Big 4 Accounting Firms - Exit Opportunities Explained - Audit | Tax | Consulting

Explanation of exit options for Big 4 employees in audit (assurance), tax and consulting.

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📝Brief script:
For most people at the Big 4, their careers are an incredibly important part of their life and they’ve spent a lot of time preparing for a successful career within finance, through working hard in school and university for example, so its really important to also spend a good amount of time researching what your options are in terms of jobs post the Big 4, not only in the short term but also in the longer term.

In this video I'm going to talk about what the exit opportunities are for people that leave the Big 4. You might be thinking of joining one of the big 4 accounting firms and trying to understand what your career path might look like or you might already be at one of the big 4,thinking about what the next step in your career could be.

The exit options for big 4 employees clearly vary according to which division they work for. I’ll cover the exit options for individuals working in all the three core divisions of the Big 4 firms: Audit, Tax and Consulting.

Audit
Associate & Seniors
The most common career move at this level is people moving across to jobs in industry. Three main categories of roles: Financial reporting, internal audit and more commercial/analytical

Probably the most common role you’ll come across is FR roles as by that stage, auditors are pretty familiar with how companies operate, how the finance department in a company functions and how financial statements are constructed. Associates transition to become accountants within a company, helping the company in its day to day management of its finance systems and workflow. There could also be month end responsibilities such as creating management reports about the financial position of the business.

Another category which is quite a smooth transition is moving to an internal audit role within a company. The most sought after roles for junior auditors are the more commercial roles within companies such as roles in FP&A(financial planning and analysis), business partnering, budgeting, pricing etc. In these roles, you’re doing much more analysis of the numbers, identifying trends, doing variance analysis etc and really guiding/influencing the companies actions moving forwards.

Managers & Senior Managers
Similar to junior roles, a very common transition is to move into an industry role. Similar categories of roles are open. Moving into financial reporting roles and internal audit is very common. Naturally you will move across into a more senior role given the years of experience you’ve accumulated. Plus, it’s not uncommon to see individuals at this level getting roles as the Financial Controller of small and medium sized businesses

Tax
Associates & Senior Associates
As a junior employee specialised in Tax, you still have quite a few exit opportunities open in front of you. Similar to audit, you get a lot more optionality once you qualify as a chartered accountant, a qualification most new entrants in tax undertake.

Sticking to tax related roles, a common transition is to become a tax accountant or a tax consultant for a company. The skills and knowledge that you’ve developed at the BIg 4 will naturally be applicable to these roles. Moving into industry with a large mult-national firm, you can also specialise in a particular fields of tax for eg. domestic tax, international tax or transfer pricing.

Most managers and senior managers move into industry as tax specialists as they’ve developed good technical tax knowledge by this stage.

Consulting
When looking at the exit opportunities for Big 4 consulting employees its first important to state that all of them will have different options depending on which sub-division they sit under. Consulting is a very broad category which encompases providing advice to clients on strategy, operations, IT, risk, transactions and various other topics.

In this video I’ll cover the exit opportunities for individuals working in the transactions field, the area I work in. Within transactions there are teams that provide M&A (mergers and acquisitions) advice, due diligence services, valuations and post-transaction support.

🤔 The video provides answers to the following questions:
What are the exit opportunities/options after the Big 4?
What are the careers in finance after a stint at the Big 4?
Where can you work after the Big 4?
What are the career opportunities/options after the Big 4?
What are the career paths after the Big 4?
Where do employees work after the Big 4?
Where do accountants move to after the Big 4?

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