Author: Adrienne Gonzalez

Adrienne is a 15-year veteran of the accounting industry, if by "veteran" you mean "vulture prowling the periphery of the profession waiting for something exciting to happen." She has been spewing vitriol on Going Concern since the site was founded in 2009. A former CPA review employee, she has sat through more FAR classes than any CPA exam candidate ever could -- even one who has failed FAR seven times -- and can still recall most of the mnemonics all these years later.

Prometric Disses One CPA Exam Candidate…with a Note

Imagine, if you will, heading to your exam (on a Sunday after a holiday, no less) with just a handful of days left in the final testing window of the year only to find a note stating Prometric is closed. That’s right, closed. It happened to this guy, it could happen to you.

I showed up to take FAR today only to find a note on the door stating that the testing center was closed and giving me a ticket number to reschedule. There are three days left in this testing window and I literally don’t know what to do. I don’t believe I’ve ever been this furious.

Furious is a good word. The problem with a note is that there’s no one there to yell and scream at, leaving you standing there with your FAR notes in your hand questioning your entire plan to become a CPA right then and there.

In any other circumstance, I might snicker and tell this person to get over it, it’s not the end of the world. Like if they showed up to the DMV to renew their license only to find the DMV closed. But in the case of the CPA exam, you’re talking about highly left-brained people spending weeks on end preparing for D-day down to the minute. I know you guys, and I know a lot of you meticulously plan your program with the type of dedication usually reserved for Bridezillas and control freaks. So I could see how a wrench in the plan like this could completely ruin your weeks of careful preparation.

Is it really the end of the world? No. Is it a pretty hardcore jerk move on the part of Prometric? Totally. Unless the testing center is actually on fire (3 alarm minimum, no smoke in the garbage can crap), I can’t see a scenario where this is an okay way to treat CPA exam candidates. Somehow I get the feeling the future truck drivers and nurses who showed up to Prometric that day for their exams handled the news a little better than any future CPAs who read this note.

That was a dick thing to do, Prometric. Seriously.

How To Effectively Ask Going Concern For Advice

Welcome back from the turkey coma, kids, I had to take an extra day just to shake it off but all is well now and we’re totally ready for action, at least until I take half a week off for my birthday in two weeks. Ah, life is good.

Anyway, a desperate plea for advice we received over the weekend got me thinking – I figure it’s about time we set some ground rules for writing us for advice. Why we’ve waited two years to do this is beyond me but I don’t run the show so let’s forget that part.

Caleb was concerned by publishing said letter, I might come off as a judgmental, xenophobic prick (isn’t that the brand I’ve worked so hard to craft? Oh well) so I will refrain from publishing it to maintain some sense of decency and openness to all types and cultures don’t really have an issue with foreigners with poor English comprehension, lost little sheep or clueless accounting students; if I did, I would’ve quit this gig to write a racy sex blog a long time ago. I do, however, have an issue with lazy ass people who expect to be hand-fed the answers by us as if we don’t have anything better to do.


NOW, since you probably think I’m a dick at this point, I need to be clear when I say that I LOVE the advice component of this site. It has turned into an unexpected bright point among the lame Hans Hoogervorst jokes and Caleb’s Grover Norquist obsession, and I’m constantly both delighted and disturbed by the reactions in our comment section. You guys have proven yourselves to be mostly useful, sometimes funny and generally helpful to your fellow capital market servants seeking wisdom, and that part is great. So great that I don’t mind so much that so many of the questions we get tend to be very similar.

Keeping in mind, of course, that though we were all told how special we were when we were little, there are really a limited number of scenarios a young accountant might need help navigating. Low GPA, no Big 4 offers. A couple of offers to consider, no idea which to take. High GPA, low social skills, you get it.

But here’s a tip. We’ve been doing this so long that chances are, we’ve covered a scenario similar to yours. So your first best friend is the search bar. You will find this on the upper right-hand corner of the website just under whatever ad we’re running at that time. Type in whatever you are looking for, “compensation,” “opportunities,” “Caleb’s embarrassing affinity for wearing Brazilian women’s underwear,” whatever. If we’ve written about it, you’ll find it. If we haven’t, you won’t. Try to be vague, so instead of searching for “Caleb’s embarrassing affinity for wearing Brazilian women’s underwear,” try “Brazilian underwear” and you might have better luck.

