#GradStories Robert Farrington, Tax Associate at Deloitte.

What are the main tasks you do in a day?

I specifically work in the financial services side of things so a lot of my clients would be investment management companies, insurance companies and leasing companies. The work is normally split between compliance and consulting so that means we do compliance which would be preparing tax returns for clients and consulting where we would do specific work like that related to a transaction or if there was something like a restructuring going on.

What skills do you need to be successful in your role?

Research skills and problem solving skills are very important. We're presented with a lot of quite complex problems that may have arisen due to new legislation being introduced or situations such as Brexit. You need to apply these to problems that a client might have. You need to be able to understand the problem and produce and output which you then communicate to a client who might not have a tax background.

What do you love about your job?

One of the most exciting things is how it's constantly changing. Each year the government will introduce legislation which might be different and there'd be new new rules and new things that are going to impact upon your client, You're constantly having to adapt and those changes might come from the OECD or the EU so it's it's really interesting to see it at a global level and then how that applies to your Irish clients and being able to assist them with that is great

How did you get into your job?

I went to UCD and I did a Commerce International degree with Spanish and I really enjoyed getting to do the year-long Erasmus exchange. The great thing about the degree as well was it gave us the chance to get a lot of the exemptions for the Chartered Accountant exams and that can be really helpful. I did an internship with Deloitte in the corporate tax department that I'm currently in and I got the offer to go back so it was all very smooth.

What skill should students develop if they are considering a career in this sector?

If you want to try something in college, give it a go. There's no specific skills that I would say you need to learn in college to go into a job like this. You'll learn everything on the job and Deloitte for example are entirely aware of the fact that you're not going to have all of the skills going in. I remember when I was doing my internship and I texted someone who had done it before asking if I needed to learn anything specific, they said you're going to learn everything on the job don't don't worry too much about it.

How have you adjusted to working from home?

I'm currently in the office maybe three days a week and we have the option to come in as much as we want but we're deciding to come in as a group because it's quite nice to go for lunch together and it's easier to ask questions when you're in the office. It is lovely then being able to wake up on a Friday and if you don't feel like going in, being able to just stay at home.