Karun Nayyar was just four months into his job when he experienced his first major career highlight when he attended a meeting at a racetrack. “I found myself watching cars whiz around, followed by lunch where I sat opposite a CEO of a multinational,” says the graduate trainee, who works in the tax department at KPMG Reading. Such outings are not an everyday occurrence for Nayyar or his colleagues, and he says he remembers thinking at the time: “What 22-year-old attends meetings like this?”
Before joining the business in 2021, Nayyar, now 24, had studied aeronautical engineering at Loughborough University. Even though he had no previous knowledge of tax, KPMG took him on. In his first week, he was allocated a “buddy”, a graduate a year ahead of him. “When you’re new, you’re scared to ask silly questions, but the buddy provides a safe space for this: I’m always bouncing questions off him.”
