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Putting Accounting Firms’ Quest to Dominate Magazine Lists into Perspective

We’ve hypothesized about accounting firms’ quest to dominate every magazine list on Earth. Admirable goal, no question but the motivation has escaped us.
Until now. We’ve been enlightened:

Going back to the dominating magazine lists – its a lot like the bald middle aged guy (Big 4 accounting firms) that buys a Corvette (magazine awards) to compensate for a lack of equipment size (crappy work environment) to attract the ladies (slaves).

That pretty much clears it up.

McGladrey & Pullen Needs to Quit Being Nice to Us

natalie_gulbis3.jpgOn the one hand we feel bad about missing McGladrey & Pullen being on BW’s list of Best Places to Launch a Career. They land at #66 but the picture at right wasn’t used and frankly, our attention span is short.

We’re also a little disappointed that the M&Pers out there didn’t jump our shit about missing it altogether. Perfect opportunity for you call us out for being a Big 4 whore or something to that effect. Probably due to the Minnesota Nice or maybe you’re all clinically depressed because your firms are getting divorced. WTFK.

Regardless, your opportunity is gone because this is the GC “our bad” statement for leaving you out of the previous posts.
However, when we probed M&P’s profile we discovered that the five year retention rate was 18%. And M&P sponsors Natalie Gulbis for crissakes. We shouldn’t have to explain how valuable she would be in the recruiting and retention processes. We just convinced ourselves that we don’t feel bad at all.

Get it together M&P.

Launch Your Career, Part Deux

human-cannonball.jpgWe took another look at BusinessWeek’s Top Places to Launch a Career list because: 1) lists out of business magazines, no matter how trite and meaningless, have a way of sucking us in and B) we figured there may be more information that you would find interesting.
As we mentioned last week, Deloitte knocked E&Y off the mountain by having the best stats in some key categories like salary, three-year retention rate, and lowest drop in entry level hiring.
Here are a few more stats we discovered in BW’s list:
• Only 2% of Deloitte’s new associates received a performance bonus, and the average bonus was $296. This compares to 35% for E&Y, 27% for P. Dubya, 68% for KPMG, and 85% for GT. The respective average bonus was $5,141; $4,900; $3,700; $1,552.
Continued, after the jump


• E&Y really loves their new associates so much that they spent, on average, $18,500 on training for each one. The next hightest was KPMG at $7,689. We double-checked the E&Y number, thanks.
• We mentioned the three year retention rates for the firms last week and Guest 3 noted how this is um, not good. Interestingly enough, the five year retention rate is worse, with all the firms hovering around 34%, except for GT whose five year retention rate was 28%
• PwC had the youngest partner at 30 years with eight years seniority while E&Y and GT both had partners with seniority of seven years with seven years. Deloitte’s youngest was 31 with ten years and KPMG’s was 32 with 9 years.
Unfortunately, the list does not contain happy hour to new hire or hottie to nottie ratios but we figure these fairly close too. So of you’re a recruit this probably leaves you just as confused as before.
Discuss the stats in the comments and try to guide our college friends in the right direction. Recruits, if you’ve got your mind made up, let us know which firm and why. You’re going to have to sell it though.

Deloitte is Handing Out Giant Foam Fingers Today

green#1.jpgBusinessWeek’s “Best Places to Launch a Career” hits the newsstands today and Deloitte stuffed the ballot box best.

E&Y is the first loser, PwC gets the bronze and KPMG jumped one spot to #4, up from #5 last year. Grant Thornton dropped in at #51.

A few stats that probably help Deloitte land on top include:

• Average pay range being $5k higher than all the other firms

• Highest average signing bonus and 90% of new hires received them

• Highest three year retention rate of 56%

• Lowest drop in entry level hiring

Regardless of who comes out on top in this list, all the firms will be hyping their inclusion while on campus this fall.

We’ll revisit this next week when more of you are actually at work, not hungover, or haven’t already left.
For the rest of you, feel free to discuss the list in the comments, as we’re sure there are opinions out there on this.

Best Places to Launch a Career [BusinessWeek]