Comparison Essay

During many accounting majors final semesters they begin to prepare to sit for the CPA exam in order to earn a full-time position with a reputable firm. However, before many students even take their exam they are offered internships with different companies with the hopes of passing the exam and obtaining a full time position once they are certified. Some of these students have the good fortune to intern with one of the big four firms. The big four includes PWC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG which are all very well known, reputable, firms. These four organizations have set themselves apart from other accounting firms through hard work and great success, but that does not necessarily mean that each firm is the same. Each firm has its own characteristics that differentiate from the others and can have some impact on where students may want to end up.

As far as hiring opportunities go, each firm is relatively similar in that they each hire around 18,000 – 20,000 graduates each year. That provieds equal opportunity for a newly graduated student to get hired at each firm without taking any other factors into account. Each firm requires their employees to commit a large amount of hours to work, and there are equal complaints about the working hours for each firm. They all work with big clients on a financial level all around the world. There are very places around the world that have only heard of one of the big four firms, and even fewer that won’t hear of them soon. Each firm provides auditing and consulting services, though the amount may differ between the firms, they provide more opporutnities than nearly every other firm. Even though each of the firms shares these traits, they have many cultural differences that set them