Anyone work in audit?

[auditamanda]

Long story but I've recently become interested in a career in audit and have seen some 'trainee auditor' jobs near me. Have been reading online (prospects, gov.uk) about the role but if anyone here has experience would love to know your experience on

• the day to day activities
• skills which make you a good auditor
• stress levels
• family friendliness
• job availability (once trained)

thanks :)

The role can vary a lot depending on the firm you work for. Not just the split between Big 4/ medium sized firm/ small local firm, it also within those groupings, so it's hard to give a specific answer, but I'll do my best.

• the day to day activities

As a junior, you're likely to spend a lot of your time at the client's site carrying out work as directed by a senior. The work done by juniors tends to be very repetitive, and gets more interesting as you gain more experience. You'll probably do things like attending stock takes, checking the existence of assets, tracing transactions through the accounting systems.

As you get more experienced, you'll get more involved in planning the audit (looking into where the risks arise to plan the testing needed) and completing the audit (looking at the testing result as a whole to decide if the accounts give a true and fair view)

As a senior, you'll also start managing the in site work and directing and reviewing the work of more junior team members.

Depending on the size of firm/ audit you might be on site on your own or in a huge team. You might be there for a few days or several weeks.

• skills which make you a good auditor

Reasonable maths skills, good written communication. Really important are good people skills (you find out more from talking to people than doing audit tests), good team working skills and good organisation skills

• stress levels
• family friendliness

Both vary massively depending on your firm.

• job availability (once trained)

Generally good. The number of companies needing to be audited has reduced, so the number of firms doing audit has reduced. But the number of trained auditors has reduced as well.

You will need to do a qualification (ACCA or ICAEW). The exams are hard work especially balanced with a family. If you're at a big firm, they fire people for failing exams, but they give you more support than smaller firms normally.

I trained in an accounting practice doing accounts prep and audit but have been in industry for a few years.
Depending on what attracts you to audit you might also want to consider internal audit in a large company which works with more than finance activities, or consider national audit office who audit government type bodies.
You need to have resilience and persistence as some people just won't want to help you and some might be trying to hide something and you have to calmly keep going to get what you need.
Depending on where you are work can be uneven through the year leading to high volume of work at different times (if lots of clients have same year end).
Finally, as pp said, good interpersonal skills needed - it makes a world of difference if you can build a good relationship and communicate what you are doing and why.

Thank you very much for replies.

The role I am looking at is for a county council trainee auditor, so quite broad and varied.

Appreciate the insights :)

That sounds more like internal audit, so my reply probably isn't as relevant. While the mindset needed for internal and external auditors is very similar, the aim of each is completely different.

Internal audit will be looking as transactions through the year to make sure systems are being followed, while external auditors will be looking at the accuracy of the year end financial statements.

Internal audit is likely to give you a good view of all activities as it could involve audit of any department.
I have known many internal auditors find a long term niche resulting from audit tasks e.g risk management, finance, IT management as well as those who have stayed in IA for the long haul (although move orgs as it gets repetitive after a few years).

I worked in external and internal audit for ten years, huge mistake! All I can say is some jobs were better than others, I really enjoyed Internal audit in a London uni, but loathed Internal Audit in a hedge fund bank I know a lot of people that burned out after ten to fifteen years. I think you are either suited to it or not, I really wasn't. The pay was good though.