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- Trying to get into investment banking from business school or other careers?
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- Trying to figure out the cultural fit of the finance firm you should work for?
Hiring Process and Interviews
There are currently more than 46,000 public accounting firms, ranging in size from local practices to the Big Four and other international practices. By all accounts, there should be no shortage of opportunities in accounting in the near future. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects accounting employment to grow at least as fast as the average for all U.S. occupations through the year 2006. The increasing complexity and number of business transactions require the specialized knowledge and skills of more accountants and auditors to analyze and interpret data.
However, the competition for these spots will intensify as the roles of accountants transform. As accounting software takes over more and more of the old "bean counting," accountants will increasingly be asked to provide more value-added service and to become more helpful as business strategists. Thus, aspiring accountants must have a broader range of skills that includes communications, analytical and other general management skills, in addition to technical accounting knowledge.
How Do I Get a Job?
There are several ways to break into the field of accounting. The most straightforward is through on-campus recruiting. The others include making contacts and identifying opportunities through the Internet or friends and family.
Internships at the Big Four
The easiest way to get a full-time job at one of the Big Four accounting firms is through the internship process. Each of the public accounting firms hires a large class of interns from all of the top schools and from many regional schools each year. A majority of these interns will receive full-time offers at their internship firms.
If you want a job at one of the Big Four firms, remember you have only four chances to get a job. These opportunities are each precious, so prepare thoroughly ahead of time. Know all the answers to the typical questions (discussed later in this chapter). No matter what your goal is, in order to succeed in getting a good internship, you need to be well prepared for all of your interviews.
For internship interviews, most of the questions will be "behavioral" (rather than technical questions about accounting). But you should be prepared for some of the basic technical questions. Competition is fierce - know why you want to work in accounting, why at that specific firm and why they should hire you. These are some of the basic questions. There are more questions listed in the interview section.
Other internships
If your goal is to end up full-time at one of the Big Four, but don't land an internship at one of the them, don't lose hope - you can still get a full-time position. The next step is to make sure that you obtain an internship in a related position.
For instance, you can work at a smaller public accounting firm, a government institution or in an accounting role within the corporate finance or accounting departments of a large corporation. Even relevant work at a small company can help. "In my sophomore year in college," says one senior tax accountant at a Big Four firm, "I was the accountant for a small, local heating and air conditioning company. I pretty much handled their little general ledger and prepared their federal and state tax returns, nothing too complicated. Later, when I was interviewing with the Big Four, they were very interested in my small company experience, even though I had since worked for a large investment bank and had a summer internship at one of the Big Four."
Full-time positions
Because most of the Big Four firms hire a significant portion of their full-time accountants from the internship class, competition is tough for those seeking to land a full-time position without an internship. Prepare well. Be able to explain why your internship has prepared you for a full-time position at one of the Big Four. Whatever your goal is, if you work hard and prepare well, you can succeed.
Interviews will be mostly behavioral, designed to assess how you have handled, or would handle, certain situations relevant to the profession. However, firms will expect you to be more proficient with the technical aspects of accounting than they will be during the internship recruiting process. You will have some basic technical questions. The companies are not necessarily looking for the one correct answer, they want to know your thought process.
If you do not begin your career in public accounting, you can still get into the profession later on. Individuals with valuable work experience in certain industries are hired directly from their firms to work at all levels within the public accounting firms. Depending on what type of work you want to do (auditing, tax, etc.), focus your resume on the type of work that is relevant to those jobs. This will make the transition to public accounting significantly easier.
Outside the Big Four public accounting firms
So what about companies other than the Big Four? On-campus recruiting focuses on the Big Four and large corporations for a few reasons. From a professional development standpoint, these employers tend to have wellestablished training programs that mitigate a college graduate's lack of experience and give new hires the opportunity to quickly get up the learning curve. Smaller firms often do not have the ability to devote large resources to entry-level training. Furthermore, according to New Accountant, many professors feel that placing students in these high profile positions enhances the perceived quality of an accounting program. Consequently, smaller firms faced with this situation often limit their recruiting efforts to visiting smaller colleges or to luring experienced accountants away from the Big Four.
However, there are a good number of non-Big Four opportunities available to new college graduates, including positions in private industry and government. According to one campus career counselor, these opportunities, while generally fewer in number, still require the same qualities in their new hires as the Big Four. In some cases, says this counselor, these positions require stronger skills and abilities than the Big Four - since the company does not have the same level of training available at the Big Four, it wants its new hires to come in with the strongest possible credentials.
Some of these job opportunities are available via the same on-campus recruiting processes you would use to seek Big Four positions. Expect their presentations to have a more comparative than informative tone, telling you all the reasons why you should come work for them rather than a Big Four firm. In the view of one recent accounting graduate, these smaller firms' presentations and personnel had a more intimate, "down-to-earth" feel, giving the impression that you would be able to make more of an immediate impact at their smaller firms than at the Big Four.
If you don't find them on campus, you'll have to do a little more legwork. Realize that virtually every company - private or public, profit or non-profit - and government agency has some kind of accounting function. So, the encouraging thing is that virtually every organization in the country might have a position for you. A useful first step is to make a list of companies you'd be interested in based on your own criteria (e.g., industry, geographic location, etc.). Then, do what you can to become familiar with what each company does and the types of opportunities it has available. These days, most corporate web sites have career information, including some sort of job search functionality, and should give you a very specific idea of the kinds of positions available and their requirements. Many will even allow you to apply online.
However, before you cut-and-paste that resume onto the web site, you should exhaust your networking abilities to try to find a reference inside the company you've targeted. Having a professional contact refer you and present your resume is much more effective than an anonymous e-mail or Web posting. According to an accounting recruiter at one large company, resumes presented by current employees are almost always evaluated in short order, while unsolicited e-mails have a higher tendency to sit unread in a bin with dozens of other resumes.
The important thing to remember is that you are selling yourself. On campus, the companies, to some degree, are looking for you and are trying to sell themselves to you. When the tables are turned and you are pursuing the company, you absolutely must be prepared and persistent, and you should also be prepared to face what most likely will be a higher rejection rate. But don't get discouraged. While these jobs might take more work to get, they also could ultimately be more fulfilling.
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