Big 4 to Investment Banking Template & Tutorial

Okay. Welcome to our story teller that shows you how to go from Big Four accounting
into the finance industry and how to tell your story when you're making that type of
move. As I say right here at the top, this is applicable if you're in accounting, auditing, or
even something like transaction advisory services, or perhaps valuation or even internal
investment banking at a Big Four firm such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young,
and so on.

Now, when you're coming in from this background one of the important things to do is
to assess what kind of objections you're going to get. In this case the objection is going
to be very simple. They know that you understand accounting, of course, and they know
that you understand numbers and how to use Excel, but they are going to be very
skeptical over whether you can work 80 to 100 hours a week or maybe not even that
much, maybe just 60 to 70 or 70 to 80 hours a week because usually accounting is
viewed by bankers and financiers as an easier or less of a rigorous profession.

Now, of course that's not actually true. You do get very busy at times, especially during
tax season, for example, if you're on that side. But the perception for most people in
finance is that accounting is "easier" for whatever reason. You need to keep that in mind
and make sure you handle that objection and show throughout your story that you've
done your homework. You know what you're getting into and not only that but you've
actually worked hard, worked these double shift hours, effectively, many times or at
least for one extended period in the past and you're confident that you can repeat that
going into the future.

As with most stories there are bad reasons to say that you want to do investment
banking or finance and then better reasons. One of the things that you have to be
careful about here is becoming too negative about your current job. I've seen this
before where people moving in from a Big Four firm talk about it and they say, "Oh,
well, it's just accounting. You're not actually doing anything significant or meaningful
and I want to become a driver and the one who's actually helping to get deals done in
investment banking."

With that line of reasoning you have to be careful because if you frame it the wrong way
or if you say the wrong phrase it's going to come across as very negative and people
listening to you are going to wonder, well, do you understand that when you start off in
investment banking or any other finance firm you're still going to be doing a lot of grunt
work. You're still not going to be the one driving deals or getting them done. You have
to be careful about how exactly you frame your reasons here.

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Really what you want to do in this section, where you explain why you want to actually
do banking or really anything in finance, you want to say something like you want to be
directly involved with the transaction. So contribute to the entire process as opposed to
only contributing to smaller portions. Here you're effectively saying the same thing if
you think about it. You're still effectively saying, "Hey, I no longer want to do paperwork
or grunt work like just reviewing due diligence documents. I want to contribute to the
whole process." But you're framing it very differently because you're not talking about
the significance of your work but rather the fact that you're involved with the entire
process from beginning to end.

Saying that you want to become a trusted adviser in the future is also a good reason to
mention here and something that works well for most people transitioning from other
fields over to investment banking. Then finally learning about the entire deal process
from beginning to end. Kind of going along with what I mentioned in point number one
here about contributing to the entire process and all portions of the deal instead.

So with that in mind, here are the five key points and how you adapt them slightly if
you're coming in from this background; the beginning, as always, educational
background plus your accounting experience so far, the investment banking or finance
spark. Here the best thing to do is to talk about a client engagement, a project, or a deal
that you worked on while at this Big Four firm because, again, it's always best to use
personal experience here for your spark, growing interest, talking more with bankers,
networking, finding out more about the industry, and then why you're here. You want
to say that you have the skills, or at least some of the skills, that you've gained from this
Big Four work and you want to go into investment banking because long term you, of
course, want to become a trusted adviser to companies, to executives, and so on and
you see this as the best path toward getting there.

Now let's jump into the template and see some of the key points here and how to apply
them. Here, once again, just saying you went to a certain school for undergraduate,
master's, or MBA, joined the Big Four firm and then just give a very simple reason about
why you joined the accounting firm group; whether it was the people in your group, the
work that you were doing, the industry focus. Something like that is fine. You just want
to seem like a thoughtful candidate going into this.

Then here saying that you performed well. You worked on deals, or projects, or anything
else. What you want to do is go over your resume or CV and pick out the points that are
most relevant to banking. Talking about things like valuation, talking about due
diligence, even talking about something like financial statement analysis. Anything like

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that, that is relevant to the skill set and banking you want to point out and state
explicitly that you've had experience with while working at the Big Four firm. You can
even follow that up by saying that you've gained specific skills like teamwork, leadership
abilities, analytic skills, and so on that are, of course, going to be helpful in investment
banking.

