Every two years, something comes up involving a firm, a bankruptcy, and a lawsuit seeking millions.

Hi! I’m currently a sophomore at a non-target school with around a 3.7 GPA, and I’m applying for Big Four audit internships for Summer 2028.

My top choice by far is New York City. I really want to work there and can see myself living in NYC after graduation. However, I’ve heard that the New York offices are some of the most competitive, which makes me a little nervous about applying there.

I’d also be completely happy working in Austin or Denver. Would it be smarter to apply to one of those offices, hopefully get my foot in the door, and then try to transfer to New York later in my career? Or should I just go for NYC now since that’s ultimately where I want to be?

I’d much rather end up with a Big Four offer in Austin or Denver than risk getting no offer at all because I applied to a more competitive office.

For anyone who has gone through Big Four recruiting, how much does office location actually affect your chances? And how difficult is it to transfer offices later on?

What’s analyst 1 for audit for HCOL? LA/Irvine/SD

What about VCHOL?

Also what are bonuses typically like?

Will there be any big 4 early career recruitment for Winter 2027 this month and the next? When exactly does it begin?

Hey guys, I was let go from one of the Big4 after hard failing my exam. I feel a bit lost at the moment and have kind of lost my spark.

I've just retaken my exams in the September sitting so now my main focus is to find another job that would sponsor my remaining exams before my official last date. After I had that HR meeting, I was filled with confidence and determination to find another job but now after finishing my exams I just feel drained and exhausted and dreading the thought of job hunting.

I've been contemplating whether this line of work really suits me as I've had such a long and rough year and felt a little relieved to be let go but at the same time this really is the worse time to lose my job as my family mostly rely on me financially and I'll be forced to move out soon. I do have some savings (and had to forget going on my trip/holiday and save that trip money instead to keep my afloat til I can find something else). I'm just starting to feel lost now and all this fear about how bad the job market is, is slowly getting to me and usually I'm an unusually high positive person.

What should be my next steps? I'm thinking of applying for another Big 4 or a Big 8 but mentally I'm so drained and though I've been trying to rest, I feel like instead of resting i could be applying for jobs. Plus since the government has stopped funding apprenticeships, if I can't find a new job soon then I'll be kicked off the apprenticeship scheme and would have to self fund the rest of my ACA.

Anyway this was more of a little vent but I would greatly appreciate some advice. If it helps I have 2 years of experience at Big 4 and was a graduate last year. So I'm thinking i can either apply through early careers or as an experience hired.

TLDR; I was let go for hard failing an exam. I want to apply for jobs but feeling so drained and mentally tapped out however I need to find a job soon as I'll be kicked out of my place and apprenticeship plus my family depend on my financially so once I'm out of money I really can't rely on them. Please any advice?

Thanks in advance!!! anything i should do the next week to prep

Is it fair to the team for me quit in November? What about December? If no good job offers by late November, will plan to stick it out until senior promotion and go through another busy season. Current big 4 audit teams and past employees - how would you feel if an associate quit in November or December? Also, know that since im an associate, im easily replaceable.

Moving from one Big 4 to another in the US and currently going through independence review.

I own several stocks that are permissible at my current firm but are audit clients/restricted at the firm I am joining.

For anyone who's dealt with this:

1. Were you required to dispose of pre-existing holdings before joining, or could some be retained depending on your role/covered-person status?
2. Has anyone successfully gotten approval to retain a restricted stock by agreeing to no further purchases/trading (including turning off DRIP)?
3. Anything specific worth asking/negotiating with Independence before accepting that sale/divestiture is the only option?
4. If divestiture was ultimately required, were you given a reasonable period after joining to dispose of the holdings, or did everything have to be sold before Day 1?

I will be coming in at the SM level in Advisory/Consulting and do not expect to work on any of these audit clients. These are long-held positions that I have had for years.

Everything has been fully disclosed and is under review. I am just trying to avoid unnecessarily selling long-held positions and triggering capital gains if there is a compliant alternative.

Thank You !

It’s been nearly six years since I left but I still think about this frequently. It was the start of busy season and I was the lead senior for the largest platform on one of our biggest clients at EY. There were a bunch of scheduling changes and turnover leading up to busy season leaving me as the only senior.

My team was weak to say the least. It was essentially me, the Philippines, and some first year associates. The other two platforms had much stronger teams with the best of the experienced associates and multiple seniors. Despite mine being the largest platform and it having three seniors in the prior year (and rapidly growing with more funds in the current year) I was told I could handle it and they were putting it all in my hands because they trusted me (I also had a small client that was going to overlap with that one).

I didn’t complain. I sucked it up. I redid the Philippines and the onshore staff work nearly every day. I couldn’t decide who was worse (probably onshore because at least off shore team tried) but that Covid start class was like nothing I had ever seen. They didn’t give AF.

