Overview of the Audit service line
In Audit, you will join a growing team of around 1200 relationship driven, curious, problem solvers who add value to their clients daily. Our teams provide audit and assurance services which are vital to our clients' business control and credibility. Our expertise ranges from servicing private, entrepreneurial companies through to UK and internationally listed companies and groups, financial services, public sector bodies and some of the largest global organizations in the world. By joining a unique integrated structure, you will benefit from working in collaborative teams and be given responsibility for delivering robust and independent audit and assurance services in a supportive environment. Quality is at the centre of Mazars in terms of both our people and the service we provide our clients. We offer a distinctive, human-centric approach that goes beyond compliance, with an integrated structure that allows us to work seamlessly as one team.
We hold the fundamental belief that audit forms the foundations of a fair and prosperous world, we care about our industry and have long pressed for a debate on competition in the audit market. We believe that businesses and societies around the world deserve the benefits that increased resilience in the audit market can bring and are committed to playing an active role in shaping its future.
Start Date: 17 Jul 2023 for 8 Weeks (35 hours per week) with the possibility of extending up to 10 weeks
Student Type: Penultimate and final year university students
An introduction to our Public and Social Sector team
Our specialist Public and Social Sector team provides distinctive audit and advisory services across six sectors:
Job purpose
As an audit intern you will be part of a team responsible for completing about 500 limited assurance audits of small local authorities (primarily parish councils). Local authorities spending between £25K and £6.5M per annum are required to submit an annual return of their income and expenditure and we are required to undertake procedures set by the National Audit Office to give independent assurance on the annual return. The level of assurance is less than that of a true and fair opinion required for larger authorities (hence the term limited assurance) and the procedures are relatively straightforward. However, you will need to have an enquiring mind and analyse information, especially financial data quickly and accurately.
You will be trained and closely supervised by an experienced Audit Manager and all your work will be reviewed by the Audit Manager and Partner. However, you will be expected to learn quickly and work independently taking responsibility for the clients assigned to you. The clients are managed remotely but you will have regular contact with them on the phone, by e-mail and by letter so you must be a strong communicator.
You will be set weekly completion targets working towards a team target of 95% complete, reviewed and opinions issued by the statutory deadline of 30 September. Clients complete a satisfaction survey, so a key skill is chasing them for information and persuading them to correct errors in a friendly and professional way that leads to positive feedback.
The outcome of your work will contribute to providing various stakeholders with assurance of an organisation's financial and accounting records and standards of governance. The local authorities raise most of their income via a precept added to resident's council tax bills so there is considerable public interest in how the money is spent. The Partner and Audit Manager will deal with objections received from local electors and any suspicion of fraud or illegality, but you will need to be alert to politically sensitive issues, whilst working at speed on set procedures.
Following the program, if a career in accountancy is something which you wish to pursue, you may be invited to apply for one of the firm's graduate positions which would commence the following summer.
The person
Strong academic performance is important; however, we understand that things don't always go to plan. Our recruitment process looks at your whole self – academic achievements as well as other experiences in which you have grown and developed. We balance your academic results alongside the aptitude assessment within our recruitment process to ensure that you will be successful in your role with us.
Benefits
If you are interested in a career in professional services, we can offer you an exciting head start by joining one of our trainee schemes for school or college leavers.
My interview was a one on one interview with a member of their graduate recruitment team, the interview took place at their London office. The interview starts with an exercise...
After completing verbal and numerical tests online, I was invited to the 1st round interview. It was with a member of graduate recruitment and it lasted around an hour where it...
Firstly there is an online application form to pass.
Then there are two stages to the Public Sector Internal Audit (PSIA) recruitment process which is different to the...
