Articleship in a Big4 vs a Local CA Firm

For a CA student who has just cleared Intermediate Examination, the most crucial decision remains whether to join a Big4 or local CA firms to complete the mandatory articleship of 3 years. The tradeoff that most students perceive is between the brand value of a Big4 versus the opportunity to learn all disciplines (audit, direct & indirect tax) in a local CA firm.

Learning at a Big4 vs Local Firm

• Though many local CA firms initially promise to provide you with multi-disciplinary knowledge over the 3 years of articleship, it is usually noticed that most of these firms have rigorous mandates or engagements in only one of the disciplines (or two at best).
• Some local firms will have extensive Bank Audits, some will have Concurrent Audit or Internal Audit assignments, and some firms will have only tax filing work at hand. Thus, it becomes necessary to talk to existing interns at local firms to get a feel of the clients and prospective work offered during articleship.
• On the other hand, a Big4 will right away assign you in one of the four main verticals – Statutory Audit, Direct Tax, Indirect Tax, or Risk Advisory, where you are expected to work for the whole 3 years.
• Students are sometimes apprehensive about this structure at the start, feeling that working in one vertical for 3 years could be boring or unproductive. Some might even believe that they will learn most of the things in one year, and the rest two years will involve repetitive work. However this is usually not the case in reality and most students who have undergone the process for three years would concur.
• While it is true that interns are restricted to one discipline (sometimes even one client) for the entire articleship period, the learning evolves over the 3 years in the form of responsibilities allocated to you.
• For instance, in Statutory Audit, the interns may get to work with only one listed client, but the areas that they handle over 3 years are different. In the first year, they will be tasked with the audit of relatively easy areas. In the second year, they will get a chance to audit slightly more complicated areas and by the final year they will be auditing high-risk accounts and areas. Such work allocation helps interns to grasp the bigger picture and the overall functioning of the entity.

Working at a Big4 vs Local Firm

• Big4 offers you the opportunity to work with renowned listed clients and meet experts across domains both within the firm and at the client’s workplace. This experience helps strongly when recruiting for roles post qualification of the Final Exams.
• Big4 also provides a higher stipend compared to industry standards and are usually generous with exam leave for CA Final preparations.
• Some of the downsides of working in a Big4 include long working hours, occasional weekend working and the inability to join evening tuition classes in some cases.
• Most Non-Big4 firms on the other hand tend to have moderate working hours and allow interns to join evening tuitions but generally allow shorter preparatory leave before CA Final exams.
• The quality of work allocated to inters, subject matter expertise in the firm and guidance from global teams is generally not available as compared to Big4 firms driven largely by the scale of operations and quality of clients.

Recruiting at a Big4 vs Local Firm

• Both Big4, as well as local firms, follow an unstructured method of recruiting interns with no definite timelines or visibility of the interview process.
• Interns reach out to individual firms through mails or personal visits where they drop-off their CVs for shortlisting purposes.
• Big4 usually prefer students with AIR or strong internal references as first-choice candidates for interview shortlisting. Big4 firms generally avoid shortlisting students who have only cleared only one of the two groups at the intermediate stage but make occasional exceptions.
• Shortlisting is generally followed by one or two technical interview, one HR interview, and a partner interview.
• Local firms, on the other hand, have no set criteria or timeline for recruiting interns and are guided by internal firm policy which varies across the board.