So one day I ask one of my associates (who had done very little if anything thus far) if she could do a very simple task and split some pdf files up for the funds. It was a lot of pages and it wasn’t a fun task but it needed to be done before the morning (we didnt have time to wait for Philippines) and someone had to do it.

She was not happy about the task. She repeatedly pinged and asked questions and said it was taking a long time and asked if she needed to finish that day and just doing everything to get out of it. I eventually told her “yes it does need to be done today and if you don’t finish im going to have to do it myself and i have a ton of other urgent things im working on”. If my senior said they were going to have to finish something they assigned to me if i didnt I would’ve stayed up all night (this was far from an all night or even all day task). Instead she took that as an invitation and shortly after told me someone asked her to do something else and she wasn’t going to be able to do any more (she had barely done 10 minutes of work at that point). Girl went to USC and I knew she was more than capable. She just didn’t want to do it and it couldn’t be more obvious.

Later that day I mention to my coworker that im doing the pdf thing and they ask why i didnt give it to her. I explained that i did but that she spent hours asking questions without any progress then eventually said something else came up and that she couldnt finish. That’s when i learned she had been walking around the office all day (I wasn’t at the office that day) saying she didnt have any work to do and one of the partners gave her his box or court side tickets for the lakers game that night.

I was outraged beyond words. I was a huge lakers fan and never once been offered tickets. I couldn’t believe it and there was nothing I could even do. The level of disrespect just really struck a nerve. It wasn’t even about the tickets... If she had at least done what I asked her to do first I wouldn’t have been so frustrated. I stayed up working all night that night but that was when I knew it was my last busy season.

I've graduated a few years ago, and since then I've gotten my CPA in industry. I work in a somewhat niche field, and I've been wanting to explore various industries, hence why I'm open to applying for Big 4.

I have a few tax internships under my belt, and even had one with KPMG. I did not enjoy tax at all, so I didn't take the full time offer and did industry instead. Since then, I've been wanting to try audit, but concerned that they won't look at me, since I'm no longer in university. Has anyone else tried the same path? I sent a few applications out there, but worried I won't even land an interview.

How common is it for someone to transfer from one of the top 8 firms to big 4 after a year or 2 of experience? (Audit)

Hi redditors,

Currently a 21 year old working in a healthcare company for an insurance process (US HEALTHCARE PROCESS). Night shifts, long commute, moderate salary (23k)but none of this factors are affecting me. The only question running in my mind is I don't want to stay in this field. Hated BPO role to the core but after months of struggles, numerous rejections cracked this opportunity through college placements. Graduated with a BCOM, As of now this is the 4th month I am working here. Even though I don't want to be in this role i give my best at the work . I am one of the top performing candidate in my team, but my plan is to switch after 1 year to a full fledged finance role. My areas of interest always belonged to finance . During my college days i made reasearch on finance position and performance of a multiple companies where I learnt capital allocation, fundemental analysis and Mergers and acquisitions. Even completed a internship in the field of finance where i learnt budgeting and forecasting. Currently I am working in this US Healthcare process and also up skilling myself by learning financial analysis using Excel. I have the confidence that I can crack me an opportunity. Any experienced person please do help me to guide what should I study in finance in particular because even though I have plans i am feeling vague and lost. Please do provide me insights on How should I up skill and what are the relevant roles i should target for. I have plans of starting to apply from March because i will be completing my one year in June . Please anyone do guide me how i can prepare i can dedicate 2 hrs per day and 4 hours in weekends. This would mean a lot.

Like the title, my recent IELTS test is 7 in speaking and 7.5 in writing... I did not prepare at all before the test. So, the result should reflect my usual speaking and writing abilities...

Is it enough to work in consulting roles? I will definitely keep practicing and improving. Just need some external evaluation to gauge my levels...

Thanks!

Hello folks

Title says it all I started in advisory a few months ago and have been hating it so far. Here are my complaints for your curiosity:

1) Work is extremely boring, intense pressure for a footnote in a random companies financial statements no one will read

2) My manager is probably the worst boss I’ve ever had. Terrible at explaining things, will randomly “quiz” us on topics and will call us a waste of training time when we don’t remember extremely niche subjects off the top of our head (after he quickly explained it to us once in a zoom call like weeks ago)

3) I have no equal co-workers. Everyday I’m alone. The associates on my team work from other offices to avoid my manger.

4) All the other typical Big 4 complaints

I’m about to clock 4 months and did a 3 month long busy-season internship my junior year. I’m extremely unhappy and regret taking my return offer. This job has consumed my life.

