Going straight to private accounting?

Axand238
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:32:22 +0000

OOH i always wanted to try that!

Heres the thing – as a college student, the majority of recruiters that come after you are from public accuounting firms. Deloitte, PWC, McGladrey, KPMG, Grant Thornton, etc. will be all over you! They have high turnover so they hire almost every year!

By contrast, most PRIVATE firms that want corporate accountants only hire when an opening comes up which is not NECESSARILY every year.

So if you want a private accounting job, you MAY hav eto be more aggressive in looking for opportunities since they are not always as aggressive in coming after YOU as public accounting/CPA firms go.

As far as lifestyle, it is much EASIER to go FROM public TO private and to advance AS private if you have the public experience (i think you know this already). PUBLIC is a treadmill but it is the best education that you will get and pretty much all private firms respect that.

here is on trick i have picked up though – if you really don’t want anything to do with private accounting, try looking for ACCOUNTING/ CONSULTING or ACCOUNTING OUTSOURCING firms! these are firms that are basically outsourced private accounting/controller functions for OTHER companies, which gives you some of the experience of being a public accountant while actually just doing private accounting work the whole time! it is a GREAT way to basically becoming a controller and if you start there it is a good place to get into the private industry that you want without having to take the huge risk of trying to hunt down a job where openings might be SCARCE.