Category: Job Search & Career Advice

When to Leave the Big 4

By David Liebman, Director, Executive Search

Congratulations! You’re wrapping up your second or third busy season. All of your audit hours are complete, CPA exams nearly finished and your license number will be in the mail soon. The calls from recruiters are so frequent they’ve morphed into a staccato background noise you’ve learned to tune out. Your experience in Big 4 public accounting has awarded you the accounting equivalent of a top-school graduate degree. But are you ready to graduate?

The Senior Managers and Partners at your firm tow the party line. They tell you what they tell everyone else: That you’re special. That you have a great chance of making Partner if you stick with it — that you want to advance to manager before leaving the firm.

To give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are only saying what they believe to be true, know this: They don’t know what they are talking about.

What they don’t know — and what you need to understand before it’s too late — is that when leaving Big 4 public accounting, you are most marketable just after two or three busy seasons. And, you’ll be even more marketable to potential employers than your peers who stayed in public accounting to make Manager.

The Managers and Senior Managers who tell you otherwise didn’t know any better (perhaps, they still don’t). Many of them are now working with recruiters who are struggling to get interviews for them. And when they do get interviews, they are passed up for another — more marketable — candidate.

THINK ABOUT IT FROM A HIRING MANAGER’S PERSPECTIVE

If you are the Controller hiring for a Manager or a Senior Manager position, which of the following candidates would you hire:

  • Candidate A – This person is currently a Manager in Big 4 public accounting. For the last six years, he’s become better and better at conducting audits. Mentoring and managing staff who conduct audits. Creating audit plans, reviewing audit working papers and presenting audit results to clients. If you hire this person, he will need time to learn the job and your systems. And he will never be a hands-on manager without first learning all of the roles and responsibilities he will oversee.
  • Candidate B – This person left Big 4 public accounting after two busy seasons. She completed her CPA and has spent the last two years in a hands-on role learning financial reporting, month-end close and all of the other tasks that you are looking for your Manager to supervise. She’s used her Big 4 experience to become a mentor in the company, and is recognized as a top performer.

Is there any doubt the safe hire is Candidate B? No one has ever gotten into trouble for making the safe hire.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The longer you stay in Big 4 after the Manager level, the more you price yourself out of the market for a move into industry. At the Senior level, expect a pay increase in a move to industry. At the Manager level, expect a small increase in salary — and, perhaps, be willing to accept a lateral for an opportunity with advancement potential. By the time you are promoted to Senior Manager, virtually any transition to industry will involve a pay cut. If you transitioned into industry sooner, you wouldn’t have to worry about how much of a pay cut to accept.

Every individual’s situation is different. There are various career paths, types of companies and personal goals to take into consideration. But the most important thing to understand is that staying in Big 4 public accounting will make you no more marketable once you have hit the three-year mark. The earlier you understand that vital piece of information, the earlier you can explore your next career opportunity on your terms. And the more leverage you have to secure the best offer at a break-out position.

Are you an accounting and finance professional looking to explore new career opportunities? The placement experts at Century Group are here to help. Click here to find your next career move.

5 Career Mistakes You Will Regret In 10 Years

Too many of us navigate our careers like we’re paddling across a lake, not sailing across an ocean. We are short-sighted when making decisions. We focus on completing the task at hand, fighting for the next promotion, outperforming a colleague. But there are many seemingly minor actions that can have a major impact on your career’s trajectory. Ignore them and you risk arriving on a shore you didn’t choose, or worse, capsizing on an unexpected reef! Here are 5 career mistakes that can negatively impact your career down the road:

 

1.    Network only within your company. Most people are aware of the value of networking. Not traditional “gladhanding”, attending events just to pass out your business card, but real relationship building. Expanding your horizon with other people’s perspectives. Opening yourself up to new ideas. Building relationships that will make your day-to-day work easier and more successful. But too many people limit their networking activities to within their own company. Cultures can be quite different, as those who have worked in several companies know. Exposing yourself to truly new ideas and perspectives requires getting outside of your culture and the circle of colleagues you find most convenient to interact with. Sail more than one sea! Many of the most influential professional relationships you will have will be with those outside of your company – especially when times get tough. It may not be easy, but investing in these external relationships will pay off.