Your second BFF is our comprehensive, all-encompassing tagging system. You may have noticed by now that both Caleb and I enjoy employing useless, often one-time-use tags just for the sake of continuing whatever joke we cracked ourselves up over when we wrote the post but we do also use tags for easy organization of information. Let’s say you’re interested in KPMG and PwC, guess what? We have a whole tag JUST for KPMG v PwC! Amazing, isn’t it?

Now, you’ve searched the site and gotten a good idea of what others are asking and are ready to write us an email. Awesome! We love emails! But please, let’s go over what is appropriate for an advice email and what isn’t.

Remember, we are NOT professionals, we are writers. In fact, some might call us degenerates. So while we know the game well enough to gently shove your confused ass in the right direction, we cannot evaluate your transcripts, refer you to credentialed programs, take the CPA exam for you, decipher your foreign credits, pretend to be you in a job interview or any matter of issues such as these. We don’t sponsor H-1B Visas, we don’t validate parking and we don’t hold hands unless you’re really, really scared.

In the same vein, we cannot draw out your entire future for you. So writing us asking for advice on how to get started in public accounting and realize your dreams of CPAhood will go unanswered. We’re not freshman career counselors. We’re also not mind readers, so know what you want answered before you write some vague email asking how to live your life when you’re old enough to have figured that out by now. To me, asking such broad questions shows that you’re a drive-by who just stumbled across the site and I’m sorry but I work for pageviews, which means I’m far more likely to coddle someone who proves they spend 5 billable hours a day here over someone who Googled “accounting” and didn’t bother to read any previous posts we’ve written. I have given up week-long benders to crank out this content, it’s offensive to get the sense someone hasn’t taken the time to read any of it before writing us. So don’t do that.

Are we clear? With that said, please keep ’em coming. I love you. Each and every one of you, even the trolls. Fuck, especially the trolls.

Costa Rican Auditor Admits To Never Actually Auditing

Provident Capital Indemnity Ltd’s former outside auditor admitted in federal court this week to participating in a $670 million fraud in the life settlement bond market, according to the Department of Justice.


56-year-old Jorge Castillo pleaded guilty Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride in Alexandria, Virginia, said in a call with reporters. He could face up to 20 years in prison.

Castillo admitted to conspiring with PCI president Minor Vargas Calvo to prepare false financial statements that reflected contracts PCI held with other reinsurance companies. Castillo admitted to prosecutors that he never audited PCI’s financial statements and that he was aware PCI did not actually enter into the contracts with other reinsurance companies listed on the company’s financials. PCI paid him about $84,000 from 2004 to 2010.

Castillo will be sentenced in a Richmond, VA federal court on May 22.

DOJ: Purported Auditor Of Provident Capital Pleads Guilty In Scheme [WSJ]

Jobs You Wish You Had: The New Orleans Court Accountant Who Made $661,000 Last Year

That’s not a typo, people, this guy made $661,000 in 2010 for services rendered to the New Orleans traffic court.


Vandale Thomas, a personal friend of Judge Robert Jones, billed the traffic court over $660,000 in 2010 for entire chunks of hours with zero description of what those hours entail. “There’s just aggregations of hours. Forty-five hours for this, 45 hours for that. And that’s it. On that basis, we paid, the courts paid $661,000 to this guy. We’ll be talking to people to try to make sure where the money went and what it was for,” New Orleans inspector general Ed Quatrevaux told local WWLTV.

On top of his billable hours, Thomas also was handed $100,000 from traffic court with no mention of what the fee was for in court records.

Well, let’s do the math (keeping in mind while we do it that I am anything but a mathlete). If Thomas billed $40 per hour (pulling that number out of my ass, much like Thomas likely pulled his hours), he’d have to work a little over 317 hours a week to validate a $660,000 salary for the year. The problem with that, of course, is that there are only 168 hours in a week. According to documents obtained by WWLTV, Thomas is billing $80 an hour, therefore by that math, he’d have to work 20 hour days every single day of the week for every week of the year to earn the $661,000 he billed.

Judge Jones, when confronted with the dollar amount of Thomas’ services, expressed shock, telling WWLTV he then called in Thomas and told him “unless you have an army of accountants working for you around the clock, this is humanly impossible.” Jones went on to say he supports an investigation of Thomas, but doesn’t think it will show any criminal wrongdoing.

I know armies of accountants and they don’t make that kind of money.

