Public Accounting recruiting

Hello Everyone,

I hope 2020 is going as planned and your knocking out the CPA Exams. I’ve passed FAR and AUD, and I am waiting on REG retake scores while I am currently preparing for BEC. I wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts on public accounting firm recruiting/hiring procedures. I’ve been trying to get my foot in the door for almost two years by attending school sponsor career fairs, applying online, and connecting with recruiter on LinkedIn. I am one of those students who left college without public accounting internship and I had to figure out ways to stand out from other candidates applying for the same opportunity.

I had a corporate Staff Accounting job with a private company, which thought me on the foundation of accounting more than I had learned while I was in school. After working in corporate for almost a year, I knew that I wanted to learn and grow as a public accounting auditor. I decided to get my CPA and I started the journey, while I was fortunate enough to land a contract Internal Audit role with a publicly traded company. At this contract role, I got the chance to work with both the external auditors and the co-sourced Internal Auditors both from the BIG 4. I gained valuable experience working with the auditors by performing auditing procedures a normal experience auditor would perform at the Big 4.

Now, my contract is coming to end, and every public accounting firm is passing up on me since I never work at public accounting. I’ve been applying for Staff roles not as experience or senior associate. I feel like I have way more experience and qualifications than the campus recruits they hire for the staff roles but won’t consider me since I am out of school which doesn’t make sense to me. Also, an Intern at a big 4, would not have gain more experience than I have.

In my opinion, my experience is incomparable to someone fresh out of school and I have earned 150 hours, in addition to already passing FAR and AUD. I have received positive feedbacks from my manager and the Internal Audit director at my Internal Audit role, both who had significant years of experience at the big 4. If they had the budget to hire me full time, they would but still my interest is in public accounting.

Many of my friends in this profession are brain washing me on how public accounting is over exaggerated and they will work me to death, but I refuse to listen to them and will never give up on getting my foot in the door. Has anyone experience anything similar? I wanted to know everyone’s thought on this.

Thank you for your time and please excuse my grammar, English is my second language.