back office job while still in school in prep for transaction advisory career?

I just got an offer from bny for back office fund accountant job. From what i understand, all those jobs especially fund accountant position, is a death trap.

Quick snapshot of my situation:
Got Bs in finance from shitty city college, never did anything with it, decided to go back to (decent) grad school to be eligible for cpa, and because my bachelor's diploma is basically toilet paper. After some networking, realized transaction advisory is a career for me. Now I'm going full throttle to get my grad degree finished, but probably have at least another year to go, in interim, need a full time job and can't really afford an internship (but will do it if there is absolutely no options)

So basically my question is, are there any entry level jobs out there i can network for/apply for while i am finishing up my master's that would look better on my resume?

 
Best Response

You can make a killing doing hedge fund accounting (not exactly exciting or front office but my friend went this route) -> then do consulting for hedge funds>then mba/cfa. What is your masters in? Why not just get an mba instead? Unless your masters is in real estate, engineering, financial engineering, computer science, etc - it likely won't be much help. As for jobs -> try cold calling, and apply to every internship you may even consider. You may want to talk to some temp agencies as well to get part-time work (Granted this was 1999 - but this guy from Ukraine landed an Asset Management position at Goldman Sachs after his bachelors through a temp agency). I am not saying you will get that kind of placement, but it's a start.

 

Im sorry, i meant to say MBA not master's , I'm attending zicklin, and i know big 4 recruits from our school. The reason I'm getting mba in accounting is to be eligible for CPA. My idea right now is to go back office fund accountant then upon graduation internal auditor ( i know chase has a great internet auditor program from what i hear ) or as a back up external auditor and then TS if it works out or if it doesn't work out then keep working as auditor and then try to move into consulting.

 

When you refer to Transactions Advisory, are you referring to Transactions Advisory within a Big 4 Accounting firm?

If so, what grad school are you attending? From what I understand (I could be wrong), the transaction advisory groups recruiter from very few schools. If you don't get recruited into this group right out of school, the best thing to do is start in audit and transfer into the group.

As for building the resume right now, any job related to accounting will help. In fact, any job at all would help. Coming out of school recruiters don't expect to see a whole lot of work experience (especially Big 4 recruiters).

I just got on with PwC doing audit (I hope to transfer to TS as well), and prior to PwC all I had on my resume was work experience as an Accounting Tutor at my University, I did some student internal auditor gig at my university, and prior to that worked at a call center. Recruiters know that students won't have a lot of relevant experience. I think any work experience helps to show you can juggle multiple things in your life at once. So even if you wanted to wait tables, I think it would be helpful just to show you can handle a busy schedule. Obviously something related to accounting would be better, but not completely necessary.

 

yea they recruit from my school to the best of my knowledge. do you have any though on internal audit vs external ? One of my professors always highly recommends to go external auditor route in a financial institution instead of big 4, he claims hours are better and pay is a little better, any comment on that? and I'm getting my mba in accounting from zicklin, pretty solid grades so far.

Thank you to both of you for your help!

 

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