Auditors are the financial investigators of the business world. As an auditor, you get to have a look beneath the hood and gain a deep understanding of the mechanics, the processes, and the details that might not be immediately visible. Your keen eye and sharp mind are your best tools in decoding complex financial issues, ensuring the integrity of financial reporting, and safeguarding the public trust.
In a way, we guard the financial health and reputation of our clients - which means that there’s a lot of trust and relationship building that goes on. 

Our jobs are to make sure that neither us or our clients are slacking in terms of records, systems and processes and that the client’s financial statements are accurate, compliant, and transparent.
It also means our advice and insights make a difference. Auditing is like the oldest child of financial services - we’re responsible and on-time. Ethics and integrity are second to none.
 

Nah. It might seem like that because everyone thinks we’re just human calculators in suits. But we basically get a front-row seat in so many industries that it keeps things interesting. 

For example, our RSM work has involved everything from multinational companies, new and emerging tech, agriculture, and HNWI (High-net-worth individuals).

The uniqueness of the New Zealand market keeps us on our toes, we work with established and well-known companies, right to the underground disrupters who might be low key, but turnover millions of dollars. There is always something new to learn about and engage with. 
 

We’re never really stuck to our desks because we're often on-site with the client. If you like to travel, be in different places, and meet new people, auditing would be a great fit! Plus, we really dress for our day. It’s not all suit and ties even though we do like to dress to impress. For example if your client is rocks up in jandals and shorts, nice jeans and sneakers is usually all good.
 

We speak for all auditors when we say that auditors aren't just number crunchers. Our work requires a decent blend of both technical and interpersonal skills. 

Audit is a team-based activity, where each member, right from the graduate, through to the Audit Partner, bring their individual skills together to achieve a collective goal – audit completion with the right audit opinion!
 

We look for people who are all rounders and have drive to learn because we have a supportive environment and prioritise your training. We all have a grade or two on our transcripts where we know we could've done better, but if you're a great problem solver or can pick out trends and patters and communicate - these are great traits for auditing!
 

For all the people-persons out there - we know that being in a room alone with nothing but a spreadsheet can be daunting, but don't worry! That's not what audit is. You do have lots of talking time with the team members and your clients, and these relationships are key to maintaining integrity and curiosity. Auditing suits extroverts too, especially because auditors can’t compromise on communication. We have to work super closely with lots of personalities - and we have to be able to explain our analysis, findings, and recommendations in a way that everyone can understand.
 

Don’t let your commitment issues scare you from auditing! There’s lots of growth and development here, and you won’t niche yourself into a lifetime of auditing if you try it out and feel that it’s not right for you.

Here are a couple reasons why:

• We learn skills that are transferable across different jobs and industries
• Progression is pretty much guaranteed, you start as a junior but can work your way up to different levels of seniority, management, and even specialise in areas you enjoy
• We become highly trained in understanding business needs and processes
• We tend come from various educational backgrounds and even non-business disciplines so there is lots of cross-learning for those who like new topics, emerging industries, and changing client and social needs
• We join huge networks and ecosystems due to the nature of our work

Auditors are in high demand - in New Zealand and abroad. This is only due to grow, so there's unlikely to be shortage of work or opportunities. That’s how significant the mahi is. RSM is a great place for an audit career because we're a global network with offices all over the world! And not just in audit, but in many different areas of consulting. 

We're pretty good here at RSM. 

Sometimes our hours can be longer than usual, especially around deadlines. But because our culture and working relationships with clients is different to larger firms, we're more flexible and don't typically work late at night. 

We were asked by a few students who heard that other firms work a lot of overtime. Our answer is that although you may have a long day here or there, it's not a norm for us. You'll also get shorter days over summer, and our clients sometimes force us to stop working even if we try! Our partners and clients are cool as. 

We’re different because we lead the middle-market. This means that we're well-resourced to support our clients' needs and be proud of our work. No late hours here! We're proud of our work, our clients, and the quality what we do and who we do it with. 
Our teams really value working hard and playing hard. We spend a lot of time bonding by enjoying the odd drink together and the auditors are the firm favourites for our activities like:

• Having our own pool table
• Going axe-throwing
• Paintballing and ten-pin bowling 
• We're even going on a ski trip! 

Our career development has been supported by the in-house training we’ve received from the amazing management team and the support we get from each other doing CA or CPA courses together (don't forget that RSM pays for us to complete our professional memberships too!).