New MACPA White Paper Outlines Future CPA Leaders’ Vision For the Industry

Our favorite revolutionaries over at the Maryland Association of CPAs never take a vacation, and for those of you interested in leadership, you might be interested in their latest project. Or at least enjoy the following without making snide comments about overachievers that mask your true feelings of jealousy. Let’s face it, you’re probably not as cool as Tom Hood. It’s fine, just embrace it.


A team of graduates from MACPA’s 2011 Leadership Academy say CPAs must become more global-minded, proactive, future-focused, balanced and tech-savvy to maintain their competitive edge in a complex and constantly-changing world. Getting there, they say, will require a brand new set of skills and characteristics. Among them: Unity and flexibility, the ability to collaborate and crowdsource, a mind shift from history to possibility, and a new tech-focused mindset.

It is likely no coincidence that Gen Yers, as the future leaders of the industry, are hyper-connected, collaborative and far more interested in the “possible” than the “already been done.”

Forty members of the MACPA’s 2011 Leadership Academy used those infamous collaboration skills to shape a new MACPA white paper, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Maryland’s Young CPAs Create a Vision of the Profession’s Future.”

“These young CPAs care deeply about their profession,” said MACPA Executive Director Tom Hood, CPA. “They know we’re facing an increasingly complex and challenging future, and they see each challenge as an opportunity not only to help clients and employers, but to position CPAs as the world’s most trusted business advisor.”

The white paper comes on the heels of the profession’s CPA Horizons 2025 project, which leveraged input from CPAs, regulators, thought leaders and futurists to identify key trends and map what the profession will look like in 2025.

The interesting part about the MACPA’s project is that opinions and visions are a dime a dozen in this industry, but Leadership Academy participants went beyond postulating about the future to map opportunities from a future CPA leader’s point of view complete with action plans, timelines and desired results. This isn’t simply a report on the state of the industry at some point in the future but a report on how young leaders can get us there in the here and now.

“There have been a lot of questions swirling about the next generation of business leaders. Topping the list is, ‘Are they ready to lead?’” said Hood. “Our Leadership Academy provides the answer: Not only are they ready to lead, they’re hungry to lead, and this white paper is their starting point.”

Download the white paper here. To find out more about the Leadership Academy, head here.

The Overworked SEC Makes Time To Entertain Teenagers

If there were candy involved in this, it might be considered creepy.

The SEC hosted a shadowing event at its Washington, DC HQ yesterday (what, no invite for AG?) as well as a few regional offices to show high school students interested in finance just how cool the SEC is and how much fun it is to work for a [dot]gov in the business of protecting investors or whatever it is the SEC purports to do these days.


Participating students are involved in the Academy of Finance, one of five career-themed academies that are part of the National Academy Foundation (NAF). More than 250 students are visiting SEC offices this week in Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco. The kids will hear from SEC Commissioners Elisse Walter and Troy Paredes and other SEC leaders in group discussions, and are then paired with an SEC professional to observe the workday. SEC staff members from various divisions and offices volunteered to be shadowed and, according to the press release, “are enjoying the opportunity to explain their work and interact with America’s next generation of financial professionals.”

“By shadowing an SEC employee for the day, students can learn about the SEC’s mission on behalf of investors and the work that we do on a daily basis to achieve it,” said Kathy Floyd, a Deputy Director in the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy. “We hope to pique the students’ interest as they consider their own potential career paths in the financial services industry or in public service at an agency like the SEC.”

JD Hoye, President of the National Academy Foundation, added, “The National Academy Foundation provides students with experiences that allow them to see the real world applications of what they are learning in school and hone the skills necessary to excel in their careers. Through our partnership with the SEC, students gain a window into an important part of the financial industry, underscoring the relevance of their class work and exposing them to possible career paths.”

The shadowing program helps the SEC meet objectives in Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which calls for federal financial regulators to seek diversity in their workforce at all levels and, where feasible, to partner with inner-city high schools, girls’ high schools, and high schools with primarily minority populations to establish or enhance financial literacy programs and provide mentoring. Funny, I don’t think any of the dreadlocked teenagers that hang out on my corner are all that interested in finance and accounting beyond the math required to figure out how many 8ths are in an ounce but whatever, good for them.

It’s important to start them young. Way to go, SEC.

The Definitive Number of Hours to Study For One Section of the CPA Exam Is… 445 Hours?

