BIg 4 worth it?
Hello everyone, been reading a lot about the Big 4 on this site and i am quite unsure how to proceed in my career.
I am an accounting and finance major at a school in Atlanta where the big 4 recruits heavily. (Currently a junior)
My plan is to start off in accounting and then move to a finance job (IB) however I've found that the general consensus is that while the transition is possible it is pretty difficult, so I have a couple options.
1.Keep on the same path and work hard to eventually break into IB
2. Look for a finance internship at a boutique and disregard the Big 4
3. Drop my Accounting major all together and focus on Finance to find a better finance internship/job when I graduate.
I pretty much know I have a BIg 4 internship, (I am the president of an Accounting organization and I know all the recruiters for the big 4 and they have told me I have the internship, just need to go through the formal process.)
I haven't really heard of many students here getting good finance jobs out of college only a couple IB analyst interns at small boutiques.
All in all I don't really want to stay in Accounting I just see it as a tool to aid in my Finance Career.
Opinions?
Big 4 is a good career, in and of itself. But this isn't the forum to get unbiased opinions on the subject (i.e. accounting friendly), so keep thick skin as you read through some of the threads.
My thought is if you want to go for IB, focus on that. By all means, still pursue the B4 internship while you're going for the IB internships, etc. If you do well in the internship, you'll pretty much have a FT offer. Not a bad fallback, and as noted, you wouldn't have to rule out finance altogether. And if you're a standout at school, I would see if you can get into one of the non-audit service lines right away. You might ask around at goingconcern.com or a similar site to see which firms even give that option.
My only point is if finance is the destination, don't settle for accounting and just keep doing the "non target hustle." Good luck either way.
Thanks for the response Scott Irish. My only concern with taking the big 4 internship is that it will tarnish my resume in my search to continue onto a finance position by being labeled as an "accountant".
Also if I where to take the big 4 internship would advisory be the best route if I want to go into IB later on? I know some of the big 4 firms have financial advisory.
Sorry if it's a dumb question, not exactly sure what you meant by non-audit.
Former big4 guy here.
While I'm not in IBD, I am in equity research for whatever that's worth.
Non audit work would include advisory / consulting. From friends in the industry, EY has a fairly weak advisory arm, though that may change as they recently acquired some consulting firm. Deloitte has by far the best big4 consulting arm with PwC as a far second.
Having said that, for IBD, you'll probably want to focus on transactional groups which can fall into advisory or possibly even tax.
Sorry for the rambling, at work now. Lemme know if you want any clarifications. Will respond later.
Thanks for clarifying. I have read a lot about how going from audit/tax -> TS -> IB is a lot easier than the jump from audit/tax -> IB so I will definitely be looking into that.
Just torn between taking that path or just skipping the big 4 altogether and trying to make my way to a good IB position through small boutique internships or even other finance positions.
Slow day at the office (lying to myself, but whatever).
Sorry to leave you without a firm recommendation earlier. Here's my rather consensus take on the topic. Big4 is kind of a shitty place to start if your goal is the street (ER, IBD, s&t,). If you can get experience in any of those fields directly, even at a smaller shop, take it.
Having said that, I had a very good time at big4 and it's nice to have that as a backup in these turbulent economic times.
A bit of non consensus views from my experience though, in my opinion, what you do at big4 is overblown in importance. So long as you do enough outside studying any network enough, it doesn't really matter whether you do audit, tax, or advisory. It's about crafting your story more than anything else, and given that people from all three service lines have made it into IBD, clearly a good story can be told about any of them.
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