Professional contacts and the decision to become an auditor. An analysis using linkedIn

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to analyse how contact with professional auditors influences undergraduates’ career decisions to become an auditor as a public interest profession. Students may decide not to join an auditing company due to stereotypes of auditors and, consequently, audit firms may not find professionals with needed skills. Undergraduates were selected by a professional body to shadow an audit team for a workday. A pre-post survey was conducted with the participants of the activity to analyse their perceptions. Some years later, their LinkedIn profiles were checked to determine whether the alumni work or have been working in the auditing industry. The survey responses were linked to the employment history that the former participants have posted on LinkedIn. Our results corroborate the effectiveness of contacts with auditors that improve participants’ perceptions about their intention to become an auditor and consideration of auditing as a public interest profession. Thus, negative perceptions of auditors could be minimised with greater understanding of the job.

KEYWORDS:

• Auditors’ career
• auditors’ image
• expectation gap
• job shadow
• LinkedIn
• professional contact

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of an ongoing project entitled ‘Cátedra UAM – Auditores Madrid de información corporativa: Financiera y de Sostenibilidad/ Chair UAM-auditors Madrid on corporate financial and sustainability reporting’ from the ICJCE-Madrid and some universities in Madrid, with the aim to provide students with up-to-date knowledge of the audit profession and boost them to become auditors. We do thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 More information about this activity can be found here: https://www.icjce.es/luchando-contra-estereotipos (in Spanish).