Exit Opportunities

bah1011

I have an offer from one of the big 4 in tax where I will be completing the ACA and AITI exams.

I am just wondering if I want to leave after my training contract what kind of employment options will I have?

Thanks very much.

Dellboy2007

How did you get a job with a Big4 firm and not know the answer to this question?

bah1011

Dellboy2007 wrote: »

How did you get a job with a Big4 firm and not know the answer to this question?

Obviously im looking for things I don't know about or haven't thought of.

On how I got the job; That question didn't come up but i must have answered the other questions ok I suppose. My results probably helped and previous work experience was a factor I think.

Why would I want to go into an interview(or any stage of an application process) telling them about my plans to leave even if they know the majority of people do that?

Dellboy2007

Don't mean to sound flippant, i just can't really understand how you don't already know the answer to this question given the stage you're at.

Your employment options will be good, the fact that you will have big4 experience will stand to you and enhance future job prospects. Is this what you were after or could you be more specific?

cson

You'll get a more precise answer if you know the area you'll be placed in when you start your contract.

For example; VAT is particularly good remuneration wise I'm led to believe, if of course you're at the top of your game. I'd imagine it'd be looked highly upon in exporting multinationals given the differential in VAT between countries.

Given the way they've incentivised expenditure into the BRIC countries in the latest budget, I'd hazard a guess that if you had an edge in VAT treatments in those countries you could well find yourself in demand in the coming years.

ManwitaPlan

Dellboy2007 wrote: »

Don't mean to sound flippant, i just can't really understand how you don't already know the answer to this question given the stage you're at.

Your employment options will be good, the fact that you will have big4 experience will stand to you and enhance future job prospects. Is this what you were after or could you be more specific?

???

The majority of people at the end of their contracts dont know what options are open to them never mind somebody still in college who has just gone for the interview.

"Your employment options will be good" does not exactly tell the op a lot. He's looking for typical exit ops from big 4.

Bah, cant really comment on the tax side of thing but from Big 4 audit typical exit ops would include financial planning and analysis (management accountant) roles within industry or internal audit roles. I believe thats where the majority of opportunities would lie but other options would include treasury, middle office work in banks or maybe something closer to strategy development in industry. Very difficult to make the jump to front office roles like banking but it can happen in very limited cases.

Apologies that I cant give more info on tax exit ops but Im sure somebody will be along soon enough who can. As a guess I would say you would be very useful for transfer pricing work in industry and again would have a lot of the audit exit ops open to you having the ACA.

One thing about tax though is I imagine it may be of limited use if you want to work abroad in the longer term (could be very wrong on that) and it appears to me that a lot of tax people actually stay on in the big 4 (almost like for a tax consultant big 4 is as good as it gets but for somebody specialing more in finaical analysis audit is well down the pecking order...just my take).