National Audit Office

It would probably help if I could spell "office" in the title - sorry!

Are foriegn students eligible to apply ?

No info right now, but I do know they have a reputation for being a good place to work and their grad scheme is top rated. It would be great to have a wiki profile for these guys - any info you can share after your interview would be really appreciated.. in the mean time, I will try to come up with some more info for you...

I've had my first interview, and have been invited back to the AC (or Group Selection as they call it).

The first interview was fairly straightforward - I had to do a Maths test - 1 hour to complete 30 questions (nothing more difficult than GCSE level - I think I was finished within 25 minutes. They do send a "revision guide" with practice questions in advance). After that was an interview with someone from HR - I was asked the usual "why NAO/accountancy/audit, etc", and then just three (I think) competency questions - one about motivating someone, persuading someone and I can't remember the third (I'll post again if it comes back to me). All in all, it was very informal, and the interview itself only lasted about 30-40 minutes.

The AC consists of a Case Study, Group discussion, interview with a director, and a pre-prepared presentation. If anyone has any advice for any of this I'd be grateful as I've never had to do a group discussion on presentation before.

Cheers

Cool. Thanks Silvermouse. I'm going to make this a wiki, here - National Audit Office. Good luck for the next stage - let us know what happens!

• group exercise
• presentation

Good luck.

Had my AC a couple of days ago - it wasn't at all tense, and there was plenty of time to chat to other candidates, so I think that actually helped to relax us all.

The case study was fairly straightforward - one question had a few calculations, otherwise it was wordy. We were given an hour to complete it, which for me was just right - I didn't find myself having to rush anything, and in fact (in my opinion) the answers didn't require too much writing.

We had half an hour for the group discussion, five minutes before to read through the info. I won't say what we had to discuss, but it wasn't related to accountancy. Again, it wasn't too challenging, we just had to make sure we had come to a decision within the half hour.

Lunch was a bit disappointing - just sandwiches provided (Having started at half past 9 I was really hungry!). Unfortunately some graduates were meant to have come to have lunch with us but noone turned up, so we didn't get a chance to ask about their experiences etc at NAO.

After lunch we had to do our (pre-prepared) presentation to two selectors and another candidate, and then a one-to-one interview (mine was with an HR manager). Like the first round I found the interview quite informal - a couple of competencies, how does NAO differ from private firms, how might NAO have been affected by the current issues.

All in all, it was a long day - fair bit of waiting around, but it gave us candidates a chance to relax in between sessions. It was pretty relaxed throughout, and we were well looked after.

I got a call the following morning to offer me a job, so I'm pretty chuffed! Hope this helps anyone who may have an interview with NAO in future.

SM

Hi,

I've got my group selection next week and I'm really nervous, I've never had to do any of this kind of stuff for an interview before!

It's the one-on-one interview I'm worried about really, for example, what sort of answer did you give for the one about how the NAO is affected by various current issues? I don't want to copy your answer obv, but just get an idea of what sort of thing I should say!! What other sort of questions did they ask?

Thanks so much,
Aimee x

Long = good!

Thanks very much for this! ..we'll get to work making it into a full wiki interview profile.. when we get time!

Hey guys,

Don't be too nervous about the group selection, I had mine two days ago and had never done anything like it before but got a call earlier today offering me the job! The day was pretty much exactly as silvermouse83 said.

The case study was the part that I was most worried about, just make sure that you read it carefully. For the numerical question check your answer incase you made a mistake, and for the written questions, just make sure that you think about all possibilities, eg costs, number of people interested, marketing (if applicable). Just show that you can look at the situation from lots of different angles.

As for the group selection, make sure that everyone is heard, and try not to talk over anyone. Also make sure that at least one person in the group knows exactly how long is left, since we actually ended up rushing to finish, and actually finishing 3 minutes early! But yeh, just make sure you are heard and argue your points across logically.

Lol i would have to agree with sm about lunch, not amazing, just some sandwiches on plates, although trainees DID turn up to ours, and very extremely friendly :) they said that they couldn't believe the workload though, something i won't be looking forward to!!

The presentation, although I'm not going to give away what the titles might be, I'd say that every single topic involves a question where there is no real right or wrong answer, you just have to argue each side and come to a logical conclusion. Make sure you don't rush! I know that when I went through my presentation at home it took em 9 minutes, but when I actually did it, it only took about 7 since I rushed so much, however I managed to answer their questions pretty well. So not only do your presentation, but also think about what they might ask you that you could have mentioned but didn't. One thing to note is that the presentation isn't necessarily anything to do with audit, mine sure wasn't. It seems to be purely your ability to look at both sides of the question and arguing your point.

Finally, and I know this is getting a bit long now, but the interview was very similar to the first one, only with a director now. Don't be put off by this, he/she is still human and they just want to know more about you. Make sure you know why you want to do audit and not just accountancy, this is a question that came up for me, and although I had an answer, I couldn't remember all the points. Also try and read up on some of their recent reports, I found this very useful (until I mentioned one that the guy interviewing me had created!!!) since it allows you to show your interest in their Value For Money side which is unique to the NAO, which as far as I could gather they will ask you about anyway. Aimee, for the question about how the NAO is affected by the current issues, I was a bit stuck by but I said that due to the credit crunch and the fact that people don't like paying taxes, it means that people will be more interested in where the taxes are going and that they're not being wasted. Also you could bring in teh fact that, just like in america, the government has set aside some money to bail out banks, which will affect the audit office. Another could be that due to the situation, there may be calls to make the banks have to operate under government rules to avoid the risks that have caused all this mess, and maybe the audit office would have to audit the banks. That's just what I said on the spur of the moment though, so I would talk to someone else whether any of those would actually be true or not :) Ohter questions are things like 'has someone told you of a weakness you have recently?' or 'when have you have to make a decision under pressure'. General competency questions really!

Right, thats enough, sorry its so long!!

Niki

Hi Aimee -
was just about to write but Niki's covered pretty much everything! In terms of current situation question I talked about Lehman Brothers and Merill Lynch and then referred to Northern Rock being taken over by the Government and how the NAO would have been involved. Not sure if what I said totally made sense but my interviewer nodded lots. I also mentioned setting money aside like in USA.

Good point about reading some recent reports - I was asked, and luckily had swatted up on one or two.

Not really sure what else to say as Niki's post is spot-on. Best of luck though Aimee!

Niki - might meet you in January?!

Fantastic tips, to everyone - and congrats to silvermouse and niki.

I have my first interview next week and found the points you guys have given REALLY helpful.
Thanks.

Woohoo!! Got through the first round last week and I have to add that reading through this page definitely help quell the nerves a bit - it was exactly as expected. The test itself wasn't harder than their practice paper - where I couldn't figure things out, I guessed and "worked backward" - applying the answers to the questions.. and you'll generally be able to figure the correct answer out. The only surprise for me was when they posed a question around Simple and Compound interest - last time I looked at that was in school - which for me was over 10 years ago... so would have helped had I revised on that one. I was notified that I'm called in for the 2nd round next week (3 days before Xmas :-(
So my concerns at this stage are around the presentation, and the case study questions. WikiJobs has references to case studies that one can practice online published by BAIN(http://www.joinbain.com/apply-to-bain/interview-preparation/default.asp) and MCKINSEY : (http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/how_do_i_apply/how_to_do_well_in_the_interview/case_interview/practice_cases.aspx)... can anyone tell me if this is the type of question they'll be asking?
Also - re the presentation : should we be looking at our appointed topics as a potential auditor i.e. considering all the stakeholders involved and/or including some stats and visual representation of the facts? I've already formed my own opinion of my topic, but not sure the presentation should include that, or should it be an impartial/presenting both sides of the argument type thingy?
Any help anybody can offer would be a great help!

Also, to add something to first interview day : they made a note of mentioning that they don't do negative marking (ie you don't get penalised for getting something wrong) - so at least make a bash at it.... hence, if you can't figure it out, try working it out from the answers given (since all questions are multiple choice)

hi guys, how long does it take for them to reply after the application form stage?

Mine was just over a week later. Sent in my application the Tues - they called me the following Wed after 5

Hi cee_agu,

How did the AC go? Hope you did well.

How similar was the case study, in terms of structure, to the two websites you mentioned above:

BAIN(http://www.joinbain.com/apply-to-bain/interview-preparation/default.asp) and MCKINSEY : (http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/how_do_i_apply/how_to_do_well_in_the_interview/case_interview/practice_cases.aspx

Was it multiple choice like BAIN or written answers like MCKINSEY?

Hi,

I have my first round with NAO next week - i saw above that in the interview they only asked 3 competency questions (but the comment was in 2008) . Has anybody had an interview more recently that could let me know what questions they received, and whether you had to give more than 3 competency examples?

Thanks in advance,
klt