How Claire Earned her Big 4 offer without prior experience in accounting
NAME: Claire C.
NICHE: Staff Auditor
DESCRIPTION
Claire is an experienced professional from China who moved to North America with the goal of establishing a foundation for her family to join her. Listen to her story and be amazed how she earned her Big 4 offer without prior experience in accounting.
Stuart taught me about knowing the right time to apply like for example, when the company is expanding, you will apply in this kind of opportunity and get hired.
TRANSCRIPT
Stuart: Congratulations on getting an offer because it’s not just any offer it’s also an offer with a famous brand name. So, that must feel pretty good.
Claire: Yeah, it’s only a 5 minutes walk away from here.
Stuart: How did you succeed in getting hired as an accountant with the Big Four when in the past you did not have accounting experience on your resume or banking experience on your resume? How did you succeed in standing out among the competition?
Claire: First, I think a few times, few months ago, we talked with each other and you recommended like to extract to something, like even I don't have the direct but I tried to extract some problem related like finance, I think that this is the very first, this is very important to show in your resume. And the second one is always like the time you apply for the job or the option that you have, for example why the other team is expanding, so will you apply in this kind of opportunity you have hired to join in the company.
So, the 10 years things that you talked about on our conversation, because I remembered that conversation, you may not have been any accounting department of the economic development zone where you worked in China but when we talk about how you often had conversation about budgeting and planning, and how you could position yourself as somebody who knew about accounting, because you were doing work that was related to accounting.
Stuart: I noticed a couple of times, in other conversations that I had where somebody is not seen immediately how they can break in to a particular job because they weren’t doing the same thing before and one of the things i found myself saying to people is, you want this company to hire you and this company wants to market its product or services, this company is in business to market its services and make money so the first you need to do is learn how to market yourself, how to position yourself to make the company want to hire you now you are your own product and you need to market that product. So was there a moment when maybe that was the moment when we had that conversation but was there a moment like in our cooperation, to feel like the career accelerator program worked and what we are teaching was starting to work for you and starting to help you?
Claire: Yes, from the beginning you keep on saying that networking is very important. And I found that it is indeed. It's basically like when you apply for some good companies compared to my (student) I also applied probably 60, but most of them are related to accounting, finance, or banking or something like that, most of them tried to find something related. If you apply for good companies without a referral even you cannot get an interview. And also, sometimes they look and conclude on what you did in the past, especially for the resume, sometimes we tend to focus on what we achieve and not what the company wants, and remind me of what you taught me at the beginning of our resume. These two are very important.
Stuart: So did you find that networking was helpful to you in getting the offer with Ernst and Young?
Claire: Yes sure and for this one like you know after getting a referral from one of the managers who walked, when he just like moved to, but still has connections there. He referred me to his friend who worked, and just like after 5 days I got the interview and in two weeks I got the offer.
Stuart: So now you work for somebody currently at PWC formerly with Young and it is the friend that person from PWC who gave you the referral.
Claire: Yeah his friend in (NY). After that offer, I found I can prepare my learning and plan my everything. I can plan everything and it is much better than before.
Stuart: You can start a plan for your life.
Claire: Yeah, that’s true.
