Is it Significantly Harder To Apply to a B4 Office That Doesn't Come To Your Campus?
Hi all,
I have a question regarding recruiting for the Big 4. The program I'm attending has a very strong placement record all along the east coast, but I'm strongly considering applying to offices out west because it's where I grew up. I was wondering how much more difficult (if at all) it is to land an offer at a Big 4 firm if one applies to an office that's further away from where your school is located.
The dilemma for me is that even though I'm interested in an office out west, I also have no objection to working in NYC or DC, which both get directly recruited on-campus at my program. In other words, although I currently have a slight preference to stay out west, I would much rather work for a Big 4 out east for a few years and then transfer back west than work for a non-Big 4 firm but in my "ideal city", especially since my notion of what's an ideal place to start may change after I start working.
So I guess the best way to ask this is if it's more "risky", so to speak, to apply to a non-core office for one's program. I can deal with getting rejected from the Big 4 if I'm simply not good enough and would have been shot down regardless, but what I would be disappointed in is getting rejected from the Big 4 offices out west because I didn't get enough networking in with firm representatives when I probably could have gotten an offer with an office that gives me lots of face time with the representatives due to the OCR factor.
I apologize for the long post, but if anyone can help me out, I'd greatly appreciate it. I need to decide by Monday, and I should have posted this sooner, but I didn't realize I'd be so wishy-washy about what to do and didn't think to look into other resources until now. In case this has any bearing on what you say, my school is traditionally ranked in the T7-10 nationwide and has typically placed a few people outside of the core offices yearly (I'm still paranoid though, so that's why I'm asking here). If you also need to see my resume to evaluate things, I can PM you with a link.
Thanks in advance!
I think you and I may have had a PM conversation about this, but correct me if I'm wrong. I can't verify it because for some reason my tool bar with the messages and what not isn't showing up at all.
I am in the southeast, a big state with each Big 4 firm having at least 2-3 offices in it. I wasn't HUGELY opposed to staying in town, there are certainly benefits like not leaving family and friends, etc., but I wanted to try the big city life style. I can take you through my experiences, and they probably aren't identical to your situation, but it is at least something.
I was a junior last school year, in a five year program, so I was shooting for Summer Leaderships. I did the typically thing, network during BAP meetings, then at career fair the time came that they were evaluating candidates for the SLPs. Your mileage may vary, but the professionals I talked to had a system of questions they ran through, one of which was location preference. They of course are expecting to hear cities in your own state, so when I said my preference, a major metro about a 2.5 hr flight away, they were a little surprised. They are going to ask you what your reasons are, and they are going to ask about backup locations, at least in my experience. Moving back home is a good reason, certain client base is a good reason, etc., but "I went there once and kinda liked it" is not, so try to avoid that kinda thing.
Now, I can tell you only ONE of the Big 4 (starts with a p and ends in a wc) was seemingly willing to work with me for this. A couple others said maybe for internships or FT, but not for SLPs. I don't know if this is something that is a country wide trend, just in my area, or just something they told me because they didn't want to be bothered, but it is what I was told.
I can tell you that I too felt like it was "risky" saying I wanted to go out of state. I had networked with THESE professionals, THEY know me, but someone half way across the country doesn't. I was just told by other people who have done it that you just have to go all in, be unwavering. You can't do too much to hedge your bets because then you seem unsure. The only advice I would give is to say something like "I really want to go to City X for so and so reasons, but I know that may be a difficult placement, so if its not possible, I would be fine in City Y as well. My number one priority is to work for Firm A."
Another thing that may or may not be the standard, I had only my on campus interview, no out of state office location interview. I interviewed with a partner from the local office that I met several times, told her again at the end of the interview that if it wasn't possible with the out of state city, I would absolutely have no problem staying local. I'm not sure how it went from there, but I guess she passed her idea of me onto the other office, and they decided from there. I went to the out of state SLP, did some interviews up there, got an internship offer for next summer a day after the SLP. And so the story goes.
I guess thats about all I can tell you. Yes, I think it is a little more risky to try for a far away office, but I think they will tell you upfront if they think it probably won't work rather than feed you to the lions. In my opinion, and take it for what it's worth from a kid who's still in college, they're looking for a certain type of candidate, and the bigger offices probably want a couple of out of state people, so why not you. Hell, at the SLP I was surrounded by kids who were ALL local talent (I was the only person not from that region) who ALL went to much better schools than I, and I fared fine.
