Thank you for this truely amazing site, I have just graduated from Imperial College London and have got an offer from the UK National Audit Office doing the ACA [I will be auditing central government departments (public sectors)]

i want to get into IB in the future but at the moment it just seems pretty impossible having not being able to get into the big4, where the audit sectors are a lot more relevant to banking clients. I wanted to ask

1) how would you play this, i have done lots of research and linkedin lots of people that have worked at the NAO before and now at banks, and the most common way is
NAO –> Big4 public sector –> Big4 consultancy –> banks
i was just wondering if there is a quicker way, my biggest problem is that despite doing Audit I won’t get the commercial profit-making sector experience which i would get if i was auditing at one of the Big4. or should i try to get in Big4 Transaction services straight after qualifying the ACA with NAO [3years]

2) I really have no idea at this stage but do you know if public sector experience would help me get in IB or not at all helpful, do you think in that case I should decline my NAO offer and try to get into a Big4 next year? but i have also heard that government does outsource a lot of its work so in a way will i be getting interactions with commercial clients?

Many Thanks for taking the time to help, truely appreciate everything.

Ken