KPMG Reviews in Vancouver, BC Area

Pros

Great colleagues. Met some of my best friends here. Lots of resources. Quite fair, if you work hard, you will advance.

Cons

Work a lot of weekends, limited work/life balance

Advice to Senior Management

make employees feel valued

Pros

benefits were the only reason- certainly not the low pay and the overload of work, nor the constant nit pick and analyzing of your character - good or bad...

Cons

They load you up with insane amounts of work and then expect perfect results. I would never recommend them to any client to trust them to do their work - the partners are so full of themselves with their egos and unrealistic workloads that they pass on, it is sad to see the sickening stress they put on all of the rest of their employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Smarten up! Your employees can not do quality and accurate work in the environment you have them in... it does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Don't you all have degrees?

Pros

- They pay for your CA training courses and provide workshops to help you through the education part of your CA training
- You get to see a lot of different businesses
- You get to work with some really good people

Cons

- Working at KPMG for your CA, you start off in audit. It's not the firm's fault, but working as an auditor isn't always seen as a value-added service when you're out at the client and adding to their already high workload

Advice to Senior Management

- Keep rewarding the right people and promoting them; they are the strongest assets and shouldn't be worn down until they decide to leave themselves.

Pros

The big 4 is a great place to launch your career. Apart from the name recognition that you get, KPMG provides great training opportunities, also treats and respect its people well.

Cons

Top heavy structure at Advisory. As you move up, sales become an all-important focus - resulting in too many "fluffy" Senior Managers who can talk their way through anything, but cannot deliver themselves. Pay is also poor compared to the other big 4 and the industry, generally $10,000 less than what you would get if you were to venture outside.

Advice to Senior Management

Reflect pay with performance. Provide people with more guidance and purpose as to why they are doing their job (i.e. align people's interests with the work that they do).

Pros

- Develops professional judgement
- Learn valuable business and financial skills

Cons

- Long hours (no work/life balance)
- Significant travel time

Advice to Senior Management

- More communication with the staff about the direction of the company
- More transparency about salaries and benefits

Pros

Strong support to help pass UFE exam. Excellent people. As far as audit firms go, I would recommend KPMG in Vancouver. KPMG paid overtime during my first two years, which for me was essentially travel time. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to travel within Canada, USA, Central America and Africa. These experiences alone were great. However, KPMG is big enough, that if you don't want to travel, there are plenty of local jobs.

Cons

Auditing was not a rewarding job for me personally. This is not a KPMG specific negative - it is more of a job specific negative. Basically, regardless of how well you build relationships with clients, they are always happy to see you leave at the end of the audit. I didn't enjoy that part of the job.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

to get the experience needed to become a designated accountant

Cons

less feedback. too pushy. always wanted things to be done ASAP.

Advice to Senior Management

lack of linkage between senior management

Pros

KPMG treats their people better than some of the other big 4 companies out there. Much of this also depends on where you work (geographical area), and what area you work in (advisory / audit / tax). Generally the smaller the practice the better - you connect more with people in your groups on a personal level, you receive better feedback, better learning opportunities, more opportunities for career advancement within the practice.

Cons

* First impressions sticks, your first 60-90 days last forever - once you made a bad impression, it's hard to erase. On the other hand, good first impressions tend to last longer (than it should).
* Pay is also an area that KPMG can definitely improve on - it is probably one of the lowest among the big 4 group itself (and big 4 salary standard is not exactly high to begin with!)
* Some groups are too top-heavy (3 to 1 Senior Management to Staff Ratio!!!)
* As you move up to the top, you're expected to 'sell' more and more of KPMG's services.

Advice to Senior Management

KPMG always claim that its pay is 'in-line' with industry standard - I have no idea how people can believe this. Management needs to do more to make sure that it can retain talented and hardworking people, by giving them the fair salary that they deserve.