Big 4 resume development
I'm posting this here because part of it is fairly specific to accounting, and I don't think the resume forum guys want to see me again.
One of the criticisms I received on my resume was a lack of skills and interests section. I have some background in a foreign language, and some background in programming, but neither of them are strong/recent enough for me to comfortably claim as a professional skill. My plan is to remedy that for at least one of them. Which do you think would be more valuable on an accounting resume or on the job? I'm sure in S&T or some other fields there'd be a clear cut winner, but I'm not sure about accounting. Is there any other low-hanging fruit I could pick up and slap on a resume?
I'm in a similar situation for interests. I have interests of course, but not ones I'd put on a resume and expect to be taken seriously. I was thinking I could get away with pretending to be interested in running since I'm a fairly slim guy. Any others that people commonly use to bullshit? Is Poker valid, or is the idea of gambling taboo?
So I'm guessing you're gunning for accounting related jobs? The language/programming stuff is probably more for filler than anything else so don't worry too much about that. You could always put down the usual generic "tech" stuff like you know Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, etc.) provided you actually know them. I know some of the excel gurus will argue that you don't really know excel until you know macros, pivot tables, etc. it could be worth a shot if you use it somewhat regularly. (And if you do know pivot tables, those can be handy in an accounting/financial analysis type role.)
As for interests, why wouldn't you put down your actual interests? (Unless maybe you think they're offensive to others.) While Big 4 jobs don't work IBD hours, you're still spending a good amount of time with one another so showing your personality is key. If you put down running, you've got to be able to talk about it. Poker can go either way depending, but do you actually play poker or are you just finding something to put down?
What area of accounting are you going for?
Audit initially, ideally moving to TAS a couple years down the line.
Why audit first? Why not jump straight into TAS? Might limit your choice of firms if you go that route but if you interview well you will pull it off.
OK, fair enough, I was hoping you weren't going to say that it's because audit "gives you that understanding of how the business processes work so you will be better prepared for TAS" stuff they try to tell you when they really want to test you out first. I've heard they usually only give you the behavioral type bs in the first round interviews, the accountants usually don't ask you stuff like that later on I wouldn't think.
Hiring into TAS groups straight in is a relatively new thing these days so I'm not sure if there are hard and fast rules about qualifications.
I've wondered the same thing myself about Poker but decided to leave it off of the resume. I did actually get some good skills from all the time I've spent playing (ie. better math skills from number crunching odds and payoffs, better at reading people, used to being under pressure in front of people, etc.) so I think if someone brought it up in an interview I could talk about it in a positive light but not so sure it's not in the "taboo" category depending on the interviewer. Anyone care to shed some more light on this?
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