Company Battle: EY or PwC – Which is Best for MBAs?
If you attend a top business school, getting a job post-MBA graduation is reasonably secure. Your program has probably hosted dozens of recruiting events, you’ve worked closely with your career center, and you completed your internship, not to mention all the experiential learning courses that put you into close contact with companies and managers.
Finding a job after your MBA is a piece of cake—at least when it comes to opportunities. There are a million in front of you. The problem happens when you try to narrow it down and make your final choice. How do you know if you’re choosing the right company for you? This decision particularly tricky for consultants—one of the hot jobs for MBA graduates in 2019—because there are so many options.
And while no job is permanent and you can leave after a year or two if you find you’ve made the wrong choice, that’s not an ideal situation. To help you out, we’re taking a look at two of the top companies for consulting MBAs: Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Continue reading…
MBA Jobs: Accounting Manager
If there is one thing that unites all businesses, whether they are Etsy storefronts or multinational conglomerates, it’s that everyone needs to know how much money it has coming in and where it is going. At large companies and firms, this responsibility falls onto accounting managers. If you are someone with an eye for detail who knows their way around a budget, you might be an excellent fit for this job.
What Is an Accounting Manager?
The accounting manager is, largely, the head of a company’s accounting department. With the assistance of a small staff, the accounting manager keeps track of an organization’s finances and makes sure that the organization is following all necessary financial laws.
Accounting managers prepare reports for executives, letting them know where they are in relationship to their monthly, quarterly, and annual goals. Accounting managers also help to forecast the company’s financial future.
The following represent a few key responsibilities of accounting managers:
- Conducting audits
- Planning annual budgets
- Evaluating financial data
- Defining accounting policies
- Establishing financial standards
Accounting Manager Salaries
According to Glassdoor data, the average annual pay for an accounting manager is $88,160. Accounting managers can also earn an average of $8,426 in cash compensation. Compensation can range from $2,120 to $23,206, depending on the company, background, and academic experience. This generally translates to higher salaries for MBA grads.
For instance, accounting managers at EY (Ernst & Young) will likely earn over $100,000 on average, according to PayScale data.
Where Do You Start?
Candidates for accounting manager positions must have at least a BA/BS in Accounting or Finance. Most positions require candidates to be licensed Certified Public Accountants, or CPAs. This is not an entry-level position; businesses generally expect candidates to have had some previous supervisory experience.
Given the nature of this position, ideal candidates are ethical and able to think critically. Small errors can cost either a client or a firm a considerable amount of money, so it is essential that accounting managers are thorough in their work, always ensuring that their records are accurate and complete.
In addition to the technical skills, accounting managers need to have excellent written and interpersonal skills, because they are required to manage staff, which entails interactions with a wide variety of people.
One way to gain the skills needed for this position is to get a MBA from a top-notch program. We’ve outlined three programs, which provide the skills needed to be a successful Accounting Manager that stands out from the pack.
University of Texas’s McCombs School of Business
The McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin is home to one of the country’s finest accounting programs. Students can gain considerable accounting knowledge while expanding their management abilities. They will be able to do this while living in Austin, one of the country’s most livable cities.
University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign’s Gies College of Business
Students in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois can develop their financial skills in the college’s flexible MBA program. The training will prepare graduates to take on the role of accounting manager at firms of any size.
Brigham Young University’s Marriott School
Among the top business schools in the United States, the Marriott School at Brigham Young University does not get its fair share of attention, which is unfortunate as it is home to one of the country’s top accounting programs. MBA students can go on the Finance track, which will prepare them for their futures as accounting managers.
Beyond the ‘Big Four’: What are the Other Major Consulting Firms You Should Know?
Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and E&Y: Together these firms make up the “Big Four”—the four biggest professional services firms in the world. The companies offer auditing, assurance services, management consulting, corporate finance, legal services and more. It’s no surprise, that many of these companies are also ideal destinations for many MBAs. Continue reading…
New MBA Jobs: Apple, Fidelity, BlackRock, and More
Whether you earned your MBA after your undergraduate studies and want a great entry level position, or you’re a seasoned vet who earned their MBA to make a big career jump, there’s plenty of jobs out there for MBAs. Stay on top of the latest and greatest job opportunities for MBAs with this handy guide, useful for both those looking for their first big job or those looking for the next big thing: Continue reading…
Top MBA Internship Opportunities in the London Metro
As a center for global commerce and business, London is one of the top cities in the world to earn an advance business degree and secure an MBA internship. Continue reading…
The Best Business Schools for Landing Top Consulting Jobs
Clear Admit recently explored which business schools help prepare MBAs the most for a career in consulting, which you can read below.
