Accountancy Firms, Mazars.
Discussion
Anyone have any experiences with this firm? Anyone know anyone who has worked for them? I asked a friend who works in Finance if she knew anything about them and she had never heard of them, google reveals some facts and figures and their website is pretty good, but I was really looking for personal opinions/experiences.
Just looking for any thoughts from people who know about such things, this is way out of my field or my experience understandably, I just wander into this forum from now and again and read the interesting looking threads.
Just looking for any thoughts from people who know about such things, this is way out of my field or my experience understandably, I just wander into this forum from now and again and read the interesting looking threads.
For a medium sized firm appear to have reasonable ambition but failed to get much growth last year possibly due to the top 10 & more specifically the Big4 targetting the mid tier clients which are bread & butter to the likes of Mazars.
When I worked for a Big4 a few people had come from Mazars & they were all pretty good. None of them spoke badly about the firm.
Like all the mid tier firms they are trying to develop their consultancy offerings which generally gives exposure to more interesting work than financial audit or audit support work.
What sort of role are you looking at? Client Facing/Audit/Consulting/Operations etc?
When I worked for a Big4 a few people had come from Mazars & they were all pretty good. None of them spoke badly about the firm.
Like all the mid tier firms they are trying to develop their consultancy offerings which generally gives exposure to more interesting work than financial audit or audit support work.
What sort of role are you looking at? Client Facing/Audit/Consulting/Operations etc?
bga said:
For a medium sized firm appear to have reasonable ambition but failed to get much growth last year possibly due to the top 10 & more specifically the Big4 targetting the mid tier clients which are bread & butter to the likes of Mazars.
When I worked for a Big4 a few people had come from Mazars & they were all pretty good. None of them spoke badly about the firm.
Like all the mid tier firms they are trying to develop their consultancy offerings which generally gives exposure to more interesting work than financial audit or audit support work.
What sort of role are you looking at? Client Facing/Audit/Consulting/Operations etc?
When I worked for a Big4 a few people had come from Mazars & they were all pretty good. None of them spoke badly about the firm.
Like all the mid tier firms they are trying to develop their consultancy offerings which generally gives exposure to more interesting work than financial audit or audit support work.
What sort of role are you looking at? Client Facing/Audit/Consulting/Operations etc?
Thank you so much for the reply bga, I have to say, this is why I love this forum. May I ask which the Big4 are? As I say, I'm an idiot, but as yet they don't do an idiots guide to financial institutions.
beano500 said:
bga said:
What sort of role are you looking at?
Just a guess, but he might be looking to use their services (unless they've got openings for English Teachers??? 
)And yes, Beano is right, I'm personally not looking into that career area, but my significant other is. She actually is quite clever with this sort of stuff, but she's currently studying for a set of exams for one of the professional qualifications and I don't want to probe her with distracting questions.
Shes applying for a job with Mazars, and has had her first interview with the department boss, her second interview is at the end of the month and I'm just trying to get a feel for the company, which is pretty difficult to do as I'm surrounded by 6 year olds all day.
Shes been very impressed with the attitude of the company, the HR department have bent over backwards to help which is impressive considering how badly she has been treated by some prospective employers.
AndyWoodall said:
May I ask which the Big4 are? As I say, I'm an idiot, but as yet they don't do an idiots guide to financial institutions.
Big 4 (in order)
PwC
Deliotte
KPMG
Ernst & Young
Mazars are 13th ( www.accountancyage.com/resource/top50 ) so are significant players
This lot (+ BDO IIRC) audit the FTSE 250 & th erest do the smaller firms (bit of a generalisation but about right)
If you have any q's about this sort of stuff I'll try & answer, though unfortunately I wasn't doing financial accounting or tax stuff so I'm a bit limited in those areas.
An important thing for your other half to bear in mind is that working for a partnership has some challenges that working for a PLC doesn't have. It's in no way worse, just different.
Thank you both Eric and bga, and amazingly I have heard of the Big ones, so I don't feel like such a dummy afterall.
Thank you for the offer of help, if anything it helps my understanding, so I can help a little better. He exams on Monday in Paris so I can impart what I learn from you guys after then. PH is brilliant isn't it.
Shes actually going for a Job on the investment side, which I admit I understand better than accounting, just seems to make more sense to me!
Anyway, bga, you mentioned the difference between working for a partnership and a PLC, well, I'd love to hear what you mean, so long as you don't mind explaining it.
Thank you for the offer of help, if anything it helps my understanding, so I can help a little better. He exams on Monday in Paris so I can impart what I learn from you guys after then. PH is brilliant isn't it.
Shes actually going for a Job on the investment side, which I admit I understand better than accounting, just seems to make more sense to me!
