Articleship Hunting: Not as daunting as it sounds

Looking out for articleship post your intermediate examinations can be a daunting task with a lot of questions flooding your mind- Which field to go for- Audit, tax or something unconventional? Big 4 or mid size? How and when to apply? How to prepare for the interview? and the list goes on.

 


Through this post, I do not intend to address any of these questions rather share my experience of looking out for Articleship and you can take the learnings from the same.

Before I start sharing my experience, let me brief you with my academic background which will establish the authenticity of the things I am going to share-

 - B.com (Hons.) from Shri Ram College of Commerce (2019-22)

 - Qualified CA Foundation (Nov 2019 attempt) with an AIR 21, 343/400.

 - Qualified CA Intermediate (Nov 2020 attempt) with 616/800 (No rank, unfortunately :'(, missed by 2 marks)- 90 marks & above in 4/8 subjects.

 - Starting my Articleship in M&A Tax Department at Deloitte in April end. 

How did I apply? 

You need only one platform for the same, i.e., Linkedin. I had built my profile on linkedin somewhere during the start of my college and using that I started reaching out to the people working in Big 4 in the taxation department somewhere in January 2022 because an articleship in taxation in one of the Big 4 is what I was looking for,

While reaching out I made sure that my profile is completed and I do not randomly send a message just asking for a referral instead I made sure that I write down, in pointers all the skills that I bring on table for the organisation I am going to be a part of. It worked out really well for me, I got referral from almost all the people I sent out the messages to, not only the referral but these people also appreciated me for the way I structured my message. Sharing an instance of the same below- 

(Not sharing the name of the person for obvious reasons)

Also, how I feel sharing this- 
 



Nevertheless, this was how I reached out to people on linkedin by sending connection requests to relevant people and once they accepted the request, I used to send a well structured message to them as explained above.

Let me know in the comments or on linkedin if you need to know the structure of the message that I used while reaching out to recruiters.
     

How did I prepare? 

I appeared for both tax and audit interviews and for both of them you need to brush up your intermediate syllabus. AS and SA for Audit interview and Taxation provisions for the Tax Interview. These are the very basic things you should start with. Then preparing basic HR questions like-

- Introduce yourself

- Why Big 4?

- Why M&A Taxation? Why Audit?

- How are you planning to manage work and studies together?

- What do you know about our firm and why did you choose it over others?

- Why CA?

- Where do you see yourself post CA or 5 years down the line? and so on..

I made sure that I knew the basic structure through which I was going to answer these questions and not memorizing the answer completely thus making sure that it comes out as a natural answer instead of a prepared one.

Apart from this you need to be aware about the recent happenings in the economy and political landscape of the country. Questions relating to elections, Russia-Ukraine conflict and Budget 2022 were asked during the interview process.

( Don't worry, it's going to be easier than this atleast :))

What's next?

I will be uploading my interview transcript of M&A Tax at Deloitte in the next post. In case you need any other guidance relating to Articleship process or any other thing relating to my CA or college journey uptil now, let me know in the comments section or on Linkedin.

Edit: Link to interview questions: https://lifes-musing.blogspot.com/2022/06/interview-questions-m-tax.html

Signing off,

Bhavay Agarwal

Linkedin | Email





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ICAI National Conference: Quest to becoming a paper presenter

Image
 As CA students, apart from the goal of prefixing the two words 'C' and 'A' in front of their names, one thing that remains more or less common is to present the paper in one of the ICAI conferences. Even though various national and mega conferences keep happening throughout the year offering a ton of opportunities to various CA students to speak in front of 1000+ students and network with CAs and CA students, a lot of students are still not aware as to how to get selected as a paper presenter. To those who are still wondering- Yes, anyone can get selected to present paper in ICAI conferences, provided you submit your papers ofcourse :P (subject to the conditions of the organising branch). All you have to do is go through the following:- Question 1 : How do I know what conferences/ events are going to be held in the coming months?                 Answer 1 : Well, there are a lot of sources through which one can get to know this. ICAI sends em...
Read more

Interview Questions: M&A Tax

Image
I had given 3 rounds of interview which were taken by Manager, Director and Partner in this order only, followed by a computer based test. Below is a brief of the interview questions- Interview 1 - Introduce yourself - Why M&A Tax? - What is capital reduction? How is it different from buyback. - Difference between private company and public company. - What are the two methods specified by AS 14 for amalgamation. - What are the different tax rates that are applicable to different entities?  - If a company is separating a division from its business and establishing it as an independent company- will it still be classified as a part of M&A? - What are the recent deals that took place in M&A? Interview 2 - Introduce yourself. - Explain the provisions of Income tax and company law related to M&A (whatever you have studied) - What do you think is the work that M&A articles do. - Your profile seems to be good (after going through the CV), how can we make sure that in t...
Read more