Working for an auditing firm, the pros and cons.

Just as a small background, there are four big audit firm in the world usually referred to us the ‘big four’ namely:

1.   Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

2.   Deloitte and Touche.

3.   KPMG.

4.   Ernst and Young.

In terms of revenue Deloitte leads globally followed by PwC but in our local market, PwC is number one followed by Deloitte. In looking at this, we consider the revenue of the company but our primary concern is the employee and whatever goes into the pocket of people is what we will advise for. Locally, PwC is the best paying firm but only on some levels and at some levels Deloitte is also good. If you can hoop around these firms, you can make good money.

Just before I drift away from the main topic, let me say that starting your career life in an audit firm will be the best thing to happen to you especially if you are interested in:

Ø  Auditing and Risk Analysis.

Ø  Accounting and Finance.

Ø  Advisory and Consulting.

Ø  Financial Management.

Ø  Tax and Revenue analysis.

Getting a job at an audit firm is the easiest and I know they carry out among the most transparent recruitment processes in the country. They target very bright students from both public and private universities and colleges. Anyway, starting your career in an auditing firm should provide you the following advantages:

1.   You will gain knowledge not comparable to any other employer because they invest a lot in employee knowledge.

2.   You will learn the best practices while having ‘on job training’ because being professional services firms, they insist on industry best practices.

3.   You will have very good contacts with clients because their clients are the big multinationals like Barclays, Unilever, GSK, EABL and many more. This can help you in getting a job.

4.   Your etiquette improves so much because as I said earlier, audit firms insist on best practices and in them you will find the most professional individuals.

5.   Most employers who want experience in people who have worked before will prefer these auditors to fill up positions in their finance departments.

Any good thing dos not miss its cons. There are disadvantages of starting your career or working with an auditing firm:

1.   Your life is almost over. There is a concept in HR we call ‘work – life’ balance. It will be very hard to achieve this especially if you are an auditor on peak seasons.

2.   Audit firms pay well but that is just a fallacy. It is a good salary to start from but as time goes by you realize that people in the industry with the same experience earn double what you do.

3.   Many employers may prefer that they employ from auditing firms but there is fear among HR executives that if someone has been auditing for long, he/ she may lack the industry knowledge.

4.   You definitely at one point must suffer depression especially if it is money that took you there. If the salary attracted you without the stomach and passion to do audit work, I assure you stress, stress and more stress.

5.   You probably will retire poor unless you work your way up to partnership because anything less than a Senior Manager is poverty and you will end up waiting for your pension.

I hope you now see that working for an audit firm can be prestigious but not as rosy and people think. All you need to have is passion and working in an audit firm can be a very good experience.

We at HCC wish you a good work experience.