Canada CPA-Big4 Audit vs IB?
Canadian for reference. Context, Have a full time offer at a Big 4 firm in Calgary, Rotman Commerce Student at UofToronto, Passed CFA level 1.
I know IB might be a bit of longshot at this point however I’ve always had the urge to try a 4 month internship at a Bank, Big 5 or even Boutique. Have done interviews for IB before and technically feel pretty sound. Wondering for input if delaying my degree to do a IB internship is worth it or if I can even try and look into IB full time. I know how much of an uphill battle it would be. With the CPA, I think about getting into IB or ER right after it anyway.
Thoughts?
Hey, congrats on the FT offer! I’m just a first-year finance student in Alberta so I’m no professional, but from what I’ve read and people I know, accepting your FT offer is probably the better move. Transferring from Big 4 to IB might honestly be easier than delaying graduation to chase a role with less experience. Also transferring from a Big 4 to IB isn’t uncommon at all.
Hopefully that helps a bit! Do your own research before making any big decision though the M&I articles on every path into IB are a great starting point. Good luck!
Appreciate your insight. I think thr FT offer is the way to go.
It's FT offer in hand vs chance to interview (not even like you already have the internship offer)...
You've already had your chance to recruit and while you didn't pursue that, others did and have built up competitive resumes. Idk what your GPA is but it should ideally be 3.7+ from Rotman (higher elsewhere), should ideally already have big 4 level internship in your resume, and be part of target clubs. the less you have of these reqs the lower your chnace to even pass the screener for IB. CPA does not matter for IB recruiting. CFA also.
If capital markets was a space I wanted to come back to post CPA (ER, IB, maybe PE) how can I best optimize for it? Would that look like possibly spending time in a deals team at Big 4 or another CFA level? Or even just pure networking. Thank you.
You can try to exit directly from I'm assuming audit/tax, but most exits are with a big 4 deals team in the middle.
CFA isn’t that valuable for IB. The Canadian banks hire a bunch of CPAs, I’d do your year in audit and get your exams done and start networking with other CPAs at the banks. After a year with exams done start applying and concurrently try to transfer to the corporate finance group at your Big4 which is mid market IB - much more relevant exp, you either land at a bank or do corp fin for a year and then come to a bank (which should count your corp fin experience).
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