, beach barbeques, tax new years (31 March for all you budding tax geeks), abacus training, the mid winter ball, graduation, indoor netball, volleyball and some tax returns have all been in the mix making for an exciting past 5 months! Luckily Deloitte bloggers Michelle and Lucy have been keeping you all in the loop, otherwise I would have a huge amount of catching up to do.
The last week has been a busy one where ‘work life balance’ was definitely the key. In addition to a busy week of tax returns to meet some tight deadlines there have been a number of social events helping keep away the winter blues.
The week started for me boarding the 5.45am train from Orakei (who knew trains even ran that early!) to set up for the FIFA world cup final breakfast at the Auckland office. Football fever had been evident over the last few weeks with the fantasy football league, sweepstake and the odd avid England supporter providing numerous opportunities for office banter. By 6.30am kickoff we had a dedicated but somewhat sleepy audience, coffees in hand ready to cheer on the next World Cup champions. The half time croissants, danishes and other breakfast delicacies were a definite winner. With Spain beating Netherlands in extra time it was an exciting start to the week. Celebrations finished just in time to head down to our respective floors and catch up on what antics our team members had got up to that weekend, and discuss our workflow for the coming week.
Soccer hasn’t been the only sport of choice for the Auckland grads over the last few months. Two Deloitte indoor netball teams competed in the autumn league at Action Indoor in Newmarket. Our creatively named teams Deloitte Blue (AKA Audit, A&A and Consulting) and Deloitte Green (AKA Tax) have had a solid season with games every Wednesday night from March to July. The games gave us all a good opportunity to catch up with each other and show the other corporate teams what we’re made of. The Blues narrowly missed out on third place while the Green team fought hard in the final but came off second best to our rival team ‘Wipeout’. Our second place effort earned us some very unique purple t-shirts with ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ in blazing across the front – keep an eye out for these bad boys Friday nights in the Auckland CBD!
Friday night was also sport filled with football themed monthly work drinks followed with an end the season BYO dinner to celebrate the end of our indoor netball season. The BYO involved some very tasty Thai food, a few bottles of celebratory wine and a sneaky bottle or two of ‘Bigfoot’ incurring a $10 corkage penalty as the owner failed to pass it off as rosè. It was a good night to wrap up the season. We have entered a team in winter grade so I will keep you posted on how the slightly more creatively named ‘Net Assets’ go.
The sporting theme continued on Saturday night when a few of the tax grads took the opportunity to attend the annual pub golf flat crawl organised by a number of auditors. Although the event wasn’t specifically a ‘Deloitte event’ it gave us the opportunity to network with another service line and get to know some of the auditors in a more social setting. Diamond vests, cheesecutters and golf gloves were all on display the night began at a flat in Ponsonby. A party bus picked everyone up and moved us to the second of four flats, the beginnings of a great night for all involved!
I can say that I’m looking forward to a quieter week on the social front, and getting stuck into some tax compliance work as queries have begun to come back and the returns I’m currently working on are well underway.
Cheers, Anna
