Thanks for registering for our conversation with Sean Treccia, the director of Global Campus Recruiting Programs at KPMG. Enjoy this insightful conversation on all things recruiting and KPMG.

Useful Links

  • Connect with Sean on LinkedIn.

  • A link to the lead recruiter in each US office. KPMG doesn’t list the firm’s schools on the site, but by office – each school is managed by the closest office. If you are a student, check with your school’s career center. If KPMG recruits at your school, the firm registers with the career center and the people in the career center have the contact details.

  • Recruiting contacts for all countries.

Enjoy the recording below, and drop us a note with any follow-up questions! Work with us to maximize your chances of success in the KPMG recruiting process or consulting recruiting more broadly. Resume edit and interview prep options are available below the recording.

Video Transcription:

Jenny Rae:

I’m excited today to introduce our team. I’m Jenny Rae Le Roux from Management Consulted. As you well know, I’m an ex-Bain consultant who is the facilitator of our conversations on consulting at Management Consulted. And today we have the privilege of having Sean Treccia with us. Sean is the – Sean, I’ll let you introduce yourself officially with your title, but I will call you the master of recruiting at KPMG. You can share just a little bit about your team, about what the team does. If you want to give us a bit of quick background before we dive into the questions, it would be great to get to know you. Welcome Sean.

Sean:

Sure. Thank you, Jenny, and thanks everyone for joining today. Happy to be here. I don’t know if I would consider myself the master of recruiting, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. So I work for KPMG. I’m based in Chicago. Actually a director on our recruiting team. For the last 15 years my focused has been college recruiting. I lead our global recruiting program, so as a firm recruit separately in each country, but we do have a number of programs, at least from the student level that cross – across different borders, and that’s a been my role leading them over the last 10 years. And recently, I took on some more roles overseeing all of our inclusion and diversity, and marketing and branding efforts across all levels of talent acquisition for the U.S. So not just the college side, but our experienced recruiting and our senior talent. I’ve been with the firm for about 15 years. I have a background prior to that in sales and marketing. Actually was an engineering major in undergrad for a couple of years at the University of Illinois. I got my MBA from Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern, here right outside Chicago several years ago. And I’m happy to be here today, and happy to answer any questions you all have and give you a little more insight into who KPMG is, the opportunities that we have, as well as the industry in general.

Jenny Rae:

Amazing. We are so happy to have you. So we’re going to start with a couple of rapid-fire fun questions, and then we are going to dive into the questions that are more professional and serious about KPMG. So the first one is the first place that you will travel post-COVID and why.

Sean:

Well, the first place I would say would be Scandinavia, probably Copenhagen because I was supposed to have a program there this summer, and my family was supposed to come over, and we were going to spend two weeks in Scandinavia, a place none of us had ever been, and it got canceled because of COVID. So that would be top on our list. I think I still have a credit from British airways, so that would be number one.

Jenny Rae:

Follow-up question. Would you go in the winter, or only in the summer?

Sean:

Well we all like to ski, so I think we’d be willing to go in the winter and go a little further north so we could do some skiing.

Jenny Rae:

Fantastic. I love it. Good. Second question. Your favorite quarantine activity.

Sean:

Mine has been kind of a watching activity, and that’s with my – I’m a big cook. I love to do the cooking for our family, but we’ve created a process now where our kids cook a meal one night a week. And for me, staying out and not helping them has been the big fun activity. Watching for once a week where I don’t have to cook and clean up, and make dinner for everyone, but I get to sit back has been a lot of fun.

Jenny Rae:

That’s a great question. So I have a follow-up to that one too. What is the best meal they’ve made, and what was the bottom of the barrel.

Sean:

I would say their hamburgers they made were amazing. They were a little big, like almost a pound each, but they were really good. Some of the stuff – they tried to make some fizzy drink that ended up like drinking straight sugar. They ended way too much sugar, so that was not great. But their burgers were really good.

Jenny Rae:

That’s awesome. I love that. That gives me ideas for my family. Thanks, Sean. Okay, the third one is you gave us a little bit of your background. … but didn’t pursue.