TL;DR: I think it is a little riskier, but I think if you make your desires known early, have good reasons, and are a typical good Big 4 candidate, you'll be ok.
Feel free to ask me more specifics if you want, but I think I pretty much told it all, and plus, like I said, I don't know where the fuck my PMs are lol.
Hey man, I definitely did PM you. After I sent the PM, I decided that in case you were busy, I should try some others as well plus I couldn't be the only one who was concerned about this, so I posted it on this board so everyone can see it. I'll check my PMs after I respond to this (I don't know where my message bar at the top went either btw) to keep some details that you may want to conceal away from this, but let me clarify some things quickly.
The way it works for my program is that we submit a "datasheet" where we list our top 3 cities, but they usually mostly only consider our top choice. From there, I think the school works to match us up and put us in contact with the HR people, etc. so we can be placed in the pool for that. So for me, I'm debating whether it's worth the risk of not putting NYC/DC, which are core offices for us, as my top choice and being "safer" than putting a west coast city that I have a slight preference for at the moment and "taking a risk" potentially. I'm in the same boat as you where I'd rather just work for firm X, even if it's in Bumsville, Idaho than even work for a large regional firm in my "ideal" city, so that's why it's kind of nerve wracking.
There are a couple of differences (1 big) between our situations I wager. The first is that I will be applying for FT, so I should have much less issues in general because of that. I can totally understand them being hesitant for a SLP because there are less spots open for those and trying to place you would probably be more of a headache for HR when there's other talent as well that won't be asking for that. The other is that my program is used to placing people all over the country (this sounds so pretentious but I promise I'm not meaning it in that sense lol) so our infrastructure might already be set up to make the "getting the resume in the right hands" part less of a headache as it was for you. Given the nature of the accounting biz in general, people tend to stay local/within the larger region, but by virtue of how our class is set up and whatnot, we always have a pool of people who want to work in another office and we do regularly place people all over depending on the year. I think they have to do some extra work, but it's not impossible I don't think either.
I also may be over-analyzing this. Most of my class does not have any finance/accounting experience and still get jobs at the Big 4 while I have a finance background and a decent amount of corporate internships/ECs, so I should have a leg up in that sense as well. My reasons for also applying elsewhere are legit. Even though I don't "live" in the city I'd be applying to, it's within the general vicinity of where I grew up (1-1.5 hours flight, 12 hour drive) and it's actually a perfect fit in terms of culture + the type of clients I want to work on. I feel as though that's a proper reason, but who knows what actual professionals will think lol.
I think I'm really carefully weighing all this because I am attending a more expensive program out of state just so that I'd have a much better shot at going Big 4 vs the local programs back home, and it would really suck not to capitalize on my investment lol. Maybe I'll just have to apply to those offices and consult this group for interview help. I'm not worried about getting an interview but am mainly concerned about not having enough face time with representatives relative to other interview candidates. Hopefully there's some way to mitigate this though and I can still get to where I want to end up as you were able to.
Thanks again!
PS: This is very OT, but I've been starting a google doc of which of the Big 4 audit which clients as well as which cities they are in. I've mostly been doing public companies, but I was wondering if the WSO community on here would potentially want to add to help create a more comprehensive list, particularly for private companies or smaller firms that are harder to find info for. This can help people decide which cities/firms they may want to work for based on client base. Again, very OT, but if anyone wants to work on this, I can post the link in a new thread and we can work together to create something solid.
To me, without knowing for sure exactly how things work at your school beyond what you told me, and keeping in mind I'm still only a rising senior in college lol, I'm gonna say that I think you should just go for the city you really want.
It would be different if it were like my situation, where it was an office literally 30 minutes from campus vs an office half way across the country. That was a risky thing for me to shoot for, but it ended up working thankfully. You're talking about going out of state anyway (if I'm understanding you correctly between your PM and this post). Yes, you have offices that your school places into more often then others, but I think the biggest "risk" that I faced was expecting to get an offer from people who had never met me, versus people I've talked to several times at recruiting events, BAP meetings, etc. You have that no matter what, from what I'm understanding, so I'd go for where you really wanna go, and put the offices your school typically places into for your 2nd and 3rd choice. Especially considering you go to a good program who places all over the country anyway. Top 7-10? My school would MAYBE come in the top 50 lol. If I did it coming from a COMPLETE nontarget (I go to a very large school, but very new compared to most schools, and not a big name in the slightest), you can do it coming from a good program I'm sure.
