Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Communicating For the Future

Accounting recruiting starts early. My sophomore year was filled with networking with the Big Four at different dinners and ice cream socials. Now that I’m participating in two sophomore leadership programs, it’s hitting me that they want me to decide on my service industry very soon. I just returned from EY’s Los Angeles Emerging Leadership Program and I know the survey is coming within the next few days. How am I, a rising junior, supposed to know what I might want to do when I’ve graduated?

While many students in this position are considering audit versus tax, I’m also looking into forensics. I first heard about forensic accounting my first semester of sophomore year at an accounting event held by career center. I still remember how amazed my friend and I were when she started describing her job and different cases that she had worked on before. When I was calling a Babson alum who is now working as an accountant for Google, I remember he referred to forensics as the “sexy accounting.” I thought it was just him who might have given it this name. But, I was wrong. During my last two days, it’s been referred to as the “sexy one” by three different professionals.

My summer internship this year has given me a little insight on this field and I completely understand the name it was given. I love the work that I’m doing at the SEC and I can see myself doing this in the future. But, there are so many different factors to consider. For example, the Los Angeles office will probably accept at most one forensic intern if any. It’s such a small practice that they don’t really recruit out of college. While it’s possible, I’ve been constantly reminded at every event that it’s extremely hard. When they continue to discourage me like this, I feel like I want to prove them wrong even more. Also, since forensics is so small it really limits different career path opportunities. To combat this, I’ve been talking to people at the SEC and listening to what they’ve done before they arrived here. While all of them started out at the Big Four accounting firms, they’ve accomplished a lot more too. Some have worked at the FBI or small competitor firms to the Big Four.

I think your internship should help give you insight on what you want to do in the future. But remember that it’s not just whether you liked the work or not. There are a lot of different factors to consider and the professionals at your company are a perfect resource to see what their advice is and what they’ve done. Remember, it’s most important to communicate!