Sean:

So interesting there. I would say engineering because I was a civil engineering major my first two years at University of Illinois, and I had two internships after. And part of the reason I changed out of it is I said I don’t want a job where I have to be in front of a computer all day. I want to get out and do more, and I really enjoy sports. Someone said you should go into sports marketing, so my bachelor’s degree is actually in kinesiology. Sports marketing is my focus. I never ended up getting a job in that, and now I spend most of my day in front of computers. So I look back and I’m like engineering pays a lot more than recruiting, why didn’t I stay there. But no, I love what I do now. I still do have friends who are engineers and when I talk to my counterparts who are accountants, especially, and they talk about their hard accounting classes I’m like hey, I passed through three levels of calculus and differential equations, so don’t get me started on your tough algebra class.

Jenny Rae:

So that will answer one of my later questions, which is around is KPMG open to nontraditional degrees, right? Do you have to have a business degree. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

Sean:

Okay.

Jenny Rae:

Okay, great. Number four. The biggest risk you’ve taken that’s paid off.

Sean:

I think I’d group these into risks of I mentioned earlier that I like to cook. I will try any kind of food. And because of that, there’s so many things I love. There are some things I don’t, like I don’t like sun-dried tomatoes, or all olives, which are pretty basic. But because I’ve tried so many different things, now my kids last week were asking when I could make octopus tacos for them again. Because I had octopus when I was in Portugal, I loved it. Now they love it, they sell it at Costco and so I toss it on the grill and make tacos. I mean I have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old who are begging for more octopus tacos. So I think that risk of being willing to try new things, and not always tell them what it is, I don’t want to know what it is sometimes. But then you end up loving it, some things. There are some things I won’t eat again, but.

Jenny Rae:

I love that. I don’t think that I’ve met a 10-year-old that wants octopus tacos before so that’s a really great gift. Okay, great. Last, and I would say the most important question is Chicago deep dish versus New York style pizza. I’m going to need three points of justification for whatever your answer is.

Sean:

Sure. This is a good one and I am from Chicago, I’ve grown up here. I will say Chicago deep dish is my favorite. But it’s mood – it’s mood dependent. For those who haven’t had Chicago deep dish, one piece is a meal by itself. So there’s times, if I’ve been out with friends, or we’re having a drink, you come home, I love grabbing a slice of New York pizza. Walking back in New York to my hotel and grabbing a slice for two dollars, and that’s great. So there’s times I love New York pizza. But if I want to meal sitting down, I want the Chicago deep dish. But again, that one piece after that, you’re then like tired and want to go to sleep. So I love them both for different reasons.

Jenny Rae:

That’s a very politically correct answer. I appreciate that. That’s such a consulting demonstrated answer.

Sean:

Yes.

Jenny Rae:

Both are great options; it just depends on what the situation is.

Sean:

It depends on the mood, right. Right.

Jenny Rae:

Amazing. Well, great. Sean, are there any of those questions, or a different fun question that you want to ask me before we kick off into the more serious questions?

Sean:

I guess a fun one, you talked at the beginning you’ve been able to travel a lot. So where is one place you are anxious to get back to traveling to once COVID is behind us?

Jenny Rae:

I love that. One of the things that I’ve seen change in my travel desires, or travel behaviors in the last couple of months is I’ve been longing for international travel is a desire to be outside more. And so whereas normally I would travel to cities and look for an urban experience, I look for biking, and riverside eating, or seaside eating instead of an immersive city experience. I’ve had an increased desire in the wanting to be outside. So one of the things on my bucket list that I’ve moved up in COVID is to do at least a piece of the Camino in Spain. And so because of the fact that it’s mostly outside, you either camp or, you know, stay in places that are quite like low contact, I think that’s one of the places that I have changed the order of that I would like to do right now.

Sean:

I like that. That’s very good. Adapting to the current environment. I like that.

