From Job Hunt to Dream Job: The Networking Strategy That Works
The Easier Way to Find a New Internal Audit Role in 2025
From Job Hunt to Dream Job: The Networking Strategy That Works
Here’s the typical process if you’re looking for a new role: You update your resume. Every day, you fire out as many applications as you can. You cross your fingers and hope for the best.
This won’t get you an Internal Audit job in 2025.
Too many people are applying for too few jobs. Technology makes it easy to apply, so a single job posting attracts hundreds or even thousands of resumes.
But technology also makes it harder to get your resume seen. Now, your applications can easily get screened out by AI tools used in most HR departments.
Finding a new role is a long, hard, stressful process for most people in today’s Internal Audit job market. So how can you run a job search that changes the odds in your favor?
In 2025, you’ll have better luck getting a new job in Internal Audit with a different approach. It’s less about asking for a job, and more about asking what you can do for others.
Amanda Yervasi’s story offers inspiration and how-to.
Amanda’s Story
When businesses need to downsize, Internal Audit is often one of the first places they look. Even the best Internal Auditors can end up unexpectedly out of work and in need of a job.
That’s what happened to Amanda Yervasi.
Amanda is a CPA, CIA, and SOX and internal controls expert with 20+ years of experience. Since early 2022, she’d been Director of Internal Controls and SOX at a Forbes Global 2000 tech company. But she got the news in late October: Her company was restructuring. Her role was being terminated.
She did the usual things. She updated her resume. She started applying online.
One day, looking at jobs on LinkedIn, she had an idea. She had a chance to do something different with her job search.
She decided to actively engage her industry and professional community.
Amanda was already active in the Internal Audit community, including being a board member and secretary of the Long Island Chapter of The IIA since 2023. But that day, she’d seen my LinkedIn post about the launch of the Internal Audit Collective’s SOX training. She was inspired to reach out.
Amanda and I met briefly at an IIA lunch in 2024. She didn’t know me beyond that. But she’d long believed SOX training was sorely needed. So she took a leap of faith.
She messaged me and asked, “How can I help?”
Amanda explains, “I just wanted to say, ‘I'm super excited about this.’ I was so passionate about what you're doing that I didn't care how I was involved. I just wanted to learn more and get involved.”
She didn’t ask me about jobs. She only asked how she could contribute.
Amanda joined the Internal Audit Collective and we became fast friends. Eventually we found out she was looking for work. A few of us knew about possible openings. But mostly, we just started connecting her with like-minded professionals. You never know where a conversation might lead.
Sometimes the people she talked with didn’t have open positions. Sometimes the openings didn’t fit her skills. In every case, Amanda focused not on her job search, but on learning about them.
She asked about their goals and pain points. She offered whatever help, insights, or introductions she could. In one case, for a role that wasn’t a fit, Amanda referred another candidate. Her engagement focused on giving instead of taking.
This approach yielded real connections — and soon enough, real results.
Amanda talked with a Big Four consultant who thought his clients might have openings. He thought Amanda seemed great, so he shot her resume out to two clients.
One was the hiring manager at a global fintech. Within hours, he reached out to Amanda and said, “Hey, can I talk to you today?”
His job wasn’t even posted yet. If he hired Amanda, he’d be her boss.
After a good conversation, the manager had Amanda talk with another colleague. Then she talked with the CFO and several other colleagues. “It was a very informal interview process. It took a while due to holidays and year-end — about six weeks. And it actually took a lot of me reaching out to the hiring manager and checking in,” says Amanda.
But she kept having good conversations that felt like real connections. So she had faith, stayed patient, and kept checking back. “I had to be discreet. I was trying to be mindful of not being too bothersome, but enough where he remembered I was still there.”
Finally, there was one more meeting with one more colleague. Then the manager put Amanda in touch with HR so the job could be created in the system.
But it was already Amanda’s job. The verbal and written offers came a week later.
Amanda’s networking-based approach turned the usual process on its head. Her first conversations were with her new boss and other key stakeholders. The last was with HR — the traditional gatekeeper. Amanda had already made it over all gates by the time she talked with HR.
Amanda says, “It would have never happened without networking.”
Some context: Aside from her networking efforts, Amanda — a highly experienced CPA and CIA — applied online to ~20 different roles. That got her only two interviews and zero offers.
It never would have happened without networking. Not in 2025.
Amanda announced her new role as Flywire’s Head of SOX Compliance on LinkedIn on March 25. Among those cheering the loudest? Some of Amanda’s new friends.
If you’re looking for work, sure, you’ve got to dust off that resume. But then, get engaged. Have new conversations with new people. Re-engage in conversations with people you already know.
Amanda says, “What I’m finding is that while some things didn’t pan out as job opportunities, what did pan out was that I plan to connect with these people throughout the rest of my career. I think they’re amazing, and I want to support them through their careers.”
4 Key Takeaways
If you’re thinking about looking for a new role (or anticipating you might have to), I see four big takeaways from Amanda’s story.
- Her networking-based approach took about the same time as a traditional job search. Start to finish, Amanda’s search took about four months. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, average unemployment duration is 22 weeks as of January 2025. Amanda was in touch with potential employers within a month and had her first interview in about six weeks.
- Networking helped her build new professional relationships. Amanda made lasting connections with many people she talked with — even when roles were nonexistent or not a fit. She now has several new “work friends” she can look to for insight, inspiration, and support. Says Amanda, “It’s nice to be able to pick up the phone and go old-school — to have people you can talk to.”
- Reaching out to someone new is a small-stakes gamble. The worst they can do is say no. Then you know to focus your efforts elsewhere.
- The world keeps changing. How we find work will also change. AI is changing how companies screen candidates and the skills they’re looking for. Interpersonal skills are becoming even more important. A networking-based approach lets you showcase those skills and stand out from the competition while getting around the AI and HR gatekeepers.
And if you have a passion for what you do, aim to continuously improve, and are interested in networking with a group of internal audit and controls practitioners, consider joining the Internal Audit Collective Community today.
When you are ready, here are three more ways I can help you.
1. The Enabling Positive Change Weekly Newsletter: I share practical guidance to uplevel the practice of Internal Audit and SOX Compliance.
2. The SOX Accelerator Program: A 16-week, expert-led CPE learning program on how to build or manage a modern & contemporary SOX program.
3. The Internal Audit Collective Community: An online, managed, community to gain perspectives, share templates, expand your network, and to keep a pulse on what’s happening in Internal Audit and SOX compliance.