In June 2022, The EY firm and NEOMA signed a partnership agreement, marking a high point in a long-shared history. For a very long time, the two institutions have made progress alongside one another. Isabelle Tracq-Sengeissen, ’90 NEOMA graduate and EY associate, talks about this collaboration.  

How are you involved in the school?

We participate in a large number of conferences, forums, professional days and webinars. We are also partners with associations like NATS (NEOMA Alumni Team Support), which invites us to come speak about our different professions and job positions. This is important for us because students don’t know every much about the diversity of our professions. We are also a major partner of the National Confederation of Junior Enterprises (CNJE) and a sponsor of the EY Top Eight, the rugby tournament for graduate schools, organised by NEOMA students.

Why is it important for you to have a presence in this sports event?  

It’s been a long-running partnership. Romain Lancer, EY associate, is one of the founders of the tournament, which has existed since 2001. And our company shares a great deal of the values of rugby, such as team spirit, mutual assistance, celebration, new connections and friendship.

The tournament is also a way for us to meet the students from the different business and engineering schools in a more informal setting. They show interest, ask questions, and later on perhaps, they contact us. And it’s also a mixed tournament! We recruit both men and women at EY.

Concerning equality, EY is a partner of the NEOMA disability outreach effort.  

Yes, we provide funding for accessibility equipment for students with disabilities. We also participate in Duo Day, a day where NEOMA students with disabilities go through a day in the life of an EY employee. They realise that they can also hold this kind of job. These activities work well and often lead to recruiting students. This was the case for two students, showing that this initiative set up by NEOMA bears fruit. It’s a win-win experience for the companies and young people with disabilities.

EY recruits a lot of NEOMA students for internships and work-release posts as well as graduates for full positions. You also say that EY is itself a large alumni association. What are the benefits of these applicants?

We recruit them, as is regularly said, because they are good and because they are friendly. “Good” because they have acquired the skills and basic concepts at NEOMA that we need. They are people who don’t need further explanations on concepts like accounting, consolidated accounts, corporate law, which they need in the work they do with their clients.

And they are “friendly” because they don’t have a big ego, which is an attitude that you can find in other students and graduates who want to jump ahead too quickly. In auditing, you first learn to grow with a team, only then are you able to manage it. NEOMA graduates have this team spirit. They apply it properly and they have solidarity values that make working with them more efficient.

What are the upcoming developments for this partnership?

We are surely going to move forward and add a recent aspect: sustainability. Just as NEOMA has created a track based on this concept, we are certainly going to collaborate closely on this. And we will continue with the actions that provide us with greater exposure in the MiM, CESEM, TEMA and GBBA programmes.