Jenny Rae:

That’s exactly right. Awesome. Well Sean, it’s great to get to know you a little bit. That really will make the rest of this conversation fun and insightful. I get to see a little bit of who you are now. And what we want to talk about our three sections of the conversation. So the first one is recruiting trends. This is top of mind for everyone. So we want to know a little bit about what is going on in the inner workings of KPMG right now. What you guys are thinking and talking about, what is top of mind, how you’re thinking about candidates, what’s changed. There are just so many top of mind questions there. And so I’m going to ask you a couple of questions about that. After that, we just want to hear a little bit about the firm. You have a unique perspective when you’re thinking about building the next class of folks for KPMG, about where the firm is going. What the firm is thinking right now. And then the final thing is just why KPMG. We want to hear about you, from your perspective, and we want to hear about what you think makes somebody a great fit for KPMG, and what makes KPMG a great fit for them. So I’m to start off with a couple of the recruiting trends and then we’ll go forward from there.

So the first one, can you talk a little bit about core school recruiting? This has been a standard hallmark of the way that we’ve done recruiting for ever and ever. And this year, Zoom is your new core school, but is it. We want to understand a little bit about how you are thinking about defining core schools, and if you’ve changed thoughts about that related to this fall’s recruiting season.

Sean:

Sure. Great question. We have always had core schools, different levels. We have three different levels kind of of the schools we focus on. And this fall we’re going to be virtual at every school. At least in the U.S., and most other countries too. We’re going to be virtual everywhere. We’re not going physically back to any school. But we’re still keeping the focus on the core schools because those are the ones where we’ve gotten the best return on investment, and once we go back alive, we need to continue to maintain strong relationships. So we are grouping them into – when we look at a virtual event, I’ll pick schools close to Chicago that I know. So University of Notre Dame. University of Notre Dame has always had a dedicated recruiter for us. They will still have a dedicated recruiter. We will run specific virtual events for the University of Notre Dame where only Notre Dame students are invited. Similar for many of our other core schools. But because we do want to expand our reach beyond those, we’ll host other events and activities for students from other schools, but they will be combined.

So a smaller school where we may not expect a lot of hires from, we will combine them with maybe six, seven other schools because even though we’re saving costs by not going anywhere virtually, we’re not getting more people to do recruiting. So you still can’t run 75 events. And the other thing we have to face realistically is our competitors. And at Notre Dame, it is much more competitive for us because there’s a lot of other firms doing very similar things to us. And at some of the smaller schools, maybe not as many companies are there. So grouping them in maybe make it still a reasonable resource for us to get some. So that’s the plan right now. We’ve launched everything about a week ago as school started to get back into session.

Jenny Rae:

Okay, can I ask a follow-up question to that one?

Sean:

Of course, of course.

Jenny Rae:

The question is just related to – you mentioned you have these three categories of schools, and I don’t know if I heard a super clearly what those are. Can you just run us through those again so that I can make sure I understand?

Sean:

Yeah. So when we set up schools, the first category of schools for us are, and I’m guessing other employers are very similar, is what we would call a national premier school. And this is a school that will source multiple offices, as well as multiple groups. We hire with an audit. We have four different groups in audit. We have 15 different groups in tax, and 30 different groups in our consulting. So a key national school, I’ll pick on Notre Dame again just because of local here, will source many offices, many groups. Then we have what we call a locally important school. So we have offices, no offense if any of you live in Boise, Idaho, but there aren’t a lot of students who want to go to Boise, Idaho. So we have to recruit at Boise State, or local schools around there in order to get students to fill the positions in Boise. So it’s an important school for us, but realistically we’re not going to find a lot of students there who want to go elsewhere. And then our third tier are what we call our virtual schools. Schools either in locations where it just doesn’t make sense for us to go, or they don’t provide a lot of return on investment but we still like the students there because maybe they have a unique major that we only hire a few for. Or there is school that gives us a different type of background, or diversity, or technology or something. So we tend to focus on that third tier with more virtual events. That’s how we tier our schools.

Jenny Rae:

That’s incredible. And did the virtual schools exist before this year, or is that a new tier?

