How the Accounting Interview Process Works From My Side of the Table
I recently asked every candidate the same ASC 606 question. Some got it blatantly wrong. Others threw out buzzwords and circled the right answer for about five minutes without landing on it. A few got to the heart of it in under 30 seconds. The reasons for that gap explain a lot about how interviewing works, so I want to walk through the whole process from application to offer.
Most Applications End at the Resume
Applications reach me through an external recruiter, our website, or LinkedIn, and the resume is the first thing I review. For most applicants, the story ends there. I look at the resume, decide it is not what I am looking for, and reject it. I wrote about what goes into those decisions in What I’m Actually Looking For When I Reject Your Resume, so I won’t repeat it here.
A Referral Starts With a Relationship
Most referrals grow out of relationships that already exist, and few are sought as a way around the standard channels. I give my students a list of my network contacts so they can reach out and take it from there, and if I know a firm personally and I am in a position to refer someone, I will.
A referral does not let you skip the interview process, only the most frustrating part of it. When I have a lot of resumes to get through, anything that looks off goes in the trash quickly. When someone I trust vouches for your experience, I am comfortable talking to you, and your resume goes to the top of the pile.
Recruiting is a numbers game. Say I screen five people, interview three of them, and give the position to the best of those three. If I have found someone good enough, I am not going to restart the process to look for a better candidate who might have applied late. Getting into the group that gets screened is an advantage by itself, and that is what a referral buys you.
A referral also gets you inside information about what the first few interviews will be like and how to answer the questions well. If I referred someone to my firm today, I would require them to sit down with me and prepare first, so I could coach them on what to say and how to present themselves in a way that makes both of us look good. If they could not do that, or could not represent me well, I would not give them my name. Larger firms in particular like it when you reference their culture, their pillars, a specific office, or an industry group. You can find some of that online, and you can learn the rest by asking someone who works there.
The Screening Call
Candidates who get past the resume talk with someone on my team for a quick call of 30 to 45 minutes. The call covers the job and the candidate, and its purpose is to decide whether the person is a good fit and worth a full interview. Many firms screen this way.
The Interviews
After the screen, firms commonly run some mix of a cultural interview, a technical interview, and a conversation with a partner or another high level person. The order and the names vary from firm to firm. I prefer to keep the technical and cultural conversations separate so the candidate can understand each one and talk through it on its own instead of having them blended together. At my old firm, the interviewers did not divide them that way, but they still asked the classic “tell me about a time when” questions, and I have a post on those.
In every round, interviewers are quietly taking notes on everything from your communication skills to your answers to your interest in working with the team. Underneath all of it, the firm is assessing how well you fit the position and whether you can do the job well and grow your career in it.
What a Technical Question Is Doing
Not every firm asks specific technical questions, but when I do, the question has two jobs. The first is to check the baseline knowledge the role requires. If I ask about ASC 606, I expect that knowledge to be part of the work, so I need to know whether you have it. The second job gives the answer more room than right or wrong, because the question also shows me how you think through a problem and whether you ask follow-up questions along the way.
Part of the gap between the candidates I described at the top comes down to content, since the ones who answered quickly simply knew the material better. The candidate who answered it properly also thought through what the guidance says and followed the same structure the standard lays out. That structure showed me this person knows how to think through the problem.
What the Firm Is Not Willing to Teach You
Every question in these rounds comes back to one test: can this candidate do the things my firm is not willing to teach them? Different questions can get me to that conclusion. For an entry level candidate, I am looking for evidence that they know how to learn. For a more senior candidate, I am looking for demonstrated technical experience. Either way, the candidate has to prove they know enough for the firm to succeed with them in the seat.
The more experienced you are, the more scrutiny you will get on technical questions, and how much a firm asks in a given area depends on how ready it is to train that area. Public accounting firms were historically designed to teach new graduates how to audit or prepare a tax return, so experience helped but was never required. What the firm felt it could not teach was how to listen, how to take feedback, and how to be a good person in general, so those got the focus in interviews.
This is also where polish stops helping. A student who polishes up a story with details that are not relevant just to sound better stands out next to one whose story is true and matches what I am looking for, because the true story does not need polish. At the entry level, the candidates who put me at ease are self-reflective, personable, and aware of what they might not know. Even in a competitive market, I still want someone who comes in willing to learn new things and plug into an existing team.
You may also get a very specific question that seems to come from nowhere, and it often comes from a recent bad hire. Human resources usually gives the interviewer a pool of standard questions, and the interviewer should have room to go off script. Those questions tend to address the most recent concern. If someone on the team recently showed a big gap in Excel, you might get an Excel question. If someone interviewed well and then clearly lacked certain skills on the job, those skills may come up.
After the Final Interview
When the interviews end, I first have to consider how many spots I have. If I interviewed three great candidates and have one position, I rank them and offer the position to one at a time. I cannot treat it like an airline, giving everyone an offer and canceling on whoever is left over. Once the order is set, the paperwork goes through human resources and legal and needs approval from the right people, which depends heavily on the firm. It can take a few days, a week, or a couple of weeks depending on how many people are involved.
A good rule of thumb is that if you wait longer than a couple of weeks, someone else is probably the top candidate and you may be in second place. Firms typically do not like telling someone they were the second option, so they “keep them warm” while the other offers play out. If a firm decided after the interviews that it did not want you, it will tell you fairly quickly.
A thank-you note is nice to have if it sounds genuine, but depending on the firm it may play no role or help only a little. If you are a student, it is reasonable to politely keep in contact with the recruiter after a week or two. Following up every day will work against you.
On negotiation, the more candidates there are for a position, the less room the offer has. Established firms work from ranges and bands to keep things equitable, so if you are a student or very early in your career, you probably have less negotiating power than the movies suggest, and pushing hard on a position that ten other people could fill can work against you. Firms understand and appreciate it when you tell them up front about other interviews or offers. How much you reveal is a judgment call, but if it affects the timing or urgency of the process, share the logistics and keep the preferences to yourself.
A firm stops looking once it finds someone good enough, which makes getting into the group that gets screened incredibly valuable. A referral can get you there, as long as you are willing to prepare and to represent the person who vouched for you.