Over the years, I’ve generally suggested to CPA exam candidates that they should spend 2 – 3 hours studying homework per hour of review lecture they watch, which means most candidates will spend about 300 – 400 hours total studying for all four sections. That formula must not be too terrible as it somehow helped thousands of future CPAs find success. Of course, not all CPA exam candidates are created equal and some need more while some need less.

So when I was trolling the CPAnet forums last night and came across a thread entitled “The definitive number of hours to study,” I definitely had to check it out. Maybe things have changed since I walked away from CPA review forever, gotta keep up with what the kids are doing.

I’ve seen many posts that ask how many hours to study. I’ve come up with the following guidelines that I believe determine the amount of time to devote. I’m using Becker with Wiley for supplemental questions, so I’ll use them as a basis. I’m studying for REG, so I’ll use that as an example.

First, watching each video takes about four hours each. Seven videos times four hours is 28 hours. Second, reading each chapter is mandatory. Each chapter should take 6 hours each, if it is read carefully and slowly. So 6 hours times 7 chapters is another 42 hours. For each question, I think you need an average of fifteen minutes each. This includes understanding everything in it, reading the textbook for information regarding that question, and doing each one three times. Between Becker and Wiley, there might be 1500 questions. 1500 questions at 15 minutes each comes to 375 hours.

The grand total is 28 + 42 + 375 = 445 hours.

Is that too much? Probably….but I bet if you follow those guidelines, you’ll pass.

OK, hold the fuck up. 445 hours? For Regulation?!

It would take a full 30 days of studying for nearly 15 hours a day to meet that. And who on Earth has that kind of time? Besides, your brain turns off after the first 3 or 4 hours of a constant task (unless that task happens to be playing hooky with the one you love in bed all day or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3), so studying any more than 4 hours at a time a day is pretty much useless – this is explained by the crash many of us feel at work around 2pm.

While it is important for candidates to know their own study ability enough to figure out how much time they actually need to study for the exam, 445 hours is DEFINITELY overdoing it. It should never take 6 hours to read one chapter of a review book, even if you are a slow reader and need a lot of time to actually comprehend the material. This is why most review courses advise their students to watch the videos first and then read the chapters, you should have enough of a base after watching the video to get the concepts. And while it might be a good idea to spend 15 minutes on each question you get wrong, it should not take you 15 minutes to review the answers for each question. In fact, you’re smart to do time drills that allow 30 – 45 seconds per MCQ so you can train yourself to breeze through them on the actual exam.

Will you pass if you study for 445 hours? Probably. But you can also pass if you study for 90 hours, so why overdo it four times over?!

Has an Auditor Ever Been Whacked For Snitching on Fraudsters?

I’ve gotten some crazy questions over the years but this one pretty much takes the cake. I’m not saying it’s stupid, nor am I saying it’s all that crazy, it’s just… well… out there, is all. Read on.

Dear Adrienne,

I’m a college student at the University of North Texas. Fraud has been a hot topic in my courses this month. We covered many scandals including Crazy Eddie, Barry Minkow, NextCard, Enron, and Bernie Madoff. This has got me thinking a lot about how I would react if I was in the shoes of the auditor. The students in my class always say to just report the fraud, however they never put themselves in the shoes of the fraudster to determine how the fraudster would act nor do they think about protecting the reputation o watched enough movies to know that if a fraudster finds out that somebody knows “too much,” then that person probably won’t make it home alive that night, unless they cooperate. I remember in that movie, “The Other Guys,” the auditing partner got killed because the fraudsters didn’t want him snitching out any information to authorities.

Another thing is that if it is found out that a partner is involved in fraud, this will ruin the firm’s reputation if this gets reported to the SEC. However, if the firm handles this internally, fire the partner, admit mistake, and let the public know that it doesn’t want anything to do with the partner, then perhaps only the partner would get in trouble and not the firm.

So exactly how are you suppose to act in situations of fraud? Of course AICPA tells us to first report it to your supervisor, then to the audit committee, and then the SEC. But still though, you got to get this out before someone kills you and you’ve got to handle it in a manner that best protects the reputation of the firm. Am I right? Also, have you ever heard of any auditors that were murdered because they knew too much? When you read about Enron or the Bernie Madoff scandal, there are talks about death threats, but you don’t necessarily hear about any murders involved. So it may be something that only happens in the movies.

Well, since you brought up Crazy Eddie, my first instinct was to pose this question to Crazy Eddie’s corrupt CPA, Sam Antar. Thankfully Sam obviously checks his Twitter account every five minutes and had some thoughts for me almost immediately.