Sean:

So they did. We didn’t do things as much virtual as we would do more what we would call a posting only, meaning we would put our job at those schools. I think one of the things that has benefited us from this is when you post jobs at a school but never recruit there, you’re not going to get the necessarily great return on investment. Or necessarily the best students because they don’t really know who you are. You’re just another company, especially for out west in the U.S., they think we’re a radio station. KPMG. If you’re not a business major, who are you. So the virtual component has really helped us. And we started that a little pre-COVID, probably in January, doing more virtual events for the schools, getting to help them know who we were.

Jenny Rae:

Okay, awesome. Well, the second one is can you just talk about some of the KPMG specific recruiting trends that are happening on 2021 hires, and even if you have them, 2022 projections, if it’s real and true for you right now, what you’re doing right now for real-time hiring. And if you’re able – if it’s different across levels, feel free to share it that way. If it’s just broader and more across them, then that’s awesome.

Sean:

Sure. One thing to set the stage for all of you that will help give you some background with this, our fiscal year ends September 30. So for us, we’re approaching the end of our fiscal year. We’re a partnership, meaning we’re owned by partners, so it’s probably not surprising if any of you have worked a partnership. We’re pretty much in a hiring freeze for the next six weeks because partners make their money on where the year – the firm ends up at your end. Their year and is September 30 so there is a hiring freeze right now. That’s not unusual this time of year. Doesn’t mean we’ve stopped recruiting. So we started looking at our numbers for the next fiscal year which starts October 1. And what we’re seeing is a definite flat to slight increases in certain areas. Our tax work continues to grow. Some of it through tax regulations that is going on with organizations, but just as companies look to sell or move out parts, they have different tax implications so that is a big change. The audit work is fairly steady to where it’s been in the past. The consulting work is kind of all over. There’s anticipation that there’s going to be a lot of consulting needs coming once companies are fully back letting us on site and needing the work. A lot of companies, and you all have probably seen this, have put projects on hold. So we’ve got a big pipeline of projects waiting to happen, but some of them can be done virtually.

I’d say the biggest area that’s facing a challenge right now is our deal advisory groups. So that’s the mergers and acquisitions group. Because a lot of companies just aren’t buying other companies right now, or even selling off others because they are just holding on that. So that’s a group that we hire a lot of people from in our consulting group that’s kind of just on hold, not sure. They know they are going to need a lot, they’re just not sure when it’s going to happen. The technology related projects, some of the more strategy related projects, those are still continuing because those can be done virtually. But our other challenge we are facing going forward is the changing skill set of what we need. We still about 50% of the people we hire are in our audit practice. And to work in audit you have to have an accounting degree and be a CPA, or eventually get your CPA license. But what we’re finding is that we need auditors with other skills. With technology skills, with data analytic skills. The challenge is the audit profession is regulated by the SEC. The Securities and Exchange Commission as well is the Public Accounting Oversight Board, or the PCAOB, the federal government. And there’s restrictions and who can work in audit that the government sets. So that’s one of the things all of the firms are trying to figure out. All of the large accounting firms, is how do you hire technology people into an audit practice when they can’t be a CPA – they won’t get their CPA license, but the government says if you work on an audit you have to have a CPA. So there are a lot of challenges that we’re working on. Some of it is internal and how you code people, but really trying to change the mindset of what we’re looking for. Computers do so much for us now. We don’t need the old-fashioned accountant with a green visor on, typing numbers in. That’s for the IRS or something now. We need people who can talk to clients, who can build relationships, who understand data, analytics, technology, strategy, accounting, all of that. I think we may have lost Jenny again.

Namaan:

COO here at Management Consulted. So you just mentioned you’re looking for almost folks that are jack-of-all-trades. Does that change the key skills that you’re looking for in applicants? Are there different things that you are looking for folks to emphasize on the resume, or on applications because of –

Sean:

Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s going to vary by level. At the student level, it’s – there’s not much on the resume beyond their grades. I mean people have had some internships and that kind of stuff, but we’re looking at grades and majors and trying to expand beyond some of the majors we’ve hired for. At the experienced level, well for MBAs, or people who have work experience, we are looking for people who have – who have had a variety of experience. Because one of the challenges of a consulting role is you’re not working at KPMG just doing KPMG clients. Just like if you are working at Google, only working on Google stuff. You’re working on clients across all different industries, some large, small, public, private, global, local, governments, whatever it may be. And so people who have shown the experience and ability to adapt and work to different things. Because 10 years ago if we hired you into our state and local tax group, you did state and local tax for 30 years at that all you did, and you are probably fine. But now if we hire you into that, you may start doing it, but then you’re going to all of the sudden need to shift to work on a technology project on how states are managing the unemployment benefits that come through COVID here. They need to have better ways because state technology is a disaster in the U.S. States don’t have good technology. So they’re coming to us for a lot of those projects. But if all you did is think of yourself as the tax person, you would really have trouble with that. You’d also have to understand technology. So looking for someone who’s done bits of those things, who’ve worked at different organizations, who’s done something more than just the same thing forever. That helps you adapt more in the consulting world.

Jenny Rae:

Sean, I have a follow-up question that I want to add in for that one. By the way, that was really helpful just to understand how you are thinking about everything. Just to be clear, especially on the professional services, but more specifically the consulting site, with that backlog, does that mean that you’re holding off on some hiring and waiting and tell you have more certainty about the pipeline? Or, can we expect almost like a split year where we have some hiring now and some hiring in the spring? Just tell us a little bit more about what that might look like if that’s the case.

Sean:

Yeah, I think there’s definitely going to be a split. In fact, our experienced hire groups, so the one that hires people who already have experience as opposed to the college recruiting, is anticipating a big push come February/March. But right now, most of their positions are on hold because they are able to do the work that our client needs with the people we currently have. The other thing that we are facing, there’s no turnover. And an industry like ours actually expects turnover. That’s how we create roles and things open up, and nobody’s leaving because there’s nowhere for them to go. So we know that come March – February/March, assuming COVID gets better and all that, people will leave because that’s natural, we understand that. And then we’re going to need to backfill a lot of those. So we anticipate coming the spring, late winter, early spring, and lot of hiring needs because a lot of companies themselves that would typically want us to do work want to first meet and say come on out, come in house, let’s talk. But they are not allowing us into their facility either because they’re not open. So everything is kind of in that holding pattern for a little while.

Jenny Rae:

At this point, is there a point when you think some of those conversations will just change? They’ll say let’s just do this virtually? Or, you know, I’m curious about that point of urgency. At some point – I feel like there are some industries that have begun to say you know what, we’re just going to do our training, or we’re just going to do our implementation, and we’re just going to do it like we can do it. And there are others that are still holding off. Just curious about your thoughts.

Sean:

I think that’s, yeah, I don’t know when it will all happen, but it’s started already. We have 85 offices in the U.S. Our plan is to not open any of them officially until January 1, well January 2, or whatever the first day. But we’re going to start testing some of them, but their plan also is to not renew the leases at the same levels because we’re just not going to need as many people. And to stop the expectation of having people at the client five days a week. Now you’re not going to need to be at the client five days a week. So starting to have those conversations and getting to understand from the client, well, what’s working, what’s not. Clients in a business like ours, clients pay for us to be there. So if I’m based in Chicago and I have to go to a client in Detroit, the client is paying my travel. That’s part of the engagement there. Well if the client is looking at it now saying you know what Sean, you can do that work from your home in Chicago. Why are we paying for your flight and hotel for six weeks in Detroit. We’ll just have you do it from home. So from a client standpoint, they are looking at it as a way to save money also. So it’s a mix of what can be done on site, what may be starts on site and then moves off. And those are the engagements that have been going really well are the ones that started pre-COVID. We had built a relationship, things are going. It’s harder to start the brand-new ones that we’ve never physically met people.

Jenny Rae:

Love that. Well, let me just finish up with one final question about recruiting. Why do you do recruiting? Why is this what you love, and why is KPMG an organization or a brand that you enjoy representing?

