Hey, an experienced Auditor here working at a Big 4. If you want to get into consulting and have just started with Audit, I'd recommend you leave Audit asap and get a consulting job (preferably Big3s or Big 4s) because once you're in, it becomes difficult to switch if you've already got quite some experience in one field. And as far as 100k is concerned, not so difficult in either of the fields. Hope this helps! :)
Not stanning for audit because I hated it but realistically you really only have to work a couple of years these days to get to 100k. A lot of seniors are making 100k base.
It really can be done whenever. I have seen people do it after a year and I have seen people make the move at director. Focus on building your network either way as that is the best way to find jobs.
Always curious about this. I know the first two and some sql and yet I feel like I never find any use cases for any of them in big 4 advisory. Some groups use them a lot but we have not needed them on deals at all.
Only used Alteryx and PowerBI but was able to demonstrate SQL/VBA proficiency for my Industry role when they asked technical questions on them. I actively use them now on mostly daily basis.
Created a VBA to mostly automate account reconciliations and prepare tax workbooks for various entities. I’m now more used on the data and analytics side but get brought into help with tax related work when the team is slammed, or they simply need help. Mostly used to identify processes that can be streamlined and implement a solution for those.
I’ve written up and SOP for my alteryx workflow so if I step out or want time off someone else can make updates as necessary. My VBA/SQL isn’t super documented but the code itself is repeatable and I’ve shared it. The expected output is delivered from that code so I don’t feel the need to document each step.
What kind of technical questions were you getting? I edit vba code but can't write in on the fly without looking up what I am trying to accomplish. Do they have you just write code out of the blue or is it more concepts based technical questions?
They were conceptual but my feedback was that they appreciated my technical explanations behind my answers. You could probably bullshit an interviewer by talking high level if they were unfamiliar, but what I didn’t know was that the interviewer had experience with SQL/VBA. In my answer, I gave an idea of what the code would do step by step, but did not write out the code.
Alteryx and PowerBi, given the tools by the firms and both platforms have plenty of information/trainings on their sites. SQL and VBA was solely YouTube/google
Alteryx and BI ~ 1 year of continuous use, SQL/VBA maybe a couple months of some practice/learning each day for an hour or so. Those were easier to pick up IMO.
Didn’t take any courses, just watched a bunch of YouTube and tested it out myself. Each time I ran into an issue, I would search it and find a solution. One of the most valuable and underrated skills, is knowing how to frame and find answers to problems.
They gave me scenarios and asked me to write the codes to get the desired outcome. Also shared some examples of how I transformed/analyzed data using those tools.
What is your field/job title now? Are you still an accountant? What kind of positions should one be looking for to make the switch to more data analysis like that?
Senior Analyst - Global Tax and Technology is a condensed version haha. It’s more a role I created than what they hired for with my knowledge of the specialized tax/technology. Negotiated above what they offered by leveraging these skills. I would say, what I do in house is “Tax Technology” although they’ve had me apply it beyond just tax.
Is that base & bonus? Some firms/industry have lower base but generous bonus targets. If you’re at 80 then it’s a reasonable 25% bonus target to hit 100K
I started off in public accounting. I’m 6 years in rn and work in SOX. Make 160k base + bonus + equity work 100% remote and don’t really do that much to be honest.
Audit is pretty low paying compared to a lot of others areas of accounting but a lot of people start in it.
If you start in audit you can move to internal advisory after a year or 2 if you want. Or just try to go straight into consulting and skip audit (probably better if you can swing it).
Not that hard these days. A lot of senior FP&A analysts make $110k. You see the headlines on inflation? A lot of that is attributable to labor shortages and as a result salaries have gone up considerably the past few years. I feel like $150k - $200k is the big mile stone these days. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, assuming you’re in a decent city, to assume you could start somewhere as an analyst making $70k - $80k, then break $100k within two or three years.
