[mlwl8521]

The proposed plan is for me to go into the Federal Audits group and start on employee benefits plans for 6-12 months, then get promoted to a senior in Federal Audits

My question is: What are the chances that I’ll also have the chance to audit publicly traded companies? Right now I have 20 clients because I’m at a small firm. I’ve never worked at a Big 4, but I imagine that each person only has 1 to 5 clients and once you get trained for a sector, they don’t want to lose their investment and retrain you for a different sector.

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CPA licensed - 2013
2 years public accounting
MAcc GPA 3.8

[fuzyfro89]

I think there was a similar post elsewhere, but anyway.

Switching industries isn't too tough (manufacturing vs telecom vs whatever else), ESPECIALLY when you are early in your career since you aren't doing very difficult things and the things you are doing are fairly similar (drafting forms, confirmations, basic work papers and testing, etc).

The more experienced you get, the harder it gets to move around, because your level of knowledge in the new area needs to be commensurate to your position. You don't get slack as a manager new to commercial just because you worked in federal for 5 years.

The worst thing would be if you joined a firm and they kept giving you the “1 more year” promise, and you find yourself a manager in federal audit with 5 yrs of experience and wanting to switch. Your firm may not know what to do with you, and clients in commercial will have no use for your knowledge (of course some may, but my point is it will be much harder to transition).

A lot of people end up switching firms in order to get into the sector/industry they want. I know from some friends in large markets like NYC, even switching from Asset Mgmt to Banking can be tough… though in a smaller office, this would likely be considered within the same group.

[Anonymous]

You experience may be different than mine. I would think pretty unlikely.

I worked for a smaller office – there were 5 audit partners, one in each line of business (MR&D, healthcare, financial/banking, information communication and entertainment, and govt/nfp.

When I started in public accounting, my first engagement was in the MR&D lines of business (manufacturing, retail, distribution – mostly publicly traded).. I performed well, and because of that, I worked primarily on his engagements. When a partner/manager likes your work, they will not want to give you up and will schedule you for all their engagements.

I rarely had open time on my schedule to allow me to try other types of engagements.

This is primarily why I left Big 4…

[mlwl8521]

“The more experienced you get, the harder it gets to move around, because your level of knowledge in the new area needs to be commensurate to your position. You don't get slack as a manager new to commercial just because you worked in federal for 5 years.”

The worst thing would be if you joined a firm and they kept giving you the “1 more year” promise, and you find yourself a manager in federal audit with 5 yrs of experience and wanting to switch

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That is EXACTLY what I'm afraid of. I'm a gov/NFP expert and I want commercial experience. With this information, should I be more pushy (borderline demanding) about getting guaranteed access to a commercial assignment during the interview process?

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CPA licensed - 2013
2 years public accounting
MAcc GPA 3.8

[Author]

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