Sean:

Sure. Great question, and it kind of gets to something I said a little earlier. I didn’t know college recruiting originally existed as a job. I, as I said, was engineering background. Thought I wanted to do sports marketing, didn’t end up doing it. Did sales and marketing. Then after getting my MBA at Northwestern, thought okay, I really want to do marketing. I came to KPMG as a marketing manager for our tax practice. And I hated it. It was horrible, marketing professional services, especially tax just was not fun. But I really liked the culture of the organization. What I liked was at a professional services organization, we don’t produce anything. Our only asset are our people, for the most part. We produce a few little products. But for the most part, it’s our people. So what I saw was an organization that had great benefits for their people, that did a ton of training for their people in investment, in career development, in technology, and all these wonderful things for their people.

And so I said well, I’d like to stay at KPMG, but I don’t want to stay in marketing. I happen to sit near the people in college recruiting and as I talked to them, realized that at least for college recruiting, what you do is marketing. You are just marketing jobs to students. You’re a marketer, you’re an event planner, you’re that, and you’re doing that to students instead of marketing Kraft Mac & Cheese to parents, or marketing Toyotas to car buyers. I’m marketing jobs to students, where now it’s beyond students, but any employee. So I made that move 15 years ago about, and I’ve had the opportunity to stay. I enjoy what I’m doing and what’s kept me at KPMG is the continued opportunities to stay and grow. So I was a Chicago manager, a Midwest person, now I manage the global programs and taking on diversity and marketing, and it’s been the opportunity that KPMG gives you to expand your horizons. If you want to do other things, raising your hand and saying hey, I’d like to do this, I’d like to do that. It may not come tomorrow, but if you’re willing to do some of that, those opportunities are opened up. And that’s why I’ve stayed and I really enjoy it, and think it’s been a great career for me, as well as the others who have joined.

Jenny Rae:

I love that. Well, let’s talk a little bit about KPMG right now. Our focus in this is to try to bring back the veil of this behemoth organization because when people think about KPMG, like you even just mentioned, you had two different experiences in two different roles that were doing two different things inside KPMG. KPMG doesn’t equal KPMG. And so what we’d like to understand is some of the practice areas, or the capabilities inside KPMG that are growing right now, where students can think about building their careers more actively, or might have more of a shot to get into KPMG. Can you talk a little bit about that.

Sean:

Of course, happy to. I mentioned this briefly earlier, but we divide our business into three: into audit, tax, and we call it advisory, but it’s consulting, same thing. The audit business is relatively flat, slight growth, 1 to 2, 3% growth. Tax, and I know that may not be of interest to a lot of people on here, but just so you know tax is growing a lot. There’s a lot of opportunities in tax. But also for tax, technology that I mentioned earlier. Technology is related to tax for countries, for governments, organizations. So while there not be interest to a lot of people, that is a very fast-growing area. And then on the consulting side, the growth areas are in some of the areas you would expect. A lot of cyber security, a lot of strategy consulting, especially in operating in a global environment that is able to withstand changes in governments. Because if you would’ve asked a couple of years ago, you’re on a big project dealing with the client that’s in the U.S., the UK and France, it’s a oh, it’s great. We’ve got the European Union, everything works well. You know what, the UK quit the European Union. So you have to develop companies are how do they manage that strategy.

You know, I won’t get into politics, but whoever the president is of the United States makes a difference in what we have to face, and what our clients have to face. Different governments around the world change at various points. So there’s a lot of work. Most clients we work on our global in nature with the exception of some of the federal government or state and local clients. And so opportunities for people who can work across borders, who understands different cultures, a lot on the technology side, security, a lot on different financing ways, on how companies are going to finance. Whether it’s a Bitcoin or things like that. We don’t get paid in Bitcoin as a firm, but how do you deal with clients who want to start selling a product and get paid on that product be a Bitcoin. That’s a project. How are you to manage that from a technology standpoint, from a strategy. Where do you set up different operations as the EU goes through a lot of different things. You’ve seen in the news when they’re looking at companies like Google, and they are setting up here so they are not passing the profits through the right areas. So then they are back taxes of a billion dollars, or whatever it is. That’s all areas that we are trying to work in. A lot of it on the cross-border and mixing of companies and the partnerships area.

