Do you like financial institutions? If yes, request for that dept.

If not, do you want to stay in audit forever? If no, google and find the company you would like to join in future. Read their annual report and identify their auditor. If it’s EY, find the name of partner and ask HR which department that is. Then request to join / interview with that dept manager. Clients like to recruit their external auditors to become their accountant / finance manager to deal back with the external auditors. You will learn the beauty of it after few years.

One way to impress the HR and to separate yourself from the others. Risks: higher expectation.

Unless you have other job offers, keep checking. Any firm can take forever. If good, they will tell you. Most will keep silent to protect reputation.

1. Interview should be simple and straightforward. I think most audit managers are busy and want to get back to their job
2. Probably they have other candidate. Do you see others there? Or is it near lunch time or late evening?
3. Not relevant. You should be more careful if he smiling the whole time. They will normally eat you for breakfast.

Just don't be depressed when you see a lot of people tender after 1st January (after bonus).

Find those people and get information from them. Resignees tend to be very chatty.

My info on the dept comes from the higher levels which will be watered and sugar-coated version from the executives level. Anyway good luck with the implementation of new accounting standards effective 1st Jan 2018. That should populate your bosses minds.

The manager normally has no say in this. They are assigned to do the job by the HR. FYI, firms adopt a bit different approach when comes to staffing. Most staffs will be parked in a general pool. The managers will choose and pick staffs from the pool depending on the project. Hence you will report to few managers. No manager claims ownership of staffs. Hence, any manager can conduct interview. Normally its based on rotation.

Big4 have hundreds of interview per year, I am pretty sure not all managers are as motivated as you are. Everyone is human after all. Especially if the manager is planning to resign soon.

If you are a fresh grad, I think the firm has little to lose from choosing wrongly. As experienced hires tend to shun Big4 due to the unattractive salary package for middle management and above, Big4 recruitment mostly targeted at fresh executives. Being the first choice destination for accounting students, Big4 has almost zero worries there. Technically I think nobody owes anyone anything so i won't assume the employer has to play nice. If they don't want you, just move on and keep finding.

You can look at my previous posts for my detailed view on post-audit career. In summary, it really depends and there is no fixed formula. I know someone who threatens to tender every week but is now a senior manager at your firm. Everyone has a different experience. You may end up in a good team making your planned departure harder. You may have some mishap with your client or partner that hastens your departure.

However, the inconvenient truth is the longer you stay = the harder to leave. Something like stick with the devil you know? Anyway, most of the people I met change their minds after their first peak period for better or worse.

Feedback is it is largely the same. Since it’s the same, most will jump for the better translated pay.

Hmm, a bigger firm attracts better people as they have larger clientale. If you work with better people, you progress better and faster? The firm is just a stepping stone especially for fresh grads. When you gain enough experience, some left the firm to open up their own firm to get more money.

When you are starting off career with almost zero working experience and little to differentiate yourself from another candidate other than education background, I will say your point is valid.

However once you reach upper management, working with a large firm means little compared to other things such as job designations and pay. A 8 VP in a foreign bank may easily get more money than a 15 year director in Big4 for example. Some people jump to a smaller company to become their CEO?

Brush up the basic thing like learn how to photostat or use scanner.

Learn your Microsoft excel and word.

Auditing standards are the domain of technical team. Hardly audit associate. Accounting standards is on the job learning.

You nailed on your last point which the career progression is highly dependent on how you utilise / maximise the opportunities in front of you. Your background has little bearing in the choices / decisions you make to shape your career.

However, from business experience I think you underestimate the brand prestige or the prestige that carries with it. Let me take Apple and Samsung analogy. I do agree that the first company that you joined won't ultimately determine where you end up but it highly influence your future employer perception. For apple, Steve Jobs successfully market iPhone as the premier smartphone and with strong first-mover advantage, that perception sticks with customers even after many years. Samsung spent much more than apple in marketing to topple apple but with limited success. Brand is very sticky. Just see the crowd waiting in line for every iPhone releases. Brand can also overcome competency. Even a person with average IT knowledge knows apple phone specs is inferior to most android phones. Brand satisfy the need for social recognition. That's why I view even staff that comes from a more prestigious firm but with lesser competency can progress further in career due to widely acceptance of brand recognition. Just look at Eton college for example.

One might argue about fundamentals? Isn't Warren buffet said fundamentals will always win in the long term? He is right but can everyone wait for long term? If I quote professional sport coaches, how many of them are given a long period to achieve results? My view is that career progression should be viewed in long term as everyone is fixated with comparison in short term. For example, how fast one become a manager or VP? Normally this is achievable within 5 to 10 years frame. However most will stop after that where one should ask when you become director, MD or CEOs. Why? Because most burnout. It's not easy to keep working like that for 15, 20 or 25 years.

The relationship between brand and fundamentals? I think fundamentals will carry the person but only if the person endures for a long period (Warren buffet theory). If not brand beats fundamentals most of the time. Brand also gives motivation. For some reason, some people drink Starbucks as they look cooler than San Fransisco?

To share a key difference between audit and consulting. Audit clients are normally recurring hence audit staffs (excluding partners) are just focused on performing the audit. There is almost no pitching skills required. Consulting is different as you need to bid and pitch for most projects. The difference is you can spend 6 months working on the presentation and client can still reject you. Most firm don't earn a single cent from the client until they win the project and delivery. MBBs normally have KPI even for the staff to meet. Normally is 2 years. If the staff fails to meet the minimum project returns (failed to secure client), most are asked to walk away. That's why most consultants in MBB shelf is around 2 years or slightly more. I am not sure big4 is subject to such standard.

This post has been edited by Topace111: Jan 7 2018, 11:03 AM

First point. From associate to manager in 1 year. Never heard of it. Partner at age 32 got. Due to the work nature in big4, you need to grind the hours. It's not like trading or sales where promotion is highly dependent on getting profits. I don't know manager can be profitable to a firm other than getting new clients.

If that particular year, a firm receives lots of outstanding candidates, they can be more stringent hence tougher filter program. Other than that big4 audit are generally less choosy.

If you doing ACCA, nope. But subway will help you submit applications which does carry some slight weight compared to self application. Anyway most of the ACCA grad I know are from sunway.

China living cost is quite high so better benchmark. Easily quarter of your salary is used for rental.

Just curious which department that does not share those concerns highlighted

Generally this is to do with the structure of the audit clients. For example, pwc and EY categorised banking audit into a single division while KPMG and Deloitte are not. FS entities generally have better finance teams and internal controls due to regulation by BNM, SC and Bursa. Non banking PLC's are normally by Bursa unless they are engaging capital market activities (SC purview). Not to mention, banking audit fees easily dwarf PLC's fees. With high fee and strong finance teams, partners have no issues putting in more staffs to the audit engagement.

The thing about turnovers is that its nothing new and the firm still survives. Since all accounting graduates apply to big4 anyway, partners never really worried about turnovers.

I believe the Pareto 80:20 rule applies in Big4. In this case, some staff will have to work harder than everyone to cover the work of others. It’s a known issue but a tolerated one. Not all staff can be super staffs and those that are not, they need an avenue where errors are tolerated and less people to compete with (due to turnovers). In such department, the over-burdened staffs will have the entitlement mentality where they feel everyone owe them something (Ie: the partner, the junior, the manager, other department, client , …). This serve as motivation to fuel their stay in the department until they get a ridiculous offer from outside (also due to the entitlement mentality)

Recoverability is a huge factor in determining number of staffs. If you take maybank AR2017 which is available publicly, the stat audit fee to EY is what? RM18m? DRB-Hicom is around RM5m. Does this mean maybank audit team is 3.5 larger than DRB?

Please read prior posts, I believe the info you asked is well covered. If you plan to join big 4 advisory, there is no spoon feeding there.

Does that not reek in desperation?

Foreigners? You will be surprised compared to the English slang of the china, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thai colleagues.

For auditors, you are right about clear presentation. As the work most deals with historical figures and accounting standards, most tend to pick it up after presenting the similar material to multiple clients.

Heard Big4 advisory promotion is similar to professional exams passing rate (Ie: 30% to 40%). One may take an additional 1 to 2 years longer to get promoted compared to assurance staffs. Heard PwC pays the most for advisory and the remuneration will reflects the staff performance. However, it’s not easy to reach that KPI and its highly dependent on projects / deals.