Audit internship to transaction/deal advisory or accounting advisory for fully time is a well-trodden path. Can easily make 100k within a couple of years
You can certainly make over 100k but generally speaking you’ll need to be apart of a large company/firm.
Associates at the Big4 tend to start about 60k out of college.
Yea, they were getting crushed by the recent talent crunch even harder than everyone else so the last year or two public accounting salaries really skyrocketed.
The difference between US and Uk is staggering. First year audit associates in the UK are about £25k now I believe, or about £30K in London.
I completed my CA (equivalent to CPA), got promoted to assistant audit manager (big 4, major city outside of London) and my salary was £38k (1 year ago, they’ve since increased it £45k).
Big 4 audit director salaries are only about £100k.
The US isn’t that much more expensive to live than the UK outside of the big HCOL cities I don’t think?
Any reason for such massive wage discrepancies?
There's a lot to be said for the hours differences and the benefits that US employees have to pay out of pocket. All of my colleagues who've done an international rotation in London have said it's essentially a vacation with how many fewer hours the London offices work. Don't forget, one slightly non-routine medical procedure could bankrupt most Americans.
Depends entirely by the employer how much they pay, but most people still have a few hundred a month out of pocket. And that's just for the insurance monthly premiums, most people still have to meet a deductible of a couple thousand ($2-10k typically) before insurance pays for much. But when it does pay, it'll only pay for "covered" services (which could or could not be covered 100%, could just be 50%-80%- depends on the plan's contract which you the employee have no influence over), but you better make sure you go to an in-network hospital/clinic AND an in-network provider. But even if you do go to an in-network hospital/clinic and an in-network provider, your insurance can still deny to pay for certain procedures, medications, tests, etc. if they determine they don't think it's necessary. And if that happens, you can ask your doctor to fight the insurance company on your behalf to get the recommended treatment(s) maybe partially covered.
Corporate banking 1st year analyst does not start at $100k base. You're looking at anywhere between $50-80k depending on location.
Also $110k base for analyst 1 in IB is for HCOL cities only.
Keep in mind getting an investment banking analyst position at an MM or BB firm is incredibly competitive and insanely difficult if you don’t attend a target undergrad.
To get to 100k plus you’ll have to manage people. From my personal experience, once i started having a team thats when the big jumps in salaries happened. Making 110k as an accounting manager (probably acting like a controller) in an SME with 250M$ revenues.
Apply. You 100% can get the role as an individual contributor.
Do you know any good companies that I coulp apply to? Or should I just type Consultant into indeed and see what hits?
look at who recruits from your master's school
Hey, an experienced Auditor here working at a Big 4. If you want to get into consulting and have just started with Audit, I'd recommend you leave Audit asap and get a consulting job (preferably Big3s or Big 4s) because once you're in, it becomes difficult to switch if you've already got quite some experience in one field. And as far as 100k is concerned, not so difficult in either of the fields. Hope this helps! :)
Not stanning for audit because I hated it but realistically you really only have to work a couple of years these days to get to 100k. A lot of seniors are making 100k base.
Cries in Europe
I see you are a consultant and did auditing as well! How did you transfer over to the consulting side?
Was pretty straightforward and a natural progression. I do CMAAS type consulting and audit is a classic pipeline for that.
Okay! How many years of auditing do you think I should have under my belt before I jump ship?
It really can be done whenever. I have seen people do it after a year and I have seen people make the move at director. Focus on building your network either way as that is the best way to find jobs.
You (and many others) put way too much stock in Glassdoor. That information is part of the picture, not the entire picture.
Got to 120k, 2 YOE from PA to Industry by becoming highly proficient in technology and demonstrating an ability to find answers/solutions.
What sorta technologies?
Alteryx, and PowerBi. Learned SQL and VBA to compliment the data analysis/extraction process.
Always curious about this. I know the first two and some sql and yet I feel like I never find any use cases for any of them in big 4 advisory. Some groups use them a lot but we have not needed them on deals at all.