Here you get to your spark and you talk about this in a little bit more detail. This could
be a deal, if you're working in transaction advisory services. It doesn't have to be. It
could just be some type of project or client engagement. If you're on the auditing side it
could even be something like that where you analyzed a company's financial
statements, their journal entries for example, and you thought of an opportunity where
they could really improve somehow. Maybe you look at their financial statements and
you realize, hey, you know, this company is actually running low on cash or could use
more cash to continue growing in the future, make acquisitions, and so on. If I were
working at a bank maybe we could help out with a deal and advise them on how to raise
debt or equity.

At a Big Four firm, of course, it's outside of the scope of your job so you're a little bit
limited in that sense. But if I were in investment banking instead I could actually go
hands-on and help with executing that type of deal.

Here he follows up and explains in more detail how the experience piqued his interest in
investment banking. How after this he started speaking with more and more bankers
and became interested in getting involved with the entire process.

And then here is an extra section that we haven't pointed out in the outline, but it's
important to note here that he is pointing out explicitly that he has done his homework,
he knows what he's getting into, and he's actually worked 70 to 80 hours a week for
extended periods in the past while at his current job. Now I say tax season here, but it
could really be anything. This could be something like working extended hours because
of a deal or because of a client engagement that heated up for some reason or that had
some kind of external issue. You could even potentially go back to before the Big Four
firm and go back to talking about when you were in school at the MBA or
undergraduate level or even something in between or something before Big Four but
after school. The point is that regardless of what you pick here you want to have a
specific example of when you've worked these long hours in the past.

He also points out that he's taken financial modeling courses and spoken to a lot of
bankers. He knows what he's getting into. He has no delusions about coming in and

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having a normal lifestyle and actually getting to do fun stuff all of the time. He knows
what he's getting into and knows what's involved with this job.

Then finally here at the end talking about why you're here and then the future. Once
again talking about learning the deal process inside and out. He goes and picks this
reason, focusing on the third reason here, which is a good one to use. Then in the long
term becoming a trusted adviser to management teams and executives.

Now if you're going for something other than investment banking such as private equity
then you can change this around. You can talk about how you want to become an
investor rather than an adviser, for example. The rest of this will be very similar and you
can tweak this slightly for the small differences that exist between private equity and
banking, but for the most part you can actually pretty much reuse this template.

Then finally here at the end he wants to leverage all of the skills that he's gained in
accounting, but then work with companies on actual deals as opposed to just working
on small portions of those deals as you might do at a Big Four firm. Then finally talking
about his future, about becoming an adviser to companies in a certain industry domain.
If you can mention that, that would be good because the more specific your vision the
better here, especially, after you've been working full time for several years. But that is
the basic idea here and some of the key points to hit on.

Then, as I say at the end here, I have a few notes about how the beginning was
shortened because it's just not as important when you've already been working full time
for several years. He explicitly points out how he can handle these intense work weeks
that come with banking. Then, finally, this is one that's really important, it goes back to
what I mentioned in the beginning, that you don't want to go overly negative. You have
to be very careful about how you phrase these topics and ideas when you talk about
them. So, don't say, "Oh, I don't want to be pushing papers and fact checking.” Rather,
say something like, "I want to contribute to the entire deal process as opposed to only
portions of it." You're effectively expressing the same idea, but you're not saying it in
the same way and you come across as far less negative. You come across as very
positive if you frame it like that instead.

Then, of course, you should also be aware of this question. This kind of goes outside the
scope of your story, but they're always going to ask you well, why didn't you enter
finance right away? You have to explain that you weren't aware of all of the options.
You weren't completely certain of what you wanted to do. You felt the Big Four firm
would be a great learning environment for some other reason, but then later on you

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realized that you actually changed your mind and you wanted to do something more
than what your current firm allowed you to do at that point.

That is a quick overview of our template here for moving from the Big Four firm into
investment banking or anything else in finance. Hopefully, now you have a much better
idea of the bad reasons to avoid stating that you want to do investment banking, better
reasons to give in an interview, then also how to structure your story a little bit
differently and how to handle some of these key objections in advance.

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