Consulting vs Accounting?
Trying to decide between internal audit and a boutique consulting firm....any recommendations, help, or advice?!
Trying to decide between internal audit and a boutique consulting firm....any recommendations, help, or advice?!
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Disclaimer I am biased to front office roles.
Accounting if you want a chill job (most of the time) the work is effortful but not/never hard. Consulting similar hours, travel ops, better pay (90% of the time) but the work is HARD.
Of course there are people who want to have a more chill jobs or love accounting (gasp), but I would say consulting is the way to go.
To expand on Hustleharder's post, with a personal feeling. I could never be an accountant. I've had internships working in the accounting department and did a great job, retro active pay at the end, and my father is one so I have no disrespect for the position. It is all about personality. If you have the focus and the discipline to come in everyday, to put it in perspective if in college you were the guy who did a little homework everyday and worked on a paper little by little to the deadline you will succeed. If you were the type of person to wait until the last minute to start a paper and are motivated by pressure and deadlines then a front office gig is for you and you should probably not work in the back office. Neither is worse than the other, but it takes different types to succeed at different roles, and I'm not insinuating that a back office type of guy can't succeed in the front office. I am speaking to personality fit and the everyday roles of the job.
The most vanilla guy I ever met in business school started at a Big 4 job and couldn't stand it after the first year. There are two types of people in this world; people who hate accounting and liars.
IT Consulting VS Big4 Accounting (Originally Posted: 12/15/2011)
Which field is better to go into for long-term career development, exit ops, job stability, compensation, job satisfaction, or placement into elite MBA programs?
For IT Consulting, think Accenture or IBM, and how would that compare to audit work at Big4 accounting? Share your thoughts.
Take IBM. Leader in IT consulting and you will be able to have a good executive job in the future without changing company.
This depends on what exit ops you are looking for. Accounting background will obviously help you more in landing a finance role than IT will, but consulting may help you build better relationships. My friends in B4 have mixed feelings about the management and way of operating, but do enjoy the work. I think B4 accounting is more stable than consulting and may build a better base than IT. Two extremely different animals so just take whatever you enjoy more, IT or accounting
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