Transition to finance from Big 4
Hey Everyone,
I'm a graduating finance and accounting major (2011) who got an offer from one of the big 4 (audit & risk). The package is great and you rotate through different industries which is pretty cool (i'll most likely get placed in financial services). I wanted to see what the views are on the transition from Big 4 into finance. I would like to work in equity research / investment management industry in the long term.
Would taking the offer and staying with the firm for 3-4 years + MBA be good enough to switch into finance (or hurt my chances)? Or should I discard the offer and try to find a finance job instead? I'll also have to get my CPA if i take the offer (I've heard many people have it in the finance industry as well)
Let me know your thoughts, I appreciate the advice!
I am also curious to see thoughts on this.
hahah, nice pro pic (fan of rage comics)
Try the search, I've seen this alot over the boards.
Depends your role in Big 4. It seems transaction advisory transfers well.
Yup, did some searches and apparently audit seems to do well (being placed in fin services company is a plus)
you're going to need more then 3-4 years in audit to get into a top MBA- most likely 5-6 as you'll prob have to it manager.
So far I still haven't seen anyone from audit to equity research transition. I have seen transaction service/valuations to IBD. But moving out of audit directly to equity research if that is your ultimate goal isn't going to be easy. Audit vs equity research is two different game, despite both use accounting skills. One is more heavy toward valuation, and audit is just audit(for the lack of better words).
When you said audit places well into finance, that would be true more for internal finance of any corporates and not so for equity research or investment management.
But if this is your only offer, I would think you should take it rather then risking trying to land another job unless you have high confidence of securing another equity research related job. I would suggest trying to move to transaction service/valuations group in your Big4 company.
The fact that someone hasn't seen this happen doesn't mean much. Sample size of 1. And I'm pretty sure he didn't ask about moving directly out of audit, he asked about his post mba opportunities. Assuming he gets into a top 15 mba program, I don't know who would be better qualified for post mba ER? You're not likely to be competing with people with prior direct ER experience as they wouldn't be getting an MBA to go back to the same field. So who at the MBA level is better qualified and also seeking ER? There may be a few ex-bankers consultants and extreme industry experts but probably not many. TS FDD mostly does mini audits before a buyout/acquisition and the skillset is similar to audit (that's why almost all FDD people started in audit). But TS does this for all industries where Audit focuses on industry groups and develops knowledge of one industry (usually). Getting into the MBA program won't be that easy but still feasible. Two realities are that most people at big 4 1) Don't want to and won't ever get an MBA and 2) have no idea what ER is and will never seek it as a career path. So when you see that top 10 programs have 2 or 3% of their admits with accounting backgrounds, does that necessarily mean it's more difficult to get than from any other non consulting/banking field? If you do well and get top ratings and have a good story you will have a good chance at a top 15 program.
If it was me, I would do 2 years in audit and then go to a top tier company in your industry in an FP&A role for another 2 years, followed by grad school, followed by ER coverage over the same industry. Finally I would actually avoid FS and here is why. If it's in NYC then maybe. But otherwise your going to audit shitty commercial banks and insurance companies. You may not get exposure to regular companies with normal business operations and won't learn how regular companies work. I know many people in FS and trust me, it's not fun, you might spend two years individually looking up a banks investments one stock at a time on Bloomberg, finding .01 differences and multiplying it by shares outstanding to find out if the partner who knows nothing about finance is "comfortable" with it. And when he's not you'll spend 80 hours a week finding out exactly how wrong it is followed by another 80 hours documenting how now you're ok with it (because the client pays for your service and you're not really independant). This may be the case in all industries to a degree but Goldman Sachs is sure as shit not going fix their mistake if their auditors tell them to simply out of pride.
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