Audit

Auditors check whether an organisation's financial statements give a true and fair view of its position, and whether the systems producing those numbers can be relied on. Most graduate auditors work in external audit at accountancy firms, visiting client companies (or working on their data remotely) to test transactions, balances and controls, then documenting the evidence so the firm can sign an audit opinion. A smaller number work in internal audit, employed by a single organisation to review its own processes, risks and controls.

Starting salary: £24k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 286 open now
Main way in: Audit graduate schemes at accountancy firms
They usually ask for: Degree subject usually does not matter

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £24,000–£35,000 to start, and this varies very widely - London and the largest firms sit at the upper end, smaller regional practices often lower, with public-sector internal audit schemes somewhere in between. Pay usually rises sharply on qualification. Treat these as rough approximations only and check individual adverts.

What you'd actually do

Testing samples of transactions - for example picking a set of invoices or payroll entries and tracing them back to contracts, bank statements or delivery notes to check they actually happened and were recorded correctly
Preparing and clearing audit working papers in the firm's audit software: documenting what you tested, what you found, and why it supports the conclusion, then answering review points raised by a senior or manager
Emailing and calling client finance staff to request documents, chase outstanding items and ask why a number moved year on year - a lot of junior audit time goes on politely chasing people
Running analytical procedures: comparing this year's figures to last year's, to budget, or to expectations, and investigating anything that looks odd

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Attending inventory counts at warehouses, shops or factories (often around year-end, which for many clients means late December or early January)
Sitting exam study leave and going to tutor-led courses for the ACA, ACCA or CA - the professional qualification runs alongside the job from year one
Team debriefs and planning meetings at the start and end of each client job, where you agree what the risk areas are and who covers what

How graduates get in

Audit graduate schemes at accountancy firms - by far the most common route. Firms range from the largest international networks to mid-tier national firms and small independent practices, and all of them recruit graduates annually with a training contract that funds a professional qualification.
School-leaver and apprenticeship programmes (Level 7 accountancy apprenticeships) - a genuine alternative to the graduate route, and increasingly common. Graduates can sometimes enter through these too, as the funding structure suits employers.
Summer internships or placement years at accountancy firms, which frequently convert into graduate offers. This is a strong route and worth targeting in your penultimate year.
Direct application to smaller or regional firms outside the main graduate recruitment cycle - these often advertise ad hoc rather than running a scheme, and can be more flexible about timing and background.

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Internal audit graduate schemes at banks, insurers, large retailers, the NHS, central government and local authorities. Less well known than external audit but a real route; the qualification funded may be IIA (Institute of Internal Auditors) rather than ACA/ACCA.
The National Audit Office and public-sector audit bodies run their own graduate training schemes auditing government spending - a distinct and smaller route with a public-value focus.

What employers ask for

Degree subject usually does not matter. Accounting and finance graduates have a head start on the early exams and may get exemptions, but firms actively recruit history, engineering, languages and science graduates. Non-accounting graduates are normal, not exceptional.
A 2:1 is the common stated requirement, though a meaningful number of firms accept a 2:2 or have dropped the degree classification filter entirely - this varies a lot by firm, so check individual criteria rather than assuming.
UCAS points or GCSE maths and English requirements still appear at some firms, though many larger firms have removed or softened them. Smaller firms are often less prescriptive.
Commitment to a professional qualification - ACA (through ICAEW), ACCA, or CA (through ICAS, common in Scotland). You sign a training contract and the firm funds tuition and exam fees; you are expected to pass, usually with limited resits.

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No prior accounting experience is needed, but you'll be asked at interview why audit specifically rather than tax, consulting or industry finance - a vague answer is a common reason for rejection.
Right to work in the UK, and for some public-sector and defence-adjacent work, eligibility for security clearance.

Skills that matter

Scepticism - not taking an explanation at face value

The core of the job is asking "how do I know that's true?" and then finding evidence, rather than accepting what a client tells you about a balance.

Spreadsheet fluency (Excel, increasingly data analytics tools)

You will spend a lot of time manipulating client data extracts - pivot tables, lookups and reconciliations are daily tools, and firms are pushing more automated testing of whole populations rather than samples.

Writing clearly and concisely in a structured way

Working papers have to be good enough for a reviewer, a partner and potentially a regulator to follow your reasoning years later without asking you.

Asking awkward questions of people more senior than you

You will routinely need a finance director twice your age to explain a journal entry, and being too intimidated to press for a proper answer is a real performance problem in audit.

Working to deadlines under exam pressure simultaneously

Busy season client deadlines and professional exam sittings overlap, so the ability to plan and protect study time is what separates people who qualify on schedule from those who don't.

Attention to detail without losing the big picture

You need to spot a mis-keyed figure, but also to notice when a small error is a symptom of a control that has broken down across the whole year.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Trainee / associate (roughly the first three years, aligned to the training contract): you do the testing, under close review. Most trainees qualify at around three years, though this depends on exam progress.
Newly qualified senior / in-charge: you run fieldwork on smaller audits, supervise one or two trainees and review their work, and deal directly with client finance teams. This is the point at which many people either stay or leave - qualifying is a natural exit moment.
Assistant manager / manager: typically a few years after qualifying, though timelines vary widely. You plan audits, manage budgets and staffing, handle the client relationship and take responsibility for the file quality.
Senior manager and then director or partner at a firm. Partnership is a long route, usually well over a decade from joining, and depends heavily on business development as much as technical skill - most people do not take this path.
Moving out of practice is extremely common and entirely normal: into internal audit, financial reporting or financial control in industry, corporate finance, transaction services, forensic accounting, risk, regulation, or finance roles in the public and charity sectors. The ACA/ACCA/CA qualification is the portable asset here.

What people get wrong

“Audit is just checking numbers add up, and you need to be a maths person.”

The arithmetic is handled by software. The job is about evidence and judgement - deciding what could go wrong in a business, what would prove it hasn't, and whether the evidence you have is good enough. It is closer to investigation and structured argument than to maths.

“You spend the year sitting in one office.”

Audit is unusually sociable and mobile for a finance job. You work in small teams on a rotating set of client sites, meet a new business every few weeks, and spend a lot of time talking to people. That said, the balance has shifted since remote working became normal, and how much you're physically at clients varies a great deal by firm and client.

“The workload is steady all year.”

Audit is strongly seasonal. Busy season - broadly the first few months of the calendar year for clients with December year-ends, though it depends on your client portfolio - involves genuinely long hours, while quieter periods can be much more relaxed. The pattern differs by firm and by whether your clients are listed companies, owner-managed businesses or public bodies.

“Audit is a career for life or a failure if you leave.”

A large proportion of people deliberately use audit as a three-year training programme and leave shortly after qualifying. Firms know this and build their recruitment around it; leaving is a standard, well-trodden outcome rather than a sign anything went wrong.

Where this varies

The experience differs substantially depending on where you train. At large international firms you are likely to work on a small number of very big clients, often doing one narrow section of a huge audit in depth, with structured training and formal study support. At mid-tier and smaller firms you may run a whole small audit yourself within a year or two and get broader exposure, sometimes including accounts preparation and tax work alongside audit - some trainees prefer this, others find the training less structured. Internal audit is a different job again: no audit opinion, no busy season in the same sense, and a focus on operational risk and controls rather than financial statements, with reports going to an audit committee rather than shareholders. Scotland has its own route via ICAS and the CA qualification, and public-sector audit (local government, NHS, central government) has distinct rules and a value-for-money emphasis that external audit of companies does not.

See all 286 live Audit jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.