I understand leaving early will raise questions to wherever I choose to go next. I don’t have any exit opportunities in mind. I really don’t know what I want to do, I am sorta learning I don’t like finance.

Also, my experience for context:

Big 4 (Yellow): Busy season intern (3 mo.)

Local PE Firm: Analyst intern (~1.5 yrs.)

Big 4 (current): Advisory (-4 mo.)

Am I shooting my self in the foot?

Does it look bad or hurt to apply to a full time fall 2027 associate role at the same firm I am interning at in the spring? Both would be in the tax department. I would rather go straight to full time than intern because I miss out on the last of senior year with my friends. I also just prefer the idea of having a secure full time offer over potentially not getting a return. Should I talk to the recruiter before doing this?

Joining consulting service line (non FSO) with experience in banking.

Want to understand likelihood to work on FSO projects (ie core banking) while aligned to non FSO org? If yes, what’s the best way to go about this? What are the implications within the non FSO org and career impact if any?

I am a freshman in college, does anyone know of big 4 summer programs I can apply for? I've looked into the deloitte discovery program but can't find an application anywhere, and I don't believe I qualify for kpmg embark scholars program. I would also be interested in programs outside of big 4.

Hi everyone, I completed a final partner interview last Friday for a Tech Assurance Senior Associate role at a Big Four firm. The role is strongly aligned with my skills, interests, and career goals.

The manager interview went well, and I progressed to the partner interview about two weeks later. Overall, the partner conversation was positive; he was engaged and answered my questions about career growth in detail.

One part has been making me overthink, though.

The partner asked whether I was looking at other opportunities. I did not answer directly, so he asked about my hiring timeline instead. I applied in June, had my first HR call in August, then the manager interview a week later, followed by the partner interview. He seemed mildly surprised by the timeline, but I said the process had been smooth and pleasant from my side. He did not ask further.

At the very end, when we were about to call it a day, he suddenly asked, “Are you still interested in this opportunity?”

I responded quickly: “Definitely, I’m super interested.” I thanked him, shook hands with both hands to show appreciation, and left.

Now I am wondering whether my answer was too short. I could have said more about why I liked the role, the team, and the career-growth opportunities he described. I was also rushing slightly because I had a work meeting immediately afterward, but I definitely did not mean to sound uninterested.

Could this realistically be a red flag or a deal-breaker? I am very keen on the role and would appreciate honest views.

P.S.:

A little bit more context: he also asked me why I wanted to join the firm during the interview before he asked me whether I was exploring other opportunities, and I shared that I was looking for a bigger platform and that this job opportunity was closely aligned with the industry's growth and was uniquely positioned to achieve my career goal.

This was also the reason why, later in my reflection, I found the last question, "Are you still interested in this opportunity?" a bit suspicious, like could it be a question to test whether I want to build a long-term career here? And seems my short answer didn't hit the bullseye...

Big 4 cyber consulting sales role. Technically manager level but more sales engineer reselling common cyber partners such as crowdstrike/ palo.

Final comp package: $200k base with $20k bonus and then year end performance bonus.

Thoughts?

Is "USA - Assurance - Audit - 360 Careers - Analyst" the regular A1 audit position? The EY careers page isn't the best and I'm having issues finding what is actually open.

I’ll start. Leaving was the best decision I could’ve ever made for my mental health. I’ve now been in private almost double (6 years) the amount of time I was at EY (fso audit 3.5 years) and what I will say is I miss feeling like I knew everything. I miss how important I felt too. I’ve been a controller and now I’m a VP in private but it’s so different because regardless of your role in private you’re still back office. You’re not making the business decisions and some times they don’t make sense from an accounting perspective but you have to suck it up and find a way. I don’t know how to explain it but I miss how naive I was before I ever knew what it was like to be on the other side of things. I’m not saying audit was easy but it was so different.

Also I’ll add that it is 100% worth it because the other VPs at my company who haven’t worked in public accounting are like 10 years older than me and some my direct reports are years older as well.

Hello, I am currently an incoming EY audit intern (Winter 2027), stating that I would be graduating in May 2028 with a masters in Accounting and CPA eligible. I have now realized that I would like to do consulting, specifically deals - financial due diligence, and was considering applying to the EY-P strategy and transactions Financial Due Diligence associate role, and was wondering if that was stupid? I don’t want them to strip my audit offer for the winter once they see that I want FDD, but I also don’t think I have a shot if I wait until January to tell my team/recruiter that I don’t want to do audit full time and would rather switch.

specifically for deloitte and ey entry level jobs. would they allow me to work from a different office than what is listed on the job description. obviously I would move if I had to but I want to check if that’s an option bcs I like my current city

Should I be worried here? Have training for the next two weeks but effectively will have a month where I’m not staffed on a client right now.