 

2.    Make decisions based on money. Statistics will say that no matter how much money we have, we always wish we had at least 20% more. Changing course on the promise of an incremental increase in earnings is tempting. We all find it tough to ignore a promotion, raise or even a change in company that will feed our hungry bank accounts. But over time in a career, you are paid for the impact you have had, not your title . Choose the path that provides you the most valuable experiences, develops the most significant relationships, and allows you to learn at the fastest rate, regardless of income. Prioritizing experience over income will lead to dramatically higher earnings over the long run.

 

3.    Avoid Failure. Over the course of a career, you will often be faced with two alternative paths – one with seemingly much higher risk. Many high performers are often frustrated by always being put into very uncertain roles, where others have failed before and success may not even seem likely. But executives manage their high potential employees like this for a reason. Difficult situations lead to accelerated growth—not just in learning about business and leadership, but in learning about yourself. Long-term success is based on gaining a combination of experiences, but also on navigating toward roles that leverage your unique strengths and passions, and steering away from those that don’t. The most difficult circumstances often precipitate to the greatest personal growth.

 

4.    Buy a House. That’s right, buying a house can hurt your career, particularly early on. Organizations value mobility. They want their high-potential employees to gain broad experiences. Even at the CEO level, boards look for candidates who have experience across multiple functions, multiple divisions within the company, and global exposure. It’s hard to collect those assets when you are anchored in one harbor. Buying a house locks you into a location. Sure, you think that if a great opportunity presented itself, you can always sell it. But companies today are much less likely to pay significant moving expenses. And the effort and expense involved in selling a house and relocating can be a significant headwind, causing you to pass up what may have been game-changing opportunities.

 

5.    Miss opportunities to help others. When you do something that creates real value for organizations or others, you will almost always be paid for it, and almost never immediately. This is a fact of life in a professional career, but not one that is widely known. In my first book, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, our research found that the most successful professionals were over four times more likely to focus on the success of those around them than even their own success! Winning the long game in a career requires a broad base of support from peers and colleagues at every stage in your career. If you see an opportunity where your actions can truly benefit another, take the time to make it happen, without any expectation of return benefit.  Call it positive Karma or whatever you like, but over time the good will you build up will create a groundswell of support when you least expect it, but need it most.

 

These mistakes are relatively easy to navigate around, once you are aware that they exist. Network broadly; chart your course by experiences, not paychecks; embrace challenging situations; stay mobile and lead with generosity. By setting your sights on the distant horizon of your career, rather than the water at your prow, you won’t have to pay for these 5 career mistakes in 10 years—or ever.

 

Originally posted on Forbes.com – LEADERSHIP 7/02/2014 @ 7:00AM

What You Need to Know: Your Career Brand

What do you need to know to successfully build and position your career brand?

Companies spend tremendous amounts of money on advertising, brand management, product placement, sponsorships, and a whole host of strategies to build their brands. Careful thought is put into branding, and some of the world’s most successful companies are immediately recognizable worldwide as a result.

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Preparation is the key to keeping calm under pressure

There isn’t any situation so bad that you can’t make things worse by allowing yourself to panic. One way or the other, everyone in business is sure to learn this lesson eventually.

There isn’t any situation so bad that you can’t make things worse by allowing yourself to panic. One way or the other, everyone in business is sure to learn this lesson eventually.

You may be giving a presentation when your carefully designed PowerPoint presentation screeches to a halt as your computer freezes. While it may be a tempting distraction to send your mind racing with counterproductive thoughts about how disastrous this is, the better option is to take a deep breath and move forward with confidence.

Of course, this is easier said than done and sudden disruptions can often leave a person feeling shocked and incapable of acting.

The key to overcoming this sort of situation is to create extensive contingency plans before entering into any situation where you will find yourself “on the spot” and have to think on your feet to adapt to events as they unfold. The more “what if” scenarios you have worked through in your head beforehand, the lower the chance that you will end up encountering unexpected problems.

For example, if your company has made you responsible for overseeing the set up of a new foreign subsidiary and you have to give a big presentation on your progress, you don’t want anyone to surprise you with in-depth questions about local tax structures that you aren’t prepared to answer.

You want to have spent the preceding days carefully preparing, going over every detail of the situation with experts in the field. You want to have lined up a top-quality international tax consultant immediately after you were assigned the task, to ensure that you have sufficient time to investigate and resolve complex issues.

Working with a firm that offers financial project consulting services should be a key part of any executive’s strategy for mitigating risks and maximizing opportunities. Relying on the advice of professionals helps a company’s leadership team prepare for contingencies and keep calm under pressure.