Skip to main content

people skills

One thing that really pissed me off this week was the apparent lack of people skills shown by some higher-ups. I know structural promotion by experience is well and good, but bloody heck, being a manager doesn't just mean reviewing workpapers. You have to manage teams, you have to learn how to negotiate, how to be flexible. Don't just promote any hobo who makes it through a set number of years. If anything, organize mandatory people skills workshops. Make them take mandatory online web-based learnings classes. This can extend to seniors too. As much as structured promotions account for very good job security and such,it pains me to see seniors, managers and above, display an utter and total disregard for interpersonal skills.
Another senior quit this week, one who dealt with the very same manager I'm talking about. Wonder why?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi auditor,
I enjoy reading about your life as an auditor. Could you tell if someone quit or was fired? Are there many layoffs at the big 4?
I've recently been to an office visit, and the HR manager spoke about his days, saying that there are good days and bad days. "Sometimes, I just don't want to get up and go fire that person".
How scary to say that in front of potential new hires!!!!!

Popular posts from this blog

ADP/Payroll

Just realized that the very payroll/adp reports we all enjoyed looking at in order to see how much our client contacts made, now seem to piss me off. Especially when your main contact, who couldn't tell a debit from a credit, makes significantly more than you, and leaves at 5. It's almost guaranteed to get you in a foul mood and yak with your team about the ridiculous salaries that certain employees get when compared to yours.

should you choose to audit financial services?

I'm trying to decide whether to audit financial services companies or non-financial services companies. What would you say are the pros and cons of either industries? Do individuals who choose non-FS have less career mobility within the firm or if they decide not to stay with the B4 after a few years? Really depends on what you'd like to do after (unless you really love auditing). If you want to a controller,etc. at a p/e firm or a hedge fund down the road, you'd want to go into financial services. The pay won't be too bad, especially if you get a share of the insane bonuses they dole out. If you want to audit industries with tangible products and want to get a better understanding of the operations of such businesses, then other industries are the way to go.In terms of mobility outside the firm, auditing other industries is the way to go since you have plenty of options when you exit the audit world. For example, in 2008, after Lehman collapsed, it was incredibly hard ...

auditing vs consulting

I was wondering if you could break down the career opportunities in auditing and consulting (in a big 4). I know that consulting pays more in a big 4 and has more interesting work, but it seems that auditing has extremely good exit opportunities (Financial controller, CFO etc). Any thoughts on which is better in the long run? Well there's different consulting services offered by public accounting companies - the most popular being IT consulting and risk consulting. There are also other consulting services offered, but these two hire the most. Do they pay more? Yes, but not by much. Not enough for you to say: Shoot, the $$ is a huge reason for me to move over. Is the work more interesting than audit? Yes. You're actually looking over a company's processes and telling them what to do instead of what not to do (audit). Everyone I know who's made the switch likes it waay better than audit. In the long run though, choosing audit vs consulting really depends on what you want ...