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PwC’s Recruitment of MBA’s is Good News on the Hiring Front, Sort Of (UPDATE)

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

pwclogo.thumbnail.jpgFINS.com has a piece on the Big 4’s recruitment of MBA’s that serves as lukewarm encouragement for those of you have considered the painstaking thought of going back to school.
More, after the jump

PricewaterhouseCoopers is ramping up its hiring of M.B.A.s, with plans to recruit 75 to 100 business-school graduates in 2010. [The Firm] planned to bring on 60 to 90 graduates from master’s degree in business programs in 2009, up from 40 last year…An improving economy and the need to make sense of new regulatory guidelines in the financial sector are what’s driving the trend

As you might expect, the hiring occurs in the advisory practices of the firms while those of you with that went back to get a master’s in accounting will most likely end up in audit or tax practices.

At PWC, most M.B.A. recruits have three to seven years’ experience and fill senior associate posts in its advisory practice. The M.B.A.s that it hires are recruited to work in finance, operations and supply-change management and human-capital management.

The article is less enthusiastic about the other firms, however:

Big Four rival Ernst & Young is hiring about 20 b-school grads into its performance-improvement practice this year, dipping from a peak of 25 in 2007 when it began hiring M.B.A.s…While KPMG does not actively recruit M.B.A.s since its consulting practice spun off in 2002, it does targeted M.B.A. hiring, according to Malana Sanders, a KPMG recruiting director…Deloitte does hire M.B.A.s, though, said Diane Borhani, head of U.S. campus recruiting for Deloitte in Chicago, who declined to provide specifics

So we’re at a loss on how we feel about this. On the one hand, it’s good to see at least one firm ending the slash and burn that’s been going on for the last 12-15 months (even if this is just advisory) but are you ready to go back to eating cup o’ noodles, no keg stands, and more school debt to do it?
Since it sounds like layoffs will occur regularly at the firms and BW says that two-thirds of you leave the firms within five years anyway, going back to school may be in the cards for a lot of you.
For those of you that fall in the 3 – 7 years experience range, discuss what, if any, thoughts you’ve had on going back to school and if would you go with a Big 4 firm. Scary thought, we know.
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Rivals are Recruiting More M.B.A.s [FINS.com]

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Did Ernst & Young Convince Republicans to Skip Last Week’s Senate Subcommittee Hearing?

If you followed last week’s “Role of the Accounting Profession in Preventing Another Financial Crisis” hearing before the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment, you may have noticed that “Ernst & Young” was never uttered by anyone on the panel, although Lehman Brothers was mentioned a number of times throughout the hearing. Anton Valukas, the bankruptcy examiner for the Lehman, was there after all and “Ernst & Young” appears in his report probably thousands of times. So why wouldn’t Ernst & Young be mentioned? This is a hearing about the accounting profession preventing, after all and Mr Valukas has stated in his report and elsewhere that “colorable claims” could be filed against E&Y. Stands to reason that perhaps the firm would come up at some point.


Also, if you followed the hearing with us on our live-blog, you definitely heard Francine McKenna and I complaining about the sorry turnout by the members of the subcommittee. The majority of questions coming from the subcommittee chairman, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), with a few from Senators Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). The eight GOP members were nowhere to be found. Now maybe accounting isn’t the sexiest of topics but it’s hard to argue that this wasn’t an important hearing where many questions could have been asked of an industry that witnessed excrement coming into contact with an old Century. However, after a tip from a person familiar with situation, we may have an idea why there was such a pathetic turnout:

[T]he auditing firms did not like it they were holding the hearing and E&Y really was complaining to Reed that Valukas had been invited. As a result, the Republicans agreed that none of them would attend the hearing which in fact, none did.

Gotta love spiteful absence! Obviously we had to call around on this one and Ernst & Young spokesman Charlie Perkins declined to comment. As for the Republican members of the subcommittee, we have…well, nothing else to share at this point. But we’re hopeful! It’s entirely possible that all eight GOP members had something better to do than ask questions of industry experts that had a front row seat to the financial crisis, but then again the hearing was pretty early in the morning.

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Senator Mike Crapo, the ranking member on the subcommittee, informed us that Mr Crapo was sick last Wednesday and canceled all his appointments for that day.