With starting salaries in the $140,000 to $150,000 range and a customary $25,000 signing bonus on top of that, it’s no wonder so many business school students target the prestige consulting firms known as the “MBB”—McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company—as their post-MBA landing pads. That $170,000+ annual compensation package can quickly cut any MBA loan debt you may have taken on down to size.
Indeed, management consulting has been one of the most coveted career paths for fresh MBA grads for ages. And though the technology industry has in recent years been stealing some grads from the consulting industry’s traditional slice of the pie, the most recent MBA employment reports reveal that consulting is already making a comeback against tech at certain schools.
The opportunity to work with a range of clients comprised of many of the world’s most celebrated businesses across industries—tech included—is part of the appeal of consulting. In many ways, a top consulting gig allows MBA grads to continue their management education while getting paid for it—and further honing their skills and expertise by helping solve a wide variety of business challenges. And, not for nothing, breaking into the MBB is a highly competitive pursuit—one that almost assures that your colleagues will be smart, driven people you’ll get a lot out of working with.
Finally, where the top consulting firms are choosing to find their talent reflects on the quality of the education those schools’ students are getting. In many ways, the hiring practices of the MBB can serve as a gold star standard of sorts for MBA programs.
Elite Firms Hire Grads from Elite Business Schools
The crème de la crème of leading business school talent has headed toward the top consulting firms for decades—and performed well there—creating a virtuous circle of sorts in which the firms’ appetite for such talent only grows. And while this piece focuses on MBB, we should note that a host of other consulting firms—Deloitte, A.T. Kearney, Accenture, Strategy&, and Oliver Wyman among others—are also highly prized post-MBA destinations.
If you are looking to see which business schools send the greatest percentage of their graduates into consulting overall, don’t miss our September 2017 analysis of leading consulting industry feeder schools. Which schools top the list? And what stands out about how these schools successfully train students for careers in consulting?
Looking at Class of 2016 graduates, the University of Virginia’s Darden School led the pack, with 38 percent of its graduates heading into consulting. Columbia Business School was next, sending 35 percent, followed closely by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which sent 33 percent.
The 2017 employment reports, which have been released since our analysis last fall, show some shifts year over year. Darden tied with Emory’s Goizueta School of Business in terms of the percentage of Class of 2017 grads who headed into consulting, with each school sending 34 percent. Close on their heels were Columbia, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School. All four sent 33 percent of their most recent graduating class off to consulting firms.
2 Non-U.S. Schools Lead All Others in Consulting-Bound ’17 MBA Grads
But year after year, one thing remains the same. INSEAD, with campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, beats all leading U.S. business schools when it comes to consulting. INSEAD’s 2016 MBA employment report, detailing employment outcomes for December 2015 and July 2016 INSEAD grads, shows that 46 percent went into consulting. And the most recent figures reveal that almost a full half—49 percent—of the 1,029 students who completed the INSEAD MBA program in December 2016 and July 2017 chose to either enter or return to the consulting field.
We should note here that INSEAD is distinct from many other schools in that it includes sponsored students who are returning to their pre-MBA employers among its hiring stats. This is in contrast to many U.S. schools, where the reported number and percentage of students hired by sector and employer corresponds to those students actively seeking employment, excluding sponsored students. Of the 49 percent of INSEAD 2017 grads headed into consulting, 33 percent were new hires and the remaining 16 percent were returnees.
London Business School (LBS) was the runner-up for the Class of 2017, sending 41 percent of grads into consulting. This was a 6 percentage-point gain over the school’s previous class of MBA graduates. Like INSEAD, LBS’s reported sector designation and top employer information includes sponsored students, only its employment report does not disclose what percentage of the class those returning students represent.