This is just me thinking through it logically, using the info you told me, so take it for what its worth. If I were a gambling man, based on this info I think you'd be ok. And also I'm taking you at your word that your resume is good lol
Yeah I totally feel you. Like i said, I think I am potentially over-analyzing this. One other thing to clarify is that even for NYC, DC, etc., my school still gets reps from those places to come down and talk to us. We get reps from our "home" offices (we too have an office that's probably 30-45 mins away from campus) but for those other core cities, we get alums for those cities as well. It's one of the perks of my particular program I guess because I don't think too many other programs would have representatives from out of state flying in to meet with us.
My resume is probably solid IMO. Again, I'm not trying to sound pretentious because it's not good enough for investment banking or consulting, but it's pretty solid for just about anything else within finance. I should at least get an interview (and I'm sure my career services will put me in touch with the people I need to get in touch with), the issue is mostly whether or not the reps from the west will want to look at me vs taking someone they've interacted with at recruiting events more.
Accounting interviews aren't even technical and it's all based on "fit", which is a very subjective thing to measure. That's where I think getting face-time with representatives will help my case out a lot. Although I've gotten much better, I still can get a bit nervous when meeting people for the first time (especially for an interview/networking, not so much socially) and that's where I think interacting with some of my interviewers beforehand at networking events will help me out. They'll have multiple opportunities to see how I actually am whereas I'd only have 1 chance to make an impression on people out west, and that will only be in the interview room, which isn't always my ideal first meeting place lol.
I don't know, it's a tough call, but I think you may be right that I might just have to take a chance and go for where I truly want to be rather than going for the place that might be easier to place in to.
As far as them not being too familiar with you, all I can give for reassurance is I had never once met anyone from the office I will be interning with until the day of the SLP, and I got an offer immediately after. I'm pretty good at talking to new people, and I would say my interviewing skills are above average, but still, as far as never meeting them, they should still give you a fair crack.
All I can give you is personally anecdotes unfortunately, but still if it's a city you really would like to go to, I think you should go for it.
All good comments so far. It's very common for people to do what you are wanting to do, but like Art mentions above their are some risks/potential disadvantages. I would recommend you talk to a recruiter in your local office and treat the relationship like you are aiming for the local office positions. At some point early on, mention that you might be interested in an office out west because [insert reason]. Hopefully he/she can give you an honest assessment of how that would go.
If you'd like to PM your resume or post a scrubbed one in this forum, I can give you an honest assessment about where you stand among other Big 4 candidates, which may provide some comfort about stepping out and taking a little risk.
Based upon my perception of recruiting with Big 4 here is my 2 cents.
The main fear that the Big 4 with any out-of-state individual is that he/she will want to return home. They invest a lot of resources in training and recruiting and hope to get a minimum of 3 years from you with more better before you jump ship.
it’s my belief that if you are going out-of-state the local office will need "endorse" you. In a sense, the local office will do the due diligence and pass you along only if they believe you will 1. stay in the office for a reasonable amount of time and 2. will be a good employee.
You will need a DAMN GOOD reason to move out of state, I have seen good candidates passed along because they had no actual ties to the location, the fact that you are originally from out West will do you well. Also, study the market you want to go to, if you want to go to SF and want to go into financial services or retail that's good, San Jose for technology and so forth.
Ask yourself, are you very serious about going to the location. Be aware you might see yourself in a new environment with little support working INSANE amounts of hours. I don't know your work habits or life style but when you work A SHIT TON of hours life becomes different and little things can annoy you like traffic jams and running the laundry mat when previously you had in unit washer/dryer. I mean these are little nuances but they add up.
Nihil vel et molestiae quia sunt suscipit omnis. Nemo id optio dicta. Inventore autem non qui amet. Et modi vitae qui voluptatem asperiores. Earum et expedita animi itaque soluta. Aperiam voluptates velit enim repellendus impedit alias nam ipsa. Modi repudiandae est et qui cum aut dolorum.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...