Consulting vs. TAS vs. Audit in Big 4
I've been doing research on the different departments of the Big 4 firms, but I was hoping someone could clear up the differences between these 3 career paths. I'm going to be a junior at a top 30 national university and I'm currently majoring in finance, though my school offers a masters in accountancy 5 year program so I am considering majoring in finance and getting my masters in accounting to broaden my career options. Basically, from what I've read I feel like ideally I would like to do TAS, though I understand it is very competitive. I'm wondering if I should go for 4 years finance or 5 years finance/MSAcc based on each possible career option? Obviously the audit would require the 5 year program, but what about the other two? And also, how would you rank the competitiveness of getting a summer internship in these 3 departments during the summer after junior year?
TAS is basically glorifed audit. I did audit for 2 years and moved to banking. A friend of mine moved to TAS, he hates it. Based on his description of the work they do it sounds boring.
Here's what I recommend you do: look at job descriptions for whatever you want to do in 2-5 years and see what skill sets they require then get those skills.
thanks, but also do you have any idea the difference in competition for getting an internship in each of these fields? I assume it went consulting>TAS>audit. But I'm not sure.
capitan del banco -
You mind shedding some light on how you were able to make the jump from audit to banking?
My experience with the big 4 is somewhat limited and I can only comment on full time not internships. I don't think it is very difficult to get a standard consulting gig w the big 4. When I was doing my superday for audit, they had people going for consulting and I wasn't really impressed by their backrounds. They seemed to all come from schools I had never heard of or schools ranked at in the 50 to 150 range. GPA's were nothing special either. Frankly, I wasn't impressed with the audit candidates either. Maybe I am being overly critical, but I can usually tell how qualified someone is within 5 minutes of meeting them. As far as Transaction Services, I believe it is definately harder to get than the other two and still offers possible exit Ops to Private Equity or Corporate Development. Since I took a position in Audit, my plan is to quickly pass the CPA, start the CFA,and look to transfer to TAS within 2 years. With a backround in Audit and TAS, there are few finance/accounting type jobs which you wouldn't be qualified for. If you can push hard from TAS and make it to a smaller or middle market PE Fund (as an investment professional and not an accountant)you would be well positioned for a Top MBA.
Isn't Deloitte the only big 4 with a true consulting arm?
no
This is a huge open-ended question.
Generally, it goes Consulting > TAS > Audit, but it depends on what you are ranking them on. Prestige? Competitiveness? Interesting work? All three would correspond to the above ranking. However for many individuals, these service lines present different career paths and are therefore not really comparing apples and oranges.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume you are asking about the management consulting businesses, i.e. strategy vs the other areas (Tech), since you posted this in the consulting forum. There are huge differences even among the Big 4 Consulting arms, let alone the different service lines each as. Let's start at the highest level, ranking their competitiveness for new recruits and their competency/prestige/practice maturity:
Deloitte > PwC > KPMG > EY
Of the Big 4, Deloitte has the most mature consulting practice as they were the only ones to not divest several years back. Therefore, they had a head-start when the Big 4 began competing in consulting once again. Deloitte also gained significant strategy capabilities with their acquisition of Monitor. PwC made major strides in catching up with their Booz & Co. acquisition, while KPMG/EY have only been acquiring smaller shops (SECOR for KPMG, Parthenon for EY) and are farther behind
Each firms' consulting practices will be more "competitive" than their TAS/FAS and Audit service lines, but to reiterate, that's not really a fair comparison. A Big 4 consultant may exit to MBB, while a TAS may exit to BB IB.
One caveat is that many firms will not hire undergrads directly into their TAS/FAS groups. An example of scale: an audit practice may hire 30-40 new accountants, but the same firm's consulting practice may only hire 2 new strategy analysts/associates.
Makes sense?
This is pretty on point, though I would place EY higher than KPMG, by a fair bit in fact, as they have a decent (not on par with Deloitte or PwC, but still decent) consulting practice in the UK and the Middle East. In the US from my experience both EY and KPMG are pretty crap consulting-wise.
Is there really that big of a gulf between the firms? Not doubting you at all, but you've mentioned this a few times and I was wondering if you could share some insider info.
From what I've seen, the Big4 is pretty incestuous, and people seem to rotate between the firms. Seems like once you're in, nobody really cares which firm you're at?
Just curious..what kind of consulting/advisory work does EY offer? Advisory is one of their service lines and they have risk, performance improvement, etc..I believe performance improvement is the closest thing to real consulting for them?
What type of clients/projects would they be doing in performance improvement?
Thats correct. Their legacy 'strategy' group falls under performance improvement. Risk/Assurance = internal audit and GRC type work.
EY is split into two groups - Financial Services Office (FSO), and everything else. FWIW, FSO gets paid a little more than the other group. Clients will depend on what practice you fall under, but expect a lot of process improvement/project management/implementation/supply chain type work. The strategy work is few and far between.
I was really curious about the pay with these groups and reached out to a few friends at EY and apparently the performance improvement group gets paid more (first year) than even FSO. The other advisory fields like risk don't, but they said the guys in PI were around 70 range base (NY office). Which I was SHOCKED, I know BTAs for Deloitte are around 72, so I think maybe EY is trying to be competitive now
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