yes. just like our friend above had mentioned, this is totally up to your decision to leave your office when you feel you need to.

work late is one of the options. You always got ways to manage your work. you can leave earlier, then come to office earlier the next day, or you can have your lunch in your office and continue working instead of going out for lunch, you can even work at home at night if your company allow you to do so.

only manager level and above are compulsory to have their own transport because they need to attend business meeting with their client. usually senior associate and fresh entries will do their routine work without much concern on other stuff than manager.

This post has been edited by tankwek: Jul 14 2017, 12:18 AM

"take ICAEW as it restricts me in my job searching" this statement is not correct. ICAEW is one of the toughest qualified professional courses in accounting and you are able to pass 2 of it. This means that you got the potential to pass the remaining 5 paper as well. If you don't really have any experience or examples which demonstrate your soft skills, then just tell your interviewer the truth and promise will learn from time to time. Interview is not difficult as all, interview is a general communication between you and the interview to know each other well. Just communicate politely, that's all.

FYI, if you plan to move to B4 from mid tier firm, your coming interview will be different compare to fresh graduate as they expect you had already master all the audit skills that you SUPPOSE to learn during your mid tier firm. Tons of technical questions will be ask during your coming interview. Besides, your working experience to apply for Big4 position will also need to DOUBLE up. This mean if the application for manager level of Big4 require 5 years of working experience, then basically you have to work for around 10 years+- in mid tier firm to apply for the job.

Its the reverse. Big4 might not hiring someone who already having Acca or ICaew qualification (jz a portion). This is because the turnover rate is very high for those candidates. Those candidates will not have any contract or bond with company and this mean that if they can't handle the pressure, then they just quit easily.

However, for those without professional qualification, they ARE require to complete it and make contract with big4 in return of years of services. This mean that those candidate will be last longer than others and lessen the work of re-hiring.

This is why for permanent position, they are usually aim for the best of the best candidate so that even though they resign but they did provide excellent service to Big4.

This post has been edited by tankwek: Oct 1 2017, 08:50 PM

of course. This is because those interns already know the culture of big4 well compare to others external candidate. Yes, it did have a advantage. a priority on interview vacancy position. But to actually get it, one still need to done well in interview and assessment la.

mmmm. perhaps they are short of supply.
Can i know which big4 doing this ? Just curious so.

It is actually good for you because of the peak session.
Fresh graduate usually learn a lot in this session.
Beside u can understand the work culture in big4.

The cons will be you wont receive any employee benefit from company.
And you might be only auditing 1 or 2 company throughout this 4 month, so you wont get a full exposure on different industry.


The problem is can you tahan ?

This post has been edited by tankwek: Oct 18 2017, 07:00 PM

reasonable. this is because most of the candidate just enter for their RESUME.
the turnover rate is very very high.
I can even judge ahead, that out of 100% of these contract candidate, more than 90 % will be refuse to prolong or accept the permanent position after their contract period.
The reason is very simple, they cannot withstand the work pressure.
I know this because I saw it with my own eyes.
The problem is not the big4, is the candidate itself.

Too many people apply for kpmg.
Unless you are very powerful in both academic and co-curriculum, if not it is EXTREMELY difficult to enter KPMG by direct applying.

I believe referral did get more advantage than direct apply.
But the interview process is conducted by other manager, so it is really depend on luck, and the mood of the interviewer because your entire interview report is written down by him.
Never mind, you still got big3 to apply.

it is very easy actually.
just ask yourself,  what if i take away all your accounting qualification. what can you offer or contribute to us without those qualification?

as long as you can answer it very well, then basically you shouldn't have a problem in your interview process

marks doesn't really mean a lot. some of my friend purposely score all paper just above the passing line and they still get the job. but their control of language and cocuriculum is very strong. In big4, only PwC will focus on your marks, if you are medalist holder, you got your seat reserved at their office.

This post has been edited by tankwek: Oct 26 2017, 05:30 PM

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This post has been edited by tankwek: Oct 26 2017, 05:27 PM

U mean the interview for 4 month contract ?

very nice and i agree much with your statement.
My EX manager love to tell us about the interview he conducted with new fresh graduate.
He say most of the time, the graduate keep emphasized that he/she had finished ACCA, get 1st class honours, oversea graduated... blablabla, which is keep focusing the academic qualification.
Then my manager questioned them: I give you 5 minutes now. Tell me what you have when I take away your accounting qualification. The graduate then will have a hard time to answer.

Last time when i still serve for big4, there was a senior associate. He doesn't have a good degree, ACCA not yet completed, and yet the manager and partner like him very much due to his passion and willingness to try and he get the highest bonus pay compare to other senior associate. He left big4 after serving for years and enter commercial line as manager due to personal reason.

Attitude DETERMINE.

This post has been edited by tankwek: Nov 4 2017, 11:07 PM

My advise, dont too focus on academic qualification. Nowadays ACCA affiliates are all over the place. Dont tell us you have a hard time completing ACCA. This is nonsense. You say you got problem and that's why you fail, this also give a reason for big4 to reject you because of the same problem. The market outside still got a lot of people waiting for the list, 99% of the ACCA student in Sunway university achieved 100% pass rate for all paper. If big4 really concern about the qualification, outsiders don't even stand a chance.

non-negotiable. Because they pay the top graduate within this range, unless you possess something extraordinary.

KPMG and EY pay above 3k. (inclusive allowance
Delotie pay around 3k. (inclusive allowance
Pwc 2.8k +150 allowace

#provided that you passed one of the professional qualifications. if not, no extra allowance for you.

Your timing is not good.
The intake for this year already ended.
Guess you have to wait until next year before they reply to you.

intake session is open for all year as they are constantly lack of staff
Just depend on how many person they wan to recruit.

Maybe 4 or 5 ppl during non-peak and tons of ppl before peak.

PwC Audit dont have AM this position anymore starting this year. they replace it with 1 more Senior level grade.

This post has been edited by tankwek: Jul 31 2018, 07:53 PM

No worries. Just the timing is not that good.
September to December actually is really not that peak.
Hence, pretty obvious that they wont need that much of ppl.
Not sure nowadays how the policy, but last time i remember the next intake after September is december.
If u apply in January, your application will be replied within days.

This post has been edited by tankwek: Aug 25 2018, 06:27 PM

True.
Normally the trend is resign during December. Thats why HR will need to recruit quite amount of new intake during december to replenish the manpower (mostly to cover stocktake).
Train the juniors ? not really. Most of the time is : please refer to last year file

This post has been edited by tankwek: Aug 29 2018, 08:15 PM

Personal Opinion : I always told my Juniors. If possible, stay until you get promoted to become a senior and go through AT LEAST one peak season.
Honestly speaking you will not learn much during associate level ( 1-2 years ) because you will not in charge of significant/complex accounting treatment (most of the time and mostly blindly follow instruction from Senior).

How are you going to tell your future company that you have solve/overcome your difficulties in your role if you are just an associate ?

Ok back to your question, to maximize your career progression, i will suggest you to pick :

Option 1 if you can stay until senior rank like i mentioned above

OR

Option 2 if you think you will left before promoted to senior (Key point here is senior rank, not number of years served) because is pretty much pointless and your insufficient experience in audit sometime might drag you down in your next career. (Few of my junior get assign to deal with auditors after they leave big4 and join commercial company. Imagine if you don't understand the flow of audit and explanation of auditors and your boss is staring at you.


Again, this is just a kind advise for your reference.

Good luck ~

This post has been edited by tankwek: Sep 13 2020, 11:26 PM