On September 10, 2020, the Student Accounting Association held its third meeting of the semester with guest speakers from BDO. The guest speakers included Heath Winsheimer ’95 (accounting), assurance partner; Ben Geraud ’17 (accounting), experienced tax associate; and Lindsay Fisher, campus recruiter.
The speakers emphasized that BDO, the fifth largest public accounting firm worldwide, is an excellent place to work with endless opportunities for career growth. According to their website, “BDO’s global network extends across 167 countries and territories, with 88,000+ people working out of 1,800 offices—and they’re all working towards one goal: to provide our clients with exceptional service.” Their services include tax, audit, and advisory.
The speakers emphasized that there are constantly new tasks for BDO employees to complete, and each day is rarely the same. To keep up with BDO’s fast-paced environment and to achieve success on job assignments, employees need to be hard-working, motivated, and able to work as a member of a team. Employees interact frequently with clients, so having strong communications skills is very important at BDO.
In BDO’s tax assurance advisory sector, accountants manage different client portfolios, ranging from around 50 million to one billion dollars. BDO is well suited for overcoming challenges that their clients might face, and each client receives individualized attention. In the tax department at BDO, accountants work on tax compliance, tax provision, and various consulting projects. In BDO’s audit sector, accountants work together to perform auditing services for both public and private clients, as well as work on employee benefit plans.
BDO has a flexible culture, which differs from many other public accounting firms. BDO tries to hire exceptional employees who can work well in teams, which creates a more positive environment. BDO’s offices offer a “family-like feel,” while still offering the resources of a large company. During the busy season, BDO employees are expected to communicate well with their peers and work hard to achieve success.
BDO offers many programs for their employees, which contribute to their unique family-feel environment, such as various networking events and opportunities to join industry groups. In addition to this, BDO has a “be a buddy” program for employees and gives back to the community through their community service initiative program, BDO Counts.
The next SAA meeting will be held on Thursday, October 1, , at 5:00 p.m. on Zoom, with guest speaker Christy Pipes ’01 (accounting), who is a managing director at Deloitte & Touche in their Tampa, Florida, office. The SAA president, Sarah Crownover, will email the link to this Zoom meeting to all accounting majors.