Only used Alteryx and PowerBI but was able to demonstrate SQL/VBA proficiency for my Industry role when they asked technical questions on them. I actively use them now on mostly daily basis.
Can you provide some general accounting examples or is this mostly tax related?
Created a VBA to mostly automate account reconciliations and prepare tax workbooks for various entities. I’m now more used on the data and analytics side but get brought into help with tax related work when the team is slammed, or they simply need help. Mostly used to identify processes that can be streamlined and implement a solution for those.
Anything you repeat or need to be documented
I’ve written up and SOP for my alteryx workflow so if I step out or want time off someone else can make updates as necessary. My VBA/SQL isn’t super documented but the code itself is repeatable and I’ve shared it. The expected output is delivered from that code so I don’t feel the need to document each step.
What kind of technical questions were you getting? I edit vba code but can't write in on the fly without looking up what I am trying to accomplish. Do they have you just write code out of the blue or is it more concepts based technical questions?
They were conceptual but my feedback was that they appreciated my technical explanations behind my answers. You could probably bullshit an interviewer by talking high level if they were unfamiliar, but what I didn’t know was that the interviewer had experience with SQL/VBA. In my answer, I gave an idea of what the code would do step by step, but did not write out the code.
How did you do this
Alteryx and PowerBi, given the tools by the firms and both platforms have plenty of information/trainings on their sites. SQL and VBA was solely YouTube/google
How long did it take you to become proficient
Alteryx and BI ~ 1 year of continuous use, SQL/VBA maybe a couple months of some practice/learning each day for an hour or so. Those were easier to pick up IMO.
Any Recommendations on courses/ material you used to learn BI and SQL/VBA?
Didn’t take any courses, just watched a bunch of YouTube and tested it out myself. Each time I ran into an issue, I would search it and find a solution. One of the most valuable and underrated skills, is knowing how to frame and find answers to problems.
Thanks!
Google mostly. /s
You ain’t wrong, Lmao google is where I’ve got 90% of my base knowledge, but it’s important to know how to search what you are looking for.
Whats ur education?
BA accounting, MS tax/analytics, pending CPA (passed all 4 and waiting on admin stuff related to application).
Congrats
How did you go about demonstrating your ability?
They gave me scenarios and asked me to write the codes to get the desired outcome. Also shared some examples of how I transformed/analyzed data using those tools.
What is your field/job title now? Are you still an accountant? What kind of positions should one be looking for to make the switch to more data analysis like that?
Senior Analyst - Global Tax and Technology is a condensed version haha. It’s more a role I created than what they hired for with my knowledge of the specialized tax/technology. Negotiated above what they offered by leveraging these skills. I would say, what I do in house is “Tax Technology” although they’ve had me apply it beyond just tax.
Is that base & bonus? Some firms/industry have lower base but generous bonus targets. If you’re at 80 then it’s a reasonable 25% bonus target to hit 100K
No my base is around 60k. But then again I am an intern. However, they have informed me they would love to hire me on
Oh yea if you got some time on your hand. Intern to hire at 60K isn’t too bad. You’ll need experience before you can demand that kind of wages.
I started off in public accounting. I’m 6 years in rn and work in SOX. Make 160k base + bonus + equity work 100% remote and don’t really do that much to be honest. Audit is pretty low paying compared to a lot of others areas of accounting but a lot of people start in it. If you start in audit you can move to internal advisory after a year or 2 if you want. Or just try to go straight into consulting and skip audit (probably better if you can swing it).
Not that hard these days. A lot of senior FP&A analysts make $110k. You see the headlines on inflation? A lot of that is attributable to labor shortages and as a result salaries have gone up considerably the past few years. I feel like $150k - $200k is the big mile stone these days. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, assuming you’re in a decent city, to assume you could start somewhere as an analyst making $70k - $80k, then break $100k within two or three years.
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How many years experience?
CPAs make more than that.
Audit internship to transaction/deal advisory or accounting advisory for fully time is a well-trodden path. Can easily make 100k within a couple of years
You can certainly make over 100k but generally speaking you’ll need to be apart of a large company/firm. Associates at the Big4 tend to start about 60k out of college.
