Auditor Review

Job title: Auditor Daily Tasks: external audit of government and public sector clients e.g. local government and NHS. Agreement of various areas of the financial statements back to underlying source records to enable us to give an opinion on the reliability of the information presented Daily interactions between myself and clients occur. This involves asking the client questions about the work they have performed, working papers they have produced and reasons for how they have accounted for items in their financial statements. My role involves working in a team of about 20 people and therefore, I report directly to managers who allocate and assign you to a particular client. As I'm in 3rd year of performing the role I am now responsible for leading a small team of people made up of staff who have recently joined EY at some of our smaller clients.

EY has provide me with the opportunity to study towards the ACA qualification. This is an externally recognised qualification and many other firms will recognise this qualification which involves gaining working experience on client work and passing 15 exams. There are also regular internal training opportunities, which enable you to develop core skills which relate directly to your job e.g. how to audit payroll. These training courses have enabled me to learn soft skills as well e.g. presentation skills, time management.

The work varies daily, which makes the job interesting. The team I work in is made up of around 20 people, which means you are always working with different people which makes it interesting. This exceeded my expectations of the programme.

Managers recognise you for doing a good job, through a variety of means. This can vary from receiving gift vouchers to buy yourself something nice to receiving an email/ face to face communication saying you did a good job. Whichever way is used you always appreciate it!

Organisation is generally good, this steams from the fact that other people are on the programme and have completed the programme previously. The programme is structured to enable you to have certain periods at work on clients, then certain periods out of the office at College studying towards your ACA qualification.

Lots of support. You receive a counsellor, who you can meet with whenever you need to. Through these meeting you can discuss your career, training, experiences and where you would like your career to go in the future. General problems and guidance can also be sought from your counsellor, making the overall level of support excellent.

There is always plenty of support from managers on your client. Also, if they are not around, everyone is more than willing to try to help you instead, which is always good!

Salary is reasonable for the office location. Salary generally increases at quite a rapid pace, which helps meet the costs of travel, living and social costs.

Yes, there are so many opportunities. There are many office wide events, so within my office (Birmingham) over the last 12 months there have been opportunities to volunteer in the local community, attend pub quizs, join the various sports teams, attend the annual Winter Ball. All of these events enable you to get to know members of your team better outside of a work environment and are good for building team spirit.

Yes

There is so much variety at EY. Also, the company has a friendly atmosphere and supports you through your programme, including time at College to study towards the ACA qualification.

For the interview preparation I'd recommend having a think about situations where you've demonstrated various skills that EY look for e.g. time management, communication, presentation skills as this is likely to be handy.