Survey: What Was the Salary at Your First Accounting Job?
If you remember, that is. Personally, I do. The job was with a boutique CPA firm and they offered, and I accepted, $43k. This was 2003. I imagine most people vividly remember their first job's salary. The feel of the paper it was printed on or the person who called with the news. But the […]
Let’s Bicker About: Top Undergrad Accounting Programs
According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, any burgeoning debit and credit artists out there would do well by attending one of the following schools for their undergraduate studies: 1. Brigham Young (Marriott) 1.067 2. Notre Dame (Mendoza) 1.076 3. UC Berkeley (Haas) 1.081 4. Cornell (Dyson) 1.089 5. Illinois – Urbana-Champaign 1.116 6. Tulsa (Collins) 1.118 7. […]
Right Now KPMG CEO John Veihmeyer Is Locked in His Office Watching This Clip From “Rudy” Over and Over and Fighting Tears
This far from being Notre Dame's Jerry Sandusky moment but it still has to hurt. The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Daniel Ruettiger and 12 other participants in a scheme to deceive investors into buying stock in his sports drink company. Ruettiger is widely known for having inspired the 1993 motion picture "Rudy." According to […]
Deloitte Bankrolls Center for Ethical Leadership at Notre Dame
John Veihmeyer can’t be pleased by this.
The Notre Dame/Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership will focus on advancing ethical leadership in business, including research, thought leadership and the dissemination of ethics-related content to the business community in the United State and around the world, the university announced Monday.
The center is being established with a major gift from Deloitte LLP, a private professional services company, according to the university. The amount of the gift was not disclosed.
Presumably portions of the curriculum will educate students on how to piece together your spouse’s new hobby with insider trading activity.
Compensation Watch ’10: Is Anyone at KPMG Getting Impatient?
It’s bad enough that KPMG is the last of the Big 4 to announce their compensation numbers.
But here’s the real problem Klynveldians – now that the Fighting Irish have blown two big games, two weeks in a row, to two Michigan rivals, John Veihmeyer is desperate for a Lou Holtz pep talk which means watching the old man on TV. This also means suffering through the shallow diatribes of the horrendous Mark May which we don’t wish upon anyone. But that’s a whole other matter.
What concerns us is whether J. Veih manifests his frustration by going back on his word on merit increases and bonuses from earlier in the summer. While this would be unprecedented show of loyalty to Touchdown Jesus, it probably wouldn’t do much for the morale of the firm.
Gridiron failure aside, it’s our understanding that more than a few people are getting antsy over the compensation news and now that KPMG has announced the new partners, the only thing left is to share the shockingly good or heart-wrenchingly disappointing news to all the mini-Flynns.
We invite those with first-hand knowledge, well-researched theories or wild-ass guesses to share their thoughts on KPMG’s eagerly awaited compensation news. And of course, keep us updated with any weepy communication from John. That is, if he managed to get out of bed this morning.
Can You Get a Big 4 Job If You Didn’t Go to a “Brand Name” College?
Today we hear from a Big 4 dreamer and their frustration with the firms’ penchant for “brand name schools,” and what, if anything, you can do about it.
Have a question about your career? An inter-office love triangle? How to interpret the partner’s passive-aggressiveness attitude? Email us your query to [email protected] and we’ll level with you.
Back to our reader:
I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to go onto the Deloitte Job Board and see positions with schools next to them, indicating the spot is only for a graduate of Notre Dame or some other brand name school. I turned down Notre Dame to go to a small liberal arts school in Chicago and now I have no idea how to get into the recruiting cycle for the Big 4 or regional public accounting firms. There were no accounting firms at the job fairs or on-campus interviews held at my school.
I graduated cum laude last December (a semester early and with my 150 credit hours). Desperate not to move back home, I took a private accounting job, but it didn’t work out and for personal reasons I moved up to Wisconsin. Now I am studying for the CPA and searching for a job. My question: how can I get in on this recruiting season? Is there even a way?
Unfortunately, this is just the way it is for public accounting firms. Unless an influential partner has a personal connection to a small school (Alma Mater, children are students there, etc), they are typically overlooked. The factory-like recruiting machines that are public accounting firms look for the same attribute in their target schools; where can they get the most bang (candidates) for their buck. If you think about it, it makes sense:
• Recruit at Notre Dame – meet 100 qualified accounting students
• Recruit at small liberal arts school – meet 15 qualified accounting students
Of the 1-2 students a firm would hire out of the small school, those numbers can be made up at the larger universities. This saves on expenses (travel, lodging, premiums, etc). Dollars and sense.
All that said, the issue is not that you’re from a small school, it’s that you’re now graduated and part of the workforce. Being a recent gradutate is more difficult; you’re not part of the campus recruiting scope and you’re too green to fit the typical experienced hire mold.
The best thing you can do is reach out to the firms directly. Use your network to find out who the HR contact is in the city where you live or want to live and call or email them. The most crucial thing with recruiters is getting them to know your name and face.
You’re cum laude so they’ll like that and if you are legitimately interested in the firm, they will take an interest in you. It will take some footwork on your part but it can be done.
John Veihmeyer Wins One for the Gipper
[caption id="attachment_10529" align="alignright" width="150" caption="But how does he feel about Charlie Weis getting fired?"]
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A few weeks back we presented the BusinessWeek ranking of accounting programs that found Notre Dame at the top. At first we just figured Touchdown Jesus had something to do with it but now we have reason to speculate that a divine carpenter had nothing to do with it.
Since KPMG Chairman-elect John Veihmeyer was recently named alumnus of the year by Notre Dame’s accounting department, some people might assume that JVeih did a little lobbying of the BusinessWeek folks in order to earn the top spot and perhaps this is South Bend’s thank you for the kind words.
Whether this back-scratching theory has any weight to it is up for a debate but what we know for sure is that some lucky Irish students/future Klynveldians got to hear JV speak recently at Notre Dame Stadium and some inspiring words were shared:
During his remarks, Veihmeyer used his own educational roots and career experiences to remind students what a unique opportunity they have had at Notre Dame and how it will benefit them on the road ahead. His audience listened in rapt attention. While the average college student would have paid just to have dinner in Notre Dame Stadium, these students knew that getting career advice from the Alumnus of the Year and CEO and future Chairman of a Big Four Accounting Firm was priceless.
From the sounds of it, the speech was the KPMG equivalent of this: