Any Internal Auditors out there?

sammyjammy

I'm in the early stages of considering applying for a trainee role in Internal Audit within my organisation (Civil Service) and am looking for some views.

Not sure what I really want to know, I have really good analytical skills which I'm hoping will help but I'm wondering if it might be a bit dry and would love to hear your opinions in working in this area. I'm desperately looking for a change and a new challenge at work and am a bit nervous that I've latched on to this for that reason rather than that I desperately want to be one , I've got the time to dedicate to the study if I'm successful.

Grateful for experiences good and bad.

InsideInsurance

Dont work in IA but nature of the job means I have lots of fun with both Compliance/ Regulatory Risk and IA. An associate of mine did go from RR to IA as a secondment and had a chat with him over his experiences.

Generally he felt he was going from the dark side to the utlra dark side and was hated even more by everyone he had to deal with. At the same time he did enjoy the more proactive detective work aspect.

One of the challenges was that he was often asked to audit subjects that he knew little about and therefore made the process much more challenging especially as you really cannot even trust your colleagues to tell you the whole truth.

ceh209

I'm in external audit and when I tell people, they think that's bad enough.

However I'm going to a public sector internal audit client soon and I'm dreading it. If you go for this role, prepare to be frustrated, hated, never finish anything properly, and feel like your work is completely pointless

Good luck!

InsideInsurance

Saying the work is pointless I think is a bit harsh but it certainly can be frustrating and feel pointless when you keep coming up against the same issues each time you audit the same people.

sammyjammy

ceh209 wrote: »

I'm in external audit and when I tell people, they think that's bad enough.

However I'm going to a public sector internal audit client soon and I'm dreading it. If you go for this role, prepare to be frustrated, hated, never finish anything properly, and feel like your work is completely pointless

Good luck!

Thanks both for your comments, that doesn't sound good ceh209! I'm very particular and fastidious about my work which is one of the reasons why I thought it might suit me but maybe not.

I think I'll put the application in and take it from there. I've proved that I'm dedicated enough to undertake study in my own time for qualifications through work by doing my book keeping exams so hopefully that'll prove that I'll be committed and will give it my all, I really need something meaty to get my teeth into and I'm sure there will be many more hoops to jump through even if they consider my application.

patman99

Funny thing, my new colleague used to be a Compliance Auditor for UL and regularly visited the place he now works at in a QA role.

We get audited by various organisations on a semi-regular basis. It keeps us on our toes as the end result of the audit could mean we are stopped from selling our product in a particular country.

Ceh209 makes quite a valid point about the work being pointless. If an organisation is not prepared to react on the findings of an Audit, then they shouldn't have one done.

BobQ

I would say it depends on what you are auditing and what your expertise is to do it. Auditing compliance with safety or security procedures might be very interesting. Auditing finances could be very dull. A private firm might be content to ignore minor discrepencies as not economic to explain but the public sector will probably spend hundreds of pounds to save pence because its "public money".

sammyjammy

Thanks again guys, well application gone in, the more I find out the more likely I think this might be for me. Not sure if or how I would be involved in actually making recommendations or knowing they were carried out or not as I believe most of our IAs work in teams, I would be the lowest qualified grade and so perhaps be involved in assisting in an Audit rather than taking a lead in anything. What I do like is that as a CS working in DWP the audits would include auditing Benefits etc which gives it an added interest.

We'll see anyway, fingers crossed!

cautiouscat

I'm an internal auditor and regulatory compliance officer and I love it. (I'm also not great company in the pub).

Although you would start out at the lowest grade, you'd generally progress quite quickly.

I think you might find DWP audits a bit dull once you have got the hang of them (having done some Government stuff myself), but once you are qualified you will open up a huge range of organisations that you could potentially work with.

As well as the attention to detail, understanding of processes and changing organisation stuff, I'd also recommend you sell yourself as a friendly patient person if you get through to interview stage. You are likely, at least from time to time, to have to tell a bunch of grumpy jobsworths that they need to do more work! (I always like that bit!)

Good luck, and if this doesn't work out, have you thought about forensic accounting?