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Audit and tax are basically solely focused on either audit or tax. You can’t use the term advisory in the same context because the services offered are so broad. A lot of advisory professions do not have any accounting background at all.
With that said there are a few advisory service lines that hire straight out of school (IT audit, Internal audit) but a lot of them either prefer different non accounting degrees or to have some working experience.
For example if you spend a few years in tax and wanted to transfer to cyber practice but have no cyber experience it would be extremely difficult if you don’t have a degree or experience in cyber and if they did agree to train you would likely need to be demoted to essentially a new hire since you wouldn’t be able to act as a senior on their engagements. It seems like your in tax imagine bringing people on your team who do not have any tax experience and having to explain how to apply a tax table or what a deduction is.
Rising Star
In every SL there is a learning curve. People have switched from tax to consulting or from audit to advisory. Whether someone is capable of doing the job depends on the individual— not everyone is suited for every job. There are some candidates I interviewed from audit and knew they wouldn’t be a good fit for FDD for various reasons.
It’s not always easy to switch because the other SLs may not have a need for someone at that level with no experience. Plus there’s the tremendous investment needed to train as well as the learning curve. Also keep in mind that the businesses are operated somewhat independent within the larger firms (of course with layers of oversight and reporting) with everyone needing to meet metrics of headcount, service hours, profitability, etc. the larger the firms, the more siloed some of the business lines become and the harder it is to break in at times.
It’s not impossible and high performers have moved around.
I suppose it’s like comparing a corner deli shop (small and sometimes the smaller midsized accounting firms) vs a fancy banquet hall (larger midsized and big4).
At the deli, same guy making fries is probably same guy making spaghetti and meatballs (audit and tax), whereas there’d be separate chefs and work stations for that at the banquet hall. The banquet hall probably has a dessert person or two making all kinds of desserts like pies and freshly baked items (advisory) whereas the deli might offer defrosted cupcakes or not much at all.
There are a few firms and some small groups in midsized and larger that do hybrid (audit and tax), sometimes under the “private company services” label, where the client entities can be smaller and may only occasionally need advisory services.
Person A works at the storefront making fries, spaghetti and meatballs and wants to go to the banquet hall to make fancy desserts - banquet hall has to train Person A on desserts and there is a fair possibility Person has to take a pay cut to start at the bottom again.
Person B in the banquet hall makes and bakes dinner bread rolls and wants to know how to make quick greasy foods (b/c he or she wants to start a food truck) can go to the storefront but will likely have to be trained also and probably start at the bottom.
A lot of the gatekeeping pain is having to train people and hoping they’ll stick around afterwards b/c it is a significant time investment to show someone how to do something and monitor ‘em, and many times when people become somewhat capable, they jump ship.
It becomes up to the Worker to convince these gatekeepers that other skills are applicable, find self guided training courses, have colleagues guide and refer, work on small projects for free or similar projects in the desired area, or a blend of all of these.
School is a big factor - some schools are considered ‘target’ schools for advisory and some are target schools for audit and tax only. You can still get an advisory position from a non target school if you have exceptional grades or specific experience and are good at networking and charismatic, but it’s more difficult
I went with audit even though I liked both audit and tax. I was told I’d get pigeonholed into one or the other and that it was easier to jump to consulting from audit than tax. Idk if that’s true or not but the jump to consulting was pretty easy for me.