George Barnstable, Senior External Audit Recruitment consultant, shares his thoughts on why Mid-Tier firms are a strong option for your CV and career progression.
I’ve spent just shy of two years speaking with internal and external auditors from various sized professional services firms daily. During this time, as I’ve worked to increase IAC’s capability to support mid-tier firms with their recruitment needs, I’ve encountered objections from candidates sitting within the Big 4 and Top 10 firms.
Common objections included:
- “I don’t want to ruin my CV by going into a mid-tier.”
- “I don’t want to move to a smaller firm because I won’t be able to move to industry afterwards.”
- “Mid-tiers have worse work life balance than the Big 4.”
Since the start of 2023 however, I’ve seen a shift in candidate’s interests from large firms to an increasing number of mid-tier firms and generally, an overall lack of care about where their potential new firm ranks on the accountancy age charts. Recently, I’ve been asking the candidate pool – why? Why are more and more Big 4 and Top 10 talent considering a move to a mid-tier or boutique consulting firm?
Here are a few common answers:
- Better work life balance
- Ability to add more value and be recognized/compensated for such.
- Have more merit driven progression, where the politics of promotion in some cases have been removed.
- Increased team support, culture, and people environment
So, it seems that the tide is turning…
Mid-tiers have very impressively reacted to the movements of the Big 4 and Top 10 in various ways including matching salaries, increasing benefit offerings such as cash allowances and holiday purchase and sales, offering sponsorships and transfers of visas etc. – the list goes on.
The new challenges Mid-Tiers face
As an increasing amount of work gets pushed out of the larger firms into the smaller counterparts, mid-tiers are becoming an attractive option for candidates, however, there still are some hurdles they need to jump over.
Mid Tiers should consider these market challenges below:
- Job titles and the overall structure that mid-tier firms operate haven’t followed suit of the movements made by the larger firms, whereby – and let’s be honest here – a lot of large firms are calling their senior auditors “assistant managers”. This is creating a psychological barrier to many candidates in my opinion.
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- For example, Big 4 “assistant managers” (who are senior auditors in terms of responsibilities) are reluctant to move to a mid-tier firm as an assistant manager as they see it as a step backwards. However, an increase in responsibilities from simply leading end-to-end audits to doing what the “actual” assistant manager should do, such as portfolio management, review of work, control of budget and resources etc. is more than an upgrade.
- Sponsorship is another hurdle most mid-tiers are facing, but not all – a lot of mid-tiers are now transferring visas and are seeing success from it – as well as the true cost of it – hint: it’s expensive but worth it! Otherwise, the talent you need is instead being swept up by your competition.
- An extra added benefit that comes from sponsoring candidates is that it not only fills the vacancy gaps but also creates incredible diversity and allows for new approaches and ideas to be voiced. #DoubleWin 😊
These challenges, however, are controllable, which puts a lot of mid-tier firms in a good position for the future. As a recruitment champion for the mid-tier market, I am working intently to improve the perception of these amazing firms that are perfectly placed to get the best talent out there.
If you’re an external auditor and like the sound of these benefits or if you’re a hiring manager at a mid-tier market firm, I’d be more than happy to discuss opportunities that may be available to you.
You can reach out to me directly at George.Barnstable@iac-recruit.com.