本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛I have been approached by some people here asking for my advise on how to getting an offer from Big Four. I will try my best here. As for myself, I had a bachelor's degree in China and have been working for 3 yrs before I came over to Canada. My advice is more suitable to students currently enrolled in an undergraduate business program.
1. 80+ marks. As a student, your mark can speak a lot for you. Accounting firms want smart people. Also since we are not native English speakers, you should do even better than the others to prove yourself.
2. Experience. All kind of experiences counts: you can get involved with school clubs, you can have some of your own hobbies, you can even use your working experinece in China. I told people from E&Y that I am married and I have worked in China, but I still got hired.For myself, I had teaching experience in China ( good communication skills),an internship at the UN (nothing fancy about the job, I told them more on how I found the job from the internet), I help my husband managing a business, and I involve in some student clubs.
3. Carefully prepare your cover letter, resume and interview skills. I read several relevent books during the summer. And I have several meetings with school career center to revise my documents specified to each firm and improve my interview skills. I should say accounting firms interviews are comparatively easier than the finance and consulting interview since it is all behaviour questions and sometimes more like conversation. You should take the lead, and provide concrete examples to sell yourself. I told them I am a new immigrant. I started three years ago at the Pizza Hut earning the minimum wage and now I enrolled in one of the best business school in Canada and have a profitable business. People like concrete examples.
Here are some tips:
1. Go for all the information session of the firms. It is possible they will track who have showed for the info session.
2.Don't hog just one recruiting person there. Hogging the recruiting manager without letting others to participate in the conversation will leave a bad impression on the recruiter and fellow students. Besides, after a while, conversation can become dry. It is totally ok to say thank you to the person and tell him or her you would like to talk to more people from the firm, and leave her or him to the other students.
3. Have several mock interviews before you go for the real one. I have got a lot of valuable feedback from the mock interview.
4. Be careful of your body language. Be confident, smile all the time. Keep things out of your hand. For one of my mock interviews, I have been waving a piece of paper on hand without knowing it.
5. Be confident and don't leave the impression of over condidence. From my observation, people from Big four and students being hired by Big Four are all very easy to approach. A partner from E&Y asked me how can get 100% for my calculus course. I told her I was luck to have a good prof for the course, and I just followed what she told us to do, and the mark including 2% bonus mark.
6. Be connected with the interviewer. The recruiter from KPMG is black girl. Later on I found out she was not born in Canada. So we shared a lot things: both minority women from a different culture. So I told her how I worked hard to improve my English here( and I complimented her on her presentation in the info session), how I work towards my goal step by step. At the end of the interivew, she told me things like KPMG had their first Muslim partner this year, and she even advised me to apply my parents to visit me earlier for my graduation ceremony as she just had a bad experience with the immigration agency.
7. Look professional. Business formal for the interview. Attention to detail: polish shoes, dry cleaned shirt or new shirt, clean hair, a little bit make up for ladies, and nice breath ( but don't chew the gum during the interview).
I hope the above information can be useful. I know there are serveral people on this forum working for accounting firms. I hope these people can add more insights and share their experience. Good luck with everyone's job hunting.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
1. 80+ marks. As a student, your mark can speak a lot for you. Accounting firms want smart people. Also since we are not native English speakers, you should do even better than the others to prove yourself.
2. Experience. All kind of experiences counts: you can get involved with school clubs, you can have some of your own hobbies, you can even use your working experinece in China. I told people from E&Y that I am married and I have worked in China, but I still got hired.For myself, I had teaching experience in China ( good communication skills),an internship at the UN (nothing fancy about the job, I told them more on how I found the job from the internet), I help my husband managing a business, and I involve in some student clubs.
3. Carefully prepare your cover letter, resume and interview skills. I read several relevent books during the summer. And I have several meetings with school career center to revise my documents specified to each firm and improve my interview skills. I should say accounting firms interviews are comparatively easier than the finance and consulting interview since it is all behaviour questions and sometimes more like conversation. You should take the lead, and provide concrete examples to sell yourself. I told them I am a new immigrant. I started three years ago at the Pizza Hut earning the minimum wage and now I enrolled in one of the best business school in Canada and have a profitable business. People like concrete examples.
Here are some tips:
1. Go for all the information session of the firms. It is possible they will track who have showed for the info session.
2.Don't hog just one recruiting person there. Hogging the recruiting manager without letting others to participate in the conversation will leave a bad impression on the recruiter and fellow students. Besides, after a while, conversation can become dry. It is totally ok to say thank you to the person and tell him or her you would like to talk to more people from the firm, and leave her or him to the other students.
3. Have several mock interviews before you go for the real one. I have got a lot of valuable feedback from the mock interview.
4. Be careful of your body language. Be confident, smile all the time. Keep things out of your hand. For one of my mock interviews, I have been waving a piece of paper on hand without knowing it.
5. Be confident and don't leave the impression of over condidence. From my observation, people from Big four and students being hired by Big Four are all very easy to approach. A partner from E&Y asked me how can get 100% for my calculus course. I told her I was luck to have a good prof for the course, and I just followed what she told us to do, and the mark including 2% bonus mark.
6. Be connected with the interviewer. The recruiter from KPMG is black girl. Later on I found out she was not born in Canada. So we shared a lot things: both minority women from a different culture. So I told her how I worked hard to improve my English here( and I complimented her on her presentation in the info session), how I work towards my goal step by step. At the end of the interivew, she told me things like KPMG had their first Muslim partner this year, and she even advised me to apply my parents to visit me earlier for my graduation ceremony as she just had a bad experience with the immigration agency.
7. Look professional. Business formal for the interview. Attention to detail: polish shoes, dry cleaned shirt or new shirt, clean hair, a little bit make up for ladies, and nice breath ( but don't chew the gum during the interview).
I hope the above information can be useful. I know there are serveral people on this forum working for accounting firms. I hope these people can add more insights and share their experience. Good luck with everyone's job hunting.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net