“Yes, the potential is there. Depends on the client. Have that person contact me if worried,” he tweeted. Now isn’t that sweet? If anyone out there is feeling the heat, you know who to hit up.

His thought? It’s rare, if not impossible. Why would a fraudster whack the auditor? By the time the fraud is uncovered, it’s too late. The workpapers would likely document said fraud, so the fraudster would then be forced to whack the entire chain on up to the partner and who has time to do all that killing? “No logic in whacking outside auditor unless part of conspiracy,” Sam said.

That being said, does anyone remember Allen Stanford’s sketchy auditor C.A.S. Hewlett (“C.A.S.H.” get it?!)? He apparently kicked the bucket on January 1st (a real accountant would have kicked the bucket on December 31st, pfft), just a month before Stanford was charged with fraud (though he didn’t get arrested until June of that year). The circumstances surrounding his death were, uh, weird to say the least but I don’t think anyone is going to go so far as to say he got whacked.

Or how about Ken Lay? I mean, does anyone really believe he had a heart attack? There is even an entire website dedicated to exposing Ken Lay’s post-mortem life.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky, and I don’t expect you to know this since you haven’t made it out into the real world yet. What is an auditor’s job? Is it to uncover fraud? Or is it to verify with a minimum of certainty (a.k.a. “reasonable assurance”) that the financial information presented by a company is probably legit? If you answered the latter, you win. Forensic accountants dissect fraud, auditors simply check boxes. I’m sorry if this offends any of you hardcore auditors out there but in your hearts, even you guys know I’m right. Auditing is a joke, an intricate dance (read: performance) that exists more for entertainment than functionality. If you don’t agree with me, I’d be happy to name any number of companies that prove my point for me (let’s see… Enron, Worldcom, Overstock, Satyam, Olympus…).

What do you think the odds are that a first or second year auditor would even be able to detect fraud? Don’t you think the criminals behind it are at least clever enough to hide their wrongdoing from a bunch of fresh-faced kids with their SALY checklists? Look at the lengths Crazy Eddie went to – to success until their greed got the best of them and a chick ruined the whole scam. And that’s the thing, the auditors rarely uncover fraud, it’s usually the fraudsters themselves who end up exposing themselves though greed or just plain stupidity.

Whistleblowers don’t make friends but they don’t have to hire armed guards either. Like I said, by the time the fraud is exposed, it’s too late to start killing people to hide the truth.

And thanks to SOX, it is illegal to “discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass or in any manner discriminate against” whistleblowers, so a more likely scenario is that revelations of fraud will come from within the firm, not from the outside auditors who are pissed off to be doing inventory counts on New Year’s Day.

You watch too many movies, kiddo. Just check the list, collect the bank recs and call it a day.

Former Swinging Salzberg Soldier Sentenced to 11 Months in Prison For Insider Trading

Former Salzberg Soldier and San Francisco housewife Annabel McClellan – who we know as the wife of former Deloitte tax partner Arnold McClellan – was sentenced in federal court yesterday to 11 months in prison for lying to a regulatory agency about slipping insider trading tips to her sister and brother-in-law. McClellan pleaded guilty in April to one count of obstructing and due administration of the law after she made false statements to SEC investigators in 2009.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup handed down the sentence. In her plea, McClellan admitted to eavesdropping on hubby’s conversations about corporate transactions and lying under oath to SEC investigators. Prosecutors guesstimate that McClellan’s naughty behavior defrauded British investors of about $3.05 million.

We are unclear at this time if Annabel will resume her business ventures – like the My Nookie app – upon her release from prison. She should certainly have some experience sistering up with strangers by that point, which can only help her swinger aspirations, unless her soon-to-be prison girlfriend insists on monogamy.

San Francisco housewife sentenced for obstructing insider trading probe [SJ Mercury News]

Big 4 Wanna-Be Who’d Even Settle For BDO Just Can’t Get a Break

Ed. note: While we can’t go rough up recruiters on your behalf, we’re happy to give you advice on how to make them do your bidding for you. Get in touch, we’ll put our team of trained monkeys on your problem right away. Also, I apologize in advance for the length of this letter.

Good evening Adrienne,

I’m a senior at the University of Michigan due to graduate in 2012 with a double major in accounting & finance with over 150 credits. I recently went through the recruiting process at the University to try and land an internship and I happened to land a couple.

