Career Advice: Tax vs Auditing vs Forensics + Feedback

In July, we got an email from one of our followers. It goes thus:

16 July 2019

Trust your day was good?
I want to use this medium to seek clarifications on a career decision I’m about to take.
I am an ardent follower of Jarus, most notably Nairaland and JarusHub. From where I deduced he is a seasoned professional in the career industry.

I am currently undergoing recruitment with a Big 4 firm, and I initially opted Technology Advisory (TA) during my documentation, but they have communicated back to me that TA is no longer recruiting. I was given 3 options of: Audit, Tax, Reforms, people and services (TRPS) , and forensics.

Meanwhile, I studied Computer Engineering in the university reason why I opted for TA in the first place. I want you as thoroughbred industry insider to advise me on this.

I will be glad if you can make out time to help sir. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks in anticipation.

Best Regards

Joe

Our response (17 July 2019):

Hi Joe,
This is Jarus. I am a tax professional myself. 

Tax is good but it can be restrictive. If you start a career in tax, your skill will be too specialized and it may be difficult to move out of tax to other finance fields. You may not be posted to tax but to the people services part – which is similar to HR. 

Audit is good as it gives you exposure. It gives you the opportunity to know different companies and also offers you opportunity to easily join another company whenever you decide to move out of KPMG as you can use your contacts during the time you are auditing those companies to network into those companies. But auditing takes a lot of your time and involves you working late for most days. There is also a school of thought that says auditing can sometimes be boring.

Forensics is a relatively new field. It is most related to your field of interest – computer/technology. The pro is that it is a new field with not many specialists for now. The con is, it may also be restrictive. 

So I cannot really decide which one you should take, but as someone that has interest in technology, forensics appears to be the area you will find most interesting and may also offer opportunity, even if slim, to move to Technology Advisory in the future.

Regards 

Jarus

Feedback: 21 October 2019

Good morning sir,

Trust you are well,

The advice/information you provided when I had to choose between three different divisions was really helpful, I can’t thank you enough. I chose Forensics. Your advice tallied with what informed professionals like yourself told me.

Fast-forward to the assessment centre, and I needed to prepare. JarusHub was not running your usual coaching schedule at the time and being a busy person that you are, I decided to help myself, and how did I do that? I practically combed JarusHub website, going through every article that concerns job or more specifically that Big 4 firm, I was literally sleeping and waking on JarusHub, and what was the result?

I was armed to teeth with information, in fact sir, I overprepared, and you and JarushHub were very instrumental to that. Guess what? I was successful, thoroughly successful. And they interviewers were surprised I could be that prepared, they did not know that “if I achieved farther than my fathers, it means I stood on the shoulders of my fathers”.

Consequently, I had my partner interview and by that time, I was already a JarusHub alumnus, so you don’t expect less. I can happily say to you today that I got the job and it is a WIN for you.

Let me tell you this sir, I have followed you closely than you might think of, I can safely conclude that you have a passion of helping willing graduates in Nigeria and you do it effortlessly. Your actions on all these platforms are so loud that I can’t even hear your voice. You have shaped lives more than you can imagine, you have us believe in the Nigerian dream again, that hardwork can get you the best jobs around thereby putting on the faces of families who hitherto can’t afford to smile.

I want to say thank you for a great job you are doing. It is my prayer that God in his infinite mercies grants you the choicest of his blessings.
It took me this long to get this message across to you because it is a very emotional one for me. 

Uncle Jarus I look forward to seeing you one day!

Until then, please keep doing what you do best: putting a smile on generations’ faces. I will appreciate further correspondence from you.

Best Regards

Joe

Congrats Joe. We are happy to have contributed positively to your job hunt journey. We wish you all the best in your new firm.

JarusHub Team

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