-: A general finance background would be good.
'Cause if you do that you're still gonna take
your basic accounting classes.
If you have a basic foundation of accounting
you'll be okay because you can learn things on the job.
You can learn from your seniors.
So that's not really the issue,
as long as you can quickly pick things up.
I think having a finance background really helped me
because of just being able
to understand the financial statements from the get-go.
Understand what goes into making the financial statements
and the elements of each line on there.
So for me, I think finance was really important
to be able to do well in this accounting job.
Really just depends on your interests, too.
If you wanna be focused on accounting,
which I was for my Master's program,
it will help you a lot to get into public accounting,
especially if you wanna do tax.
But for me, who is more interested in audit,
the corporate finance background was extremely useful.
Accounting companies love internships,
especially summer intern programs.
We have it as well at CohnReznick,
and that, I think, is the best way
to get your foot in the door,
because not only are you gonna get good experience,
but you're gonna meet everybody in the office.
When it's time to apply for the full-time job
everybody's gonna already know who you are.
And just like most things in business,
it's all about relationships.
It's, people need to know you, people need to trust you,
because you can learn these things pretty quickly.
It's not the most technical profession
compared to like medicine or something like that.
So really people just need to know that you're smart,
that you're willing to learn, that they can train you,
and that they would want to work with you.
So summer internships are great.
Alumni networks are incredible.
Just, they'll set you up with anybody
to have coffee with them or lunch with them.
You can talk to them, get your foot in the door that way.
One of the most important things,
and maybe one of the biggest pieces of advice
that I could give a student
is how important self improvement is
and self motivation and being proactive.
If I see on a resume that somebody
is applying for accounting
and is interested in an accounting position,
and this person has gone out of his or her way
to take maybe some extra Excel classes
to become extra proficient in Excel or QuickBooks
or something related to that,
then that really tells me that this person
is actually really serious about what they're doing.
They might have an actual passion about it.