Anyway, bga, you mentioned the difference between working for a partnership and a PLC, well, I'd love to hear what you mean, so long as you don't mind explaining it.
AndyWoodall said:
Anyway, bga, you mentioned the difference between working for a partnership and a PLC, well, I'd love to hear what you mean, so long as you don't mind explaining it.
Working for an accountancy firm like this there are 3 key factors to a success. Client Utilisation, Sales & Networking - Not really different to any fee earning job.
Utilisation - if you aren't busy then you aren't profitable. There is a lot of pressure to take on work even to keep up your utilisation figures. This is where Networking helps. The more people you know in a firm, the more likely you will get people coming directly to you to do work & you will get better work too.
Sales are also important. There is constant pressure to sell on additional work & IMHO rarely do partners care if the client actually needs that service.
With a partnership, all of the partners have a personal stake in the firm, it's profits and it's liabilities (though an LLP alleviates that a bit IIRC ). As such partners are incredibly protective of their own little areas and the people who work in them. As the perrformance of each partners group directly impacts that partners earnings there is a fair amount of fighting over resources with transferrable skills. Despite assertions to the otherwise, commercial needs will come above your development needs every time.
It may sound doom & gloom but it isn't. While serving many, many clients I only found one PLC which was IMO a nicer place to work than the partnership that I worked in. They have their challenges but the rewards make up for that.
bga said:
Working for an accountancy firm like this there are 3 key factors to a success. Client Utilisation, Sales & Networking - Not really different to any fee earning job.
Utilisation - if you aren't busy then you aren't profitable. There is a lot of pressure to take on work even to keep up your utilisation figures. This is where Networking helps. The more people you know in a firm, the more likely you will get people coming directly to you to do work & you will get better work too.
Sales are also important. There is constant pressure to sell on additional work & IMHO rarely do partners care if the client actually needs that service.
With a partnership, all of the partners have a personal stake in the firm, it's profits and it's liabilities (though an LLP alleviates that a bit IIRC ). As such partners are incredibly protective of their own little areas and the people who work in them. As the perrformance of each partners group directly impacts that partners earnings there is a fair amount of fighting over resources with transferrable skills. Despite assertions to the otherwise, commercial needs will come above your development needs every time.
It may sound doom & gloom but it isn't. While serving many, many clients I only found one PLC which was IMO a nicer place to work than the partnership that I worked in. They have their challenges but the rewards make up for that.
Utilisation - if you aren't busy then you aren't profitable. There is a lot of pressure to take on work even to keep up your utilisation figures. This is where Networking helps. The more people you know in a firm, the more likely you will get people coming directly to you to do work & you will get better work too.
Sales are also important. There is constant pressure to sell on additional work & IMHO rarely do partners care if the client actually needs that service.
With a partnership, all of the partners have a personal stake in the firm, it's profits and it's liabilities (though an LLP alleviates that a bit IIRC ). As such partners are incredibly protective of their own little areas and the people who work in them. As the perrformance of each partners group directly impacts that partners earnings there is a fair amount of fighting over resources with transferrable skills. Despite assertions to the otherwise, commercial needs will come above your development needs every time.
It may sound doom & gloom but it isn't. While serving many, many clients I only found one PLC which was IMO a nicer place to work than the partnership that I worked in. They have their challenges but the rewards make up for that.
Facinating.
Sorry for the tardy reply, work gets in the way sometimes.
You mentioned fighting over resources with transferrable skills. She is currently studying for one of the management accounting qualifications, she started this way before she applied for this job and we are paying for it ourselves. This particular job, being on the investment side, has a different qualification, and would of course be paid for by the company. (Sorry, don't know the names of these off the top of my head) One of the things we'd talked about for her interview was how to make this a positive. (As I think it could also be taken to be a negative) Your post seems to indicate this might be the case, with regards to having transferrable skills, would you say that is true?
As she's doing a CIMA, chances are she will not be roped into junior audit work (known as tick & bash) which is done by people studying for financial accounting (ACCA/AAC).
Either way, her quals will be very useful & if she gets stuck in to the investment stuff & gets onto client work, her Partner will not want to release her to do the audit work. They will probably say that she won't be doing that sort of work, but when it needs to be done, often there is a call for "all hands on deck" & it can't be avoided.
Another thing to think about is that it is likely that she will be sold onto work where she may not feel 100% comfortable - this is normal & the only barrier is the psychological one. A partner won't risk losing a fee by putting someone on who can't do the work (well not normally). This can be a bit annoying but 1. it's a good learning experience and 2. all the firms do it. If she has the motivation to do a course off her own back than this stuff really won't matter at all.
Either way, her quals will be very useful & if she gets stuck in to the investment stuff & gets onto client work, her Partner will not want to release her to do the audit work. They will probably say that she won't be doing that sort of work, but when it needs to be done, often there is a call for "all hands on deck" & it can't be avoided.