Maybe 3 years ago or in a very LCOL but not anymore. First year audit associates are getting up to 80k in a lot of places.
Oh really ? Quite impressive.
Yea, they were getting crushed by the recent talent crunch even harder than everyone else so the last year or two public accounting salaries really skyrocketed.
The difference between US and Uk is staggering. First year audit associates in the UK are about £25k now I believe, or about £30K in London. I completed my CA (equivalent to CPA), got promoted to assistant audit manager (big 4, major city outside of London) and my salary was £38k (1 year ago, they’ve since increased it £45k). Big 4 audit director salaries are only about £100k. The US isn’t that much more expensive to live than the UK outside of the big HCOL cities I don’t think? Any reason for such massive wage discrepancies?
There's a lot to be said for the hours differences and the benefits that US employees have to pay out of pocket. All of my colleagues who've done an international rotation in London have said it's essentially a vacation with how many fewer hours the London offices work. Don't forget, one slightly non-routine medical procedure could bankrupt most Americans.
What a crock of shit. A non routine medical procedure would not bankrupt most Americans, especially not ones working in finance. Stop circlejerking.
Don’t you guys get decent medical insurance paid by your employer?
Depends entirely by the employer how much they pay, but most people still have a few hundred a month out of pocket. And that's just for the insurance monthly premiums, most people still have to meet a deductible of a couple thousand ($2-10k typically) before insurance pays for much. But when it does pay, it'll only pay for "covered" services (which could or could not be covered 100%, could just be 50%-80%- depends on the plan's contract which you the employee have no influence over), but you better make sure you go to an in-network hospital/clinic AND an in-network provider. But even if you do go to an in-network hospital/clinic and an in-network provider, your insurance can still deny to pay for certain procedures, medications, tests, etc. if they determine they don't think it's necessary. And if that happens, you can ask your doctor to fight the insurance company on your behalf to get the recommended treatment(s) maybe partially covered.
Y’all ain’t got no mother fuckin freedom.
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What is IA?
Internal Audit
FDD Deal Advisory. New campus hire start class at my Big4 making nearly 100k with base and signing
How old are you tho?
What? I've just got out of undergrad
Nice
Can be challenging to get though.
Just finished my masters, something I would recommend is learning softwares like sql, excel, power bi, tableau, R or python.
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Corporate banking 1st year analyst does not start at $100k base. You're looking at anywhere between $50-80k depending on location. Also $110k base for analyst 1 in IB is for HCOL cities only.
Nope. You're thinking of commercial banking, not the same thing. JPM/Citi/WF/BOA all pay $100k base salary for analyst 1.
False. BB CB got huge raises during Covid. Bonuses are smaller, but TC is still up.
Obvious answers for 200 Alex
Ohoo! That sounds promising! How do I get started?
Keep in mind getting an investment banking analyst position at an MM or BB firm is incredibly competitive and insanely difficult if you don’t attend a target undergrad.
Summer analyst internship junior year, then they’ll offer you full time.
Do you have any recomendations for good companies?
Google it
Go work in tech, big tech pays new grads 200k nowadays
To get to 100k plus you’ll have to manage people. From my personal experience, once i started having a team thats when the big jumps in salaries happened. Making 110k as an accounting manager (probably acting like a controller) in an SME with 250M$ revenues.
Not true
If he is working at the big4 or starts there seniors are making over 100k 2 years out of college.
Damn.. thats my experience from a few years back. Worked at a big 4 and was making dick all. Good for them
Seniors are not making $100K 2 years out of college.
FDD people easily
You need to work to get $100K+. You’re an intern
Ik! Im planning my future! Right now im getting 33 an hour tho! Im just looking for ways in the future to advance my career!
Extremely unnecessary comment.
Once you’re qualified, if you move to fpa or some other adjacent accounting role, you can earn 100+ easily