Work Experience Academy - Cleckheaton - 2024

Location: New Chartford House, Centurion Way, Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, BD19 3QB
Dates: Between Monday, 28th and Friday, 1st November 2024
Hours: 9am to 3.30pm each day


Can you imagine a future career in finance? Well, now you can find out what it’s really like - and it’s nowhere near as dull as you might think!

This October, BHP is running our popular Work Experience Academy in Cleckheaton. Get a genuine flavour of the broad range of work that accountants get involved with and find out if it could be the right career path for you.

Spend time with our friendly, specialist teams learning what they do on a day-to-day basis, and take part in fun, interactive games and activities. We can guarantee you won’t just be making tea and filing all day!


Our Programme



Your BHP Experience

Day 1 morning - Introduction to Accountancy

On your first morning, First Intuition (our training providers for professional qualifications) will take you through some of the skills and behaviours that a trainee Accountant needs to learn as part of their professional development.

This part of the programme will prepare you for a career in accountancy and finance, focusing on the following core skills:

• Teamwork
• Problem solving and decision making
• Leading yourself
• Effective communication

Day 1 afternoon - Digital Finance
Our team of tech experts provide a full range of financial services for fast-growing businesses. During your afternoon, you will:

• Find out how automation and technology help our clients
• Review a case study: discover our services and their benefits to the client
• Work towards the production of a client business activity report
• Find out how we talk numbers with a client - and the challenges they present
• Think about opportunities for clients and how they will affect business profits

Day 2 morning - Tax
During an afternoon with our expert Corporate and Private Client Tax teams, you will explore many different areas. You will:

• Understand how the ‘employed’ and ‘self-employed’ are treated differently under the income tax system
• Understand how a sole trader/partnership and a corporate company are treated
• Understand the basics of how an individual and a company calculates their tax liability
• Find out more about other areas of tax such as VAT (Value Added Tax), SDLT (Stamp Duty Land Tax), IHT (Inheritance Tax) and Payroll

Day 2 afternoon - Translink Corporate Finance
Our Translink Corporate Finance team will be asking students to participate in several exercises, using the following scenarios:

• Exercise 1 - You’re advising the shareholders of a company who want to sell their business. Using Google, find five companies you think would want to buy them.
• Exercise 2 - The shareholders have now received multiple offers for the company. Evaluate the pros and cons of each offer and choose which one to recommend.
• Exercise 3 - Produce and deliver a short presentation on the work you have completed - present the buyers and your reasons for choosing them, and recommend which offer to accept and why.

Day 3 morning - Healthcare
Our specialist Healthcare team are advisors to many GP practices, hospital consultants, locum GPs and dentists.

Your morning with the team will involve hearing about the services they provide and their client base.

You’ll also work in pairs on a case study and will:

• Prepare an income and expenditure account from dummy data for the client, including research
on income and expenditure streams
• Work on the presentation of the document for the client
• Win a prize for being the closest to our standard BHP document

Day 3 afternoon - Audit
One of the biggest pressures that can be imposed on companies is the mandatory statutory audit. We view the audit as an opportunity to be the expert adviser and add value to our clients’ businesses. During your session with our Audit team, you will:

• Discover exactly what an audit is
• Find out why businesses need to be audited
• Understand what a good audit outcome looks like
• Explore non-BHP audit disasters in the news and the consequences
• Case study - review a set of accounts and audit figures

Day 4 morning - Financial Planning
Spend a few hours with our BHP Financial Planning arm and find out:

• What exactly is Financial Planning?
• How we invest our client’s money!
• What assets you can invest in, what the risks are, and what a sensible investment portfolio looks like
• Can you recommend an investment solution for a client?

Day 4 afternoon - Understanding the World of Work
On Thursday afternoon, you’ll learn what it takes for a business to operate successfully, including internal finance and support services such as HR and marketing.

You’ll finish the day working together as a team to demonstrate some of the skills you’ve developed over the course of the week. You’ll learn presentation skills and prepare for your mock interviews on Friday.

Day 5 - Mock Interview and BHP Team Time
Finally, you’ll have the opportunity on the last day to spend more time with one of the BHP Teams that you met earlier in the week, and we’ll prepare you for the world of work with a mock interview and lots of valuable advice about applying for jobs in the future.

Food, Travel and Dress Code
There will be regular breaks throughout the day and lunch will be provided, with plenty of time to get out and about on your lunch break.

Everyone attending the academy will receive a travel allowance, and you can enjoy a relaxed dress code throughout your week with us!

Who is the Work Experience Academy for?
BHP is offering this programme instead of hosting traditional school/college work experience weeks and it is aimed at Y11 & 6th formers who think that they may be interested in a career in finance or accountancy.

If our Work Experience Academy is of interest to you, click the ‘Apply for this job’ button to complete a short online application form.



Closing date: In order to be considered for the Cleckheaton 2024 Work Experience Academy, please submit your online application by XXXXXXXXX