Another thing to think about is that it is likely that she will be sold onto work where she may not feel 100% comfortable - this is normal & the only barrier is the psychological one. A partner won't risk losing a fee by putting someone on who can't do the work (well not normally). This can be a bit annoying but 1. it's a good learning experience and 2. all the firms do it. If she has the motivation to do a course off her own back than this stuff really won't matter at all.
bga said:
As she's doing a CIMA, chances are she will not be roped into junior audit work (known as tick & bash) which is done by people studying for financial accounting (ACCA/AAC).
Either way, her quals will be very useful & if she gets stuck in to the investment stuff & gets onto client work, her Partner will not want to release her to do the audit work. They will probably say that she won't be doing that sort of work, but when it needs to be done, often there is a call for "all hands on deck" & it can't be avoided.
Another thing to think about is that it is likely that she will be sold onto work where she may not feel 100% comfortable - this is normal & the only barrier is the psychological one. A partner won't risk losing a fee by putting someone on who can't do the work (well not normally). This can be a bit annoying but 1. it's a good learning experience and 2. all the firms do it. If she has the motivation to do a course off her own back than this stuff really won't matter at all.
Either way, her quals will be very useful & if she gets stuck in to the investment stuff & gets onto client work, her Partner will not want to release her to do the audit work. They will probably say that she won't be doing that sort of work, but when it needs to be done, often there is a call for "all hands on deck" & it can't be avoided.
Another thing to think about is that it is likely that she will be sold onto work where she may not feel 100% comfortable - this is normal & the only barrier is the psychological one. A partner won't risk losing a fee by putting someone on who can't do the work (well not normally). This can be a bit annoying but 1. it's a good learning experience and 2. all the firms do it. If she has the motivation to do a course off her own back than this stuff really won't matter at all.
Excellent, thanks again for that. My my, I am out of my depth here.
I may have gotten the wrong end of the stick as I think its the ACCA qualification she is doing.
As I mentioned, one of the things we prepared for for her first interview was being asked about already studying a different qualification, we'd worked out things to say based on it being a positive rather than a negative. The guy that did the interview didn't ask, but we are preparing for the questions for the second interview.
When you said, "sold onto work where she may not feel 100% comfortable", could you elaborate, just curious as to what sort of situations and circumstances arise. Email me if you don't want to post on forum.
Studying for a qualification off your own back will be seen as a good thing. It shows determination in both funding it yourself and dedicating the time in pursuit of the qualification. I would be very, very surprised if they saw it as anything less than a plus point.
There is no secret that client facing firms will sell employees onto work the employees don't feel 100% OK with. With the right support it can be very beneficial for the individual.
I can think of a number of examples of where it happened to me: These are quite specific to my field of expertise but hopefully illustrate my point
Providing IT compliance advice when I have never done any compliance work. Not a problem as there are detailed guidelines & I have done a fair amount or risk management work. I had the right skillset & people to phone if I got stuck. I now do this work at some of the biggest companies in the UK.
Designing an Application security strategy for an application I had never used before. There are common principles which can be applied, they just need tweaking to suit the technology.
Design & perform testing for large govt IT system. I'd done some testing before & with a bit of research it wasn't too bad.
I could go on but as I said earlier, if a partner thought you were not capable they would not blow their reputation & the chance of follow up work by putting someone on the job who couldn't do it. It is in no way a major factor & indeed all firms do it. It is extremely unlikely that they will put someone into that situation without at least a reasonable amount of experience. Personally I feel it's an important aspect of the job that needs to be mentioned but really isn't too bad. Typically you will know more than the client and in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king and all that rubbish.
There is no secret that client facing firms will sell employees onto work the employees don't feel 100% OK with. With the right support it can be very beneficial for the individual.
I can think of a number of examples of where it happened to me: These are quite specific to my field of expertise but hopefully illustrate my point
Providing IT compliance advice when I have never done any compliance work. Not a problem as there are detailed guidelines & I have done a fair amount or risk management work. I had the right skillset & people to phone if I got stuck. I now do this work at some of the biggest companies in the UK.
Designing an Application security strategy for an application I had never used before. There are common principles which can be applied, they just need tweaking to suit the technology.
Design & perform testing for large govt IT system. I'd done some testing before & with a bit of research it wasn't too bad.
I could go on but as I said earlier, if a partner thought you were not capable they would not blow their reputation & the chance of follow up work by putting someone on the job who couldn't do it. It is in no way a major factor & indeed all firms do it. It is extremely unlikely that they will put someone into that situation without at least a reasonable amount of experience. Personally I feel it's an important aspect of the job that needs to be mentioned but really isn't too bad. Typically you will know more than the client and in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king and all that rubbish.
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