My issue here is that I didn’t get any internships with any of the firms that I was really looking forward to interning with GM, Chrysler, another Fortune 500 corporation, Baker Tilly, Plante Moran, and another regional public accounting firm. My favorites which were Plante Moran and Baker Tilly didn’t seem to like my performance at the interviews and so I never heard back from them. But I did get offers from the regional public accounting firm for a winter and summer internship with a large Fortune 500 corporation that I did accept.

The reasons why I did not perform well during my first few interviews was because it was my first time having job interviews of this sort and so I was unprepared. I have since had numerous mock interviews with family and friends and I am now very good at interviewing, but I feel that it is a little too late because the damage has already been done, all of the firms have already gone through the recruiting process at our University.

I did apply for PwC, Deloitte, and E&Y early on but I never heard back from them. KPMG does not recruit at our campus. I thought that I was a very solid candidate with an overall GPA over 3.8 and a 4.0 accounting GPA which I have maintained while holding a part time job throughout my college career. I think the area where I am lacking is the volunteering department but I have been active in Beta Alpha Psi which I do volunteer work through. I have participated in programs such as Junior Achievement amongst others. I would have done a lot more volunteer work but I am the oldest child from a single parent home. We have 5 younger children in our family whom I help my mother take care of (if you’re wondering where our father is, I am too; we haven’t heard from him since 2001)!

My dream is to work for a Big 4 firm but I am having a hard time landing any interviews with them. Considering that I will be interning with a regional this winter and a large corporate firm during the summer of 2012, do you think I will ever break into the Big 4? They say that once you start working for a regional firm, it is extremely tough to move up into a larger firm such as one of the Big 6. I have worked very hard over the past 4 years and I feel that I deserve it, but I understand that I am not entitled to it just because I have worked hard up to this point. If it is at all possible to break into the Big 4, do you have any advice on how I should go about doing so considering that I will be graduating soon? I only have about 4 classes left before I graduate so I won’t be in school for that much longer.

The regional accounting firm is a great firm but I just don’t feel like it would be a good fit for me. I’m not ungrateful, I do realize that there are hundreds of students in the same position that I’m in who interviewed with numerous firms and didn’t get a single offer. I’m happy that I got 2 offers from different firms. I just feel that I would be much happier with either a Big 4 firm or maybe even BDO or Grant Thornton. Can you give me any advice about breaking into any one of these firms?

Also, I feel that since I didn’t do well at the interviews with Plante Moran and Baker Tilly which are 2 very highly regarded firms, I will never be able to work for these firms in the future. Do you think I have a chance of redeeming myself with them? What advice do can you give a person such as myself?

In case anyone finds this to be TL;DR, I’ll save you a few minutes and sum up the predicament: soon to graduate, 3.8 GPA, flopped Plante Moran and Baker Tilly interviews and wants to get into the Big 4, BAD. You’re welcome.

Anyway, I have to admit I’m a little stumped. On paper, you sound great. High GPA, u spell gud, Junior Achievement and BAP experience, able to express yourself… wait a minute, maybe that’s it. You know how to express yourself.

I’m going to go way out here and wonder out loud if your lack of success with the firms you want centers around the fact that you have a pretty good idea of what you want. You probably also have opinions you are not afraid to express. You realize that scares the crap out of firms looking for a blank, unquestioning canvas they can mold into their own private workhorse, right? You use words like “I feel,” which you are not allowed to do when you work for the Big 4. I kid. Kind of.

Your point about being unprepared for interviews should serve as a lesson to the junior accounting students out there reading this: interview skills are critical for landing a gig in public before you leave school. Anyone who actually works in a public accounting office can confirm that you don’t even have to be much of a step above completely awkward to get the job, you just have to know how to shine at an interview.

Are you doomed forever? Doubtful. There is not some master list the firms share amongst themselves that brands you as a loser for the entirety of your life in public.

My suggestion to you would be to fast track the CPA exam as having that done will definitely make you more marketable. Also make sure you are discoverable to recruiters by having a strong LinkedIn presence once you have some work experience under your belt, and try to do as much networking as possible both online and in the real world; any professional events you might be able to sneak off to will allow you to make personal impressions with those in positions you are working toward.

In the meantime, try not to feel too butthurt about the regional firm gig (try this discussion earlier about mid-size firm opportunities). On the bright side, you actually got an internship, so use it.

Can anyone else help this guy out? I’m kind of stuck for ideas.