Jay Curley, Audit Trainee, Mazars

Last updated: 13 Oct 2023, 08:33

Jay Curley, Audit Trainee, Mazars

What does your job involve?

As an auditor I can break my role into three components. We first request financial information from the client and begin audit work on that, which would be testing the balances on those statements. If we find any mistakes or errors or something that we think needs further questioning we request further information from the client. Depending on whether or not that is sufficient we give back our report. The final product would be an audit report that we present to the client with a financial statement.

What skills are important for success?

Probably the most important skill I’ve come across in either law or accounting in any work I’ve done as an intern, or now professionally is communication. Any issues I’ve ever come across can either be avoided or subsequently resolved with a good communication structure in place. A lot of the time as I enter my third year traineeship now a lot of first year and second year trainees will come up to me with different issues they might have. With good communication they should be able to get over any issues.

What made you choose a job in this sector?

Taking it back to when I chose my undergrad, in school I always had a competency for accounting, and from TV or whatever else I had an interest in law, so that’s why I chose to do Law and Accounting in Limerick. Moving forward I did a legal internship over in America. I just wanted to try it out and see what the industry was like. I subsequently decided I wanted to do something I thought I would be good at and would be competent in, so I decided to go down the auditing route.

What do you love about your job?

What I like most is the atmosphere that’s created by the young staff. As a training firm, a lot of the staff, probably 50-60%, would be quite young and just straight out of college, so it’s a nice, natural transition from college to a work environment. You have a lot of peers around your age struggling with the same issues you might have. I find that when it comes around to exam time in summer there’s a good comradery with a lot of people you can ask questions to.

What advice do you have for first year students?

The thing that helped me the most would be the internship I did in Los Angeles. It just gave me a real insight into what it takes to be a professional and what is expected and required of you in a professional services firm - how you present yourself, being timely and prudent, that kind of thing. That’s been invaluable since I started working here.

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