Big 4 experiences will vary. Much depends upon one’s practice area & upon one’s mentor, if any, or supervising manager, director or partner.
Could be a good or bad experience. What is certain is that the partners love billable hours. Everyone loves those who know their job or figure it out on their own & put their heads down & work.
My third relative, a female, was hired directly into the head office as part of an ultra-select internship program that lead to a position in the head office upon graduation at a Big 5.
Although a very hard worker, they were coddled as much as a Big 5 could coddle another.
While I am sure that is true - the Big 4 consistently get awards for their training programs so I think at least recently they are all pretty high standard there
At the entry level direct from undergraduate school, that is probably true.
This was a very advanced area that would hire with the promise of mentorship & training, but it only existed if you examined prior cases worked on in that specialty area. But, often there was no precedent from which to get a prototype. Often crossed into different practice areas–like international tax & transfer pricing–when those areas were in flux due to changes in law they resulted in uncertainty. Contacted a textbook author & prof who could not offer any guidance due to the state of fluxuation.
Worked in a cutting edge type atmosphere. Even senior managers, directors & partners had to create their own solutions / methods / prototypes.
In my very limited experience, the Big 4 are best known for exposing new hires to Fortune 500 problems & methods.
The best training. however, may be available online from various sources.
Although the training is valued by others hiring Big 4 employees making their first career move, also valued are exposure to Fortune 500 accounts, the known work ethic & the pre-employment screening.
Congratulations! My brother got his start with an internship at one of the then-Big Six firms. He will soon retire after a long and successful career as a CPA/CFP. Wishing that for your daughter, too!
Regarding the hiring of recruits with bachelors degree, many are hired with that degree, but they have taken at least 1 or 2 tax courses at the undergraduate level and once they are hired, they go through training with some of the brightest minds in the firm. These recruits are sharp and learn fast and they usually work in areas of tax provision return, tax compliance and research and with a few years of experience, they progress to complex transaction areas, research and or writing tax opinions. The more complex areas, JD’s and LLM’s recruits also are hired to perform these functions.
By comparing the training to graduate school: 1) the technical knowledge one learns is intense like graduate school; 2) the training facility is conducive to learning and the facility is like a campus classroom setting which can be at a college campus (i.e, during the summer time there are less college students on campus and Big 4 firms take advantage of this and rent the college campus and dorms for 2 weeks) or can be at a rented conference center with lodging or at the firm’s facility (Deloitte has a Deloitte University near Dallas, the demised Arthur Andersen had their campus near Chicago); and 3) the training is usually at least 2 weeks several times a year and one would network, socialize and participate in activities with others from the firm around the country.
My department recently hired a couple of tax staff, one from E&Y and the other from PwC. At their respective firms, both staff were hired with a bachelors degree and received their tax training from their firms. There was a potential candidate from Deloitte and since Deloitte does the audit of my company, the candidate was not interviewed because of potential conflict of interest (even if very minuscule). In this case, the candidate was from the local Deloitte office.
I agree that for advisory/and or consulting, in general, the Big 4 hire from more known schools. However, at the bachelors degree level, there are more spots available from the targeted schools, which generally are the top 25 or so business/business economic schools. The 20 kids example above means that 10 to 15 may be from UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UCSB and UW (Seattle) and lessor known schools make up the difference. For Advisory/Consulting if 2 to 3 will be hired, it is tougher for an unknown school student to get hired. That is not to say that if one is not from the targeted school, the person is excluded. This is also true for tax and assurance/audit.
My son is 1 year into working at Deloitte and I myself, a CPA in tax, started at Price Waterhouse many years ago and I am somewhat familiar with the Big 4. Since I do not have inside Big 4 info. anymore, I may not have everything correct, but this is my understanding.
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If I may ask, how is your son’s experience at Deloitte ? Is he in consulting ?
He is in assurance (wants the CPA license) and he was told that if he wants to work in tax, he has to decide within a year, while still early in his career. He is working long hours (about 80 hours per week) now on year end interim work before the year end audit. He likes it there, probably because he is single and does not have a lot of outside time commitment.
My good friend’s son also works at Deloitte consulting/advisory and also works similar long hours. Others young kids I know who work at E&Y consulting/advisor, the same.
Very interesting that he was told to decide within a year.
At another Big 4–of course practices can & do vary by office–after 3 years folks were free to apply to move to a different practice area.
Also, switching into Specialty Tax Areas, such as International Tax, required a minimum of three years of federal tax experience.
Does an internship lead to a permanent offer?
IME, yes unless you screw it up. There is always one or two summer interns out of dozens and dozens that were not offered spots upon graduation. The firms really “wine and dine” the intern (e.g. week at Disney world). You really have to mess up not to get an offer.
Almost always according to internet searches. Something in the 95% range, if I recall correctly.
@toomanyteens , congratulations to your daughter - Advisory is a good place to start. But if they make her travel too much she may decide to move back home:) This is how my daughter lost her roommate who worked in Consulting.
@Tanbiko Indeed. My D’s first job will be in consulting and she’s definitely planning to live at home. Makes no sense to pay rent and utilities when you’re rarely home.
Consulting is a very difficult career. I was at one of those big 4s for 6 months not that long ago (they hired me as a fairly senior person). I left because I didn’t like the firm’s business model. I know a lot of young people (my niece included) who have gone into consulting and left. I am now a very good client of those consulting firms.
I use the consultants for analytics, big data platform build out, strategy/roadmap for my business. Cyber security is an important aspect of what I do and it is not an advisory role when I need it on my project. Sometimes a firm would engage a consulting firm to review its cyber security and give recommendations, but often it transitions into implementation. OP’s daughter is going to become very technical and would be quite marketable later on.
Consulting is hard because of 1) traveling from M-Th, 2) consultants are on their own to look for their next job (consistently interviewing internally and externally with clients), 3) lack of life/work balance , 4) the pay isn’t that high considering all the above.
Some of the benefits, 1) broad experience if one is able to get good assignments, 2) good exit options, 3) a lot of hotel/airline points. Most young people I know leave after 2-3 years and pivot.
Good for her! Congratulations!
I’m going to rudely piggyback on this thread. My D, doing a traditional LAC-type major, was just offered her first job. The salary is close to six figures with fantastic perks. As my son said “That’s amazing! That’s the dream job offer that everyone wants when they graduate.” The point is that kids at LACs can get amazing job offers too, and they don’t have to be engineering majors at MIT to do it. No offense to MIT, of course.
Btw, she’s probably not taking the job, haha. She doesn’t want to go in that direction, but it was sure nice to be offered it. Great ego boost.
@Lindagaf: Was this position offered by a Big 4 accounting firm ?
Nope. Just emphasizing that a kid doesn’t have to go to a super elite school to get a great job.
At the Big 4 firms, the new hires have to decide early whether they want to continue in their current group or work in assurance/audit, tax or consulting/advisory. The reason is that it is a steep learning curve to switch and the person switching will be technically behind other peers in the new group. This translates to being promotable to the next level (i.e., senior, manager, etc.) and being able to function competently at that level. There are exceptions such as if someone is viewed as a rising star, a person who projects the firm’s image, the person’s parents are close friends to the managing partner, etc. The exceptions can be mostly political.