Anyone else think the "Audit Experience" requirement for FDD roles is overblown?

From my experience talking and working alongside individuals in FDD is that the first year has a steep learning curve and while an Audit background is a nice to have the work you'll be doing is different from Audit.

I would think it would make more sense to bring in an associate sooner rather than wasting another year in Audit when they could already be learning the FDD role.

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While I mostly agree with what you are saying, the alternative is that FDD bleeds all of audits staff that there is no one left. It’s typically audit that pushed for that additional year not FDD requirements.

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I agree 100%

This proves what I always suspected was that it was basically an artificial requirement instead of a legitimate requirement needed to be successful for an FDD role.

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OP, I agree with you. It would beneficial to the employees and the FDD practice, but not the audit practice. Yes, having the audit background is nice to have, but nothing beats real work experience.

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Firms are starting to hire straight out of college for FDD roles very recently. One of the Big 4s and GT, just those that I know of.

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I joined FDD w/o audit experience and am making manager early. We just tried hiring FDD analysts out of college for the first time and it was a disaster. It’s hard to make these sweeping generalizations

I’m in FDD and never did audit. I went from college straight into a non-audit/tax role at a local firm and eventually transferred to FDD. I’m a top performer and the lack of audit experience hasn’t hindered me. It’s more and more common these days. I know several people in FDD with no audit background

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While I don’t think audit experience is *imperative* to being successful in FDD, I do think it helps. I also think any position where you have broad exposure to financial accounting, be it technical accounting advisory or a 2-year financial analyst rotation position in industry would also provide you the financial accounting experience you need as a base to be successful in FDD.

Personal: I did 6 years between B4 audit and technical accounting advisory before moving into FDD at BDO, and I am certain I would not have done as well if I didn’t already have extensive experience across a wide range of financial accounting topics, which allowed me to focus on learning the deal process and diligence.

I think the sweet spot for getting that experience before moving into FDD is probably 2-3 years. Obviously some firms require more experience before allowing an internal transfer, but I think that is mostly so those service lines aren’t short on staff.

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Thank you for your insight and personal experience it was very informative!

While my initial position was just one year as an S1 I can definitely see the value of having more experience prior to coming in FDD as you alluded to in your response.

I left a big-4 audit job to another big-4 with less experience required for FDD. At the time, my firm had a 5 year requirement to rotate in.

Each firm has their own rules, but I think PWC-1 has the right idea. Each firm probably sets the bar around audit retention.

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Yeah, this seems to be the typical route to land an FDD role due to this artificial Audit Experience requirement!

Is it really artificial though? It’s not like there’s as many seats available in FDD. I think the firms have simply chosen the audit requirement as one way to negatively screen candidates.

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I agree with you since you have students going into FDD right after graduation, so audit experience clearly isn’t necessary. But what I was trying to convey is that even without the audit experience requirement, it would be just as difficult to get in, no? I figure you’d have a greater influx of people competing for the same number of openings now.

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Accounting experience is much more important than audit experience. That said since many accountants start out in audit there has been a historical tendency to lump the two together. I ran FDD projects for many years and had issues when a former auditor had no practical experience with accounting issues relevant to the targets industry.

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Exactly!

We do take associates now.

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