Internal Audit Careers
Internal Audit is actually an interesting career niche for those whose background are in accountancy, business or finance. Most internal auditors are accounting or finance trained but there are many quality auditors, IT auditors, process auditors that are from other disciplines. To get a sense of the demand, one should look to the job sites for careers in internal audit.
I've done some career counselling for my ex-staff who left to pursue full-time undergraduate studies on choosing a possible career niche in internal audit with accounting qualifications. The thing about internal audit is that it's a fairly specialised niche hence the number of jobs are not as many as compared to accounting and finance jobs. But because experienced internal auditors are less common compared to finance and accounting staff, the smaller supply situation is matched by a relatively small demand resulting in a number of choices of jobs for those who manage to get into an internal audit role with 3-5 years experience. If you have regional experience, i.e. carried out audits across regional operations, subsidiaries and countries, that makes you even more valuable to those who need experienced auditors who understand business proceses, internal controls, compliance and even value-for-money issues in internal audit.
If you can do IT audit and business process audit, then you will in high demand especially if you gain some seniority as internal audit heads are typically expected to run both internal (business) audits as well as the IT audits. If you are interested in an career in internal audit, can just drop me a note for free career guidance at yekker at gmail.com.