Jenny Rae:

Are there specific names if people are looking up roles, or responsibilities of those practice areas that you just mentioned?

Sean:

I’d say anything with cyber, with data, analytics, our big ones, the one that is not right now is transformation, mainly because of COVID. I would say transformation will become big after COVID, but right now there’s really not much transformation or strategy work going on. But a lot of it is around security. Cyber security, physical security, and then using data and analytics, as well is just general technology opportunities.

Jenny Rae:

Perfect. I love it. Well, then the second and final question for this piece is how should future applicants be investing in themselves? What kind of skills do those big, fast-growing divisions look for tactically? Is it degrees, is an experience, is a coding technology, is there some mix of those together? What is it in particular that makes someone an attractive candidate, and what should they build?

Sean:

I definitely say just the technology, the technical specifics, and when I say technical, I don’t mean computer technical. I mean about a specific area. So if you want to work in finance, or as a financial consultant type, make sure you really understand all the latest financial instruments, and I’m not an expert on some of this, but how derivatives work, or Bitcoin, or all those. If you want to be in SAP programmer, make sure you understand that. But something people forget is that in a business like ours, we don’t have salespeople. We have marketing people who helped develop things, but our salespeople are our consultants, our client facing people, are audit tax advisory people are partners become partner because they can sell and bring in business. So if you want to make the money at a consulting firm, and it’s not just KPMG, any of the other big four, and I guess similar, Jenny, when you are at Bain, similar to that. You have to help bring in business. And so it’s not just about doing the work, but can you communicate what you are doing to someone who’s not an expert in it. Because ultimately, at most organizations the CFO is probably going to have to pay the bill for any project. But the CFO is probably an accountant by trade. That’s – he or she is not in SAP programmer. So how are you going to get them to spend $5 million on a SAP project? You have to explain the project to them in a way that makes sense to them. And I think some people get very focused on well, I know this area very well. Well, that’s great. You’d be a great manager or worker bee kind of doing the work. But if you want to truly grow and lead teams, and lead projects, it’s about the ability to communicate effectively to the client with what we’re doing, but also manage your team. The people who grow, manage strong teams and get the most out of their teams, I mentioned earlier, we’re a people business. Managing people is not easy. Because people get sick, they get married, they have babies, they get divorced, they have vacations. There is all those things. Well, you have to manage that. Work isn’t going to just magically get done. You can’t just press a button and it’s done. You need to manage your people. So I say people who can show the ability to work with others, to lead teams, to communicate well outside of their core group who they work with, those things are really important.

Jenny Rae:

Love that. Well, now I want to move on to why KPMG. We talked a little bit about why for you and you got into this role, but the first question, you mentioned earlier that there are competitors. We’ll just keep them nameless for a moment. But these mystical competitors, when you’re sharing with somebody about why KPMG and not another firm, you don’t have to articulate what specific firm, but what is it in particular that you share that you think really resonates with people?

Sean:

Sure, that’s a great question. And I won’t say which one, but if you look me up on LinkedIn, I did work at one of the other firms, one of the other larger accounting firms, I should say. I didn’t work at one of the consulting firms. The difference, and it’s tough, is it comes down to the people at the organization. And I know that’s a nebulous word. And people are like stop telling me it’s the people. But again, all we have are our people. At least among the big four, so Price Waterhouse, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG. We pay the same, our clients are the same, our career paths are the same, our locations throughout the world are the same, our technologies. There isn’t going to be a difference there. Where you’re going to find the difference is the culture of the organization. And what I would say is KPMG’s culture compared to the other one I worked at is a little more entrepreneurial. That could be good or bad. The good part of it is its helps someone like me in my career, because I’ve wanted to do more things. So I can raise my hand and make moves very easily around different groups. The challenge with that is you are not willing to raise your hand, if you just sit back and wait, you will only get the path that they put you on. Which may be fine, but it may not be what you want. And some people want a more defined career path.

The other organization I worked at had a very set, defined career path and they didn’t really like you to deviate from that. Which was great for them. It didn’t work for me. But so I think part of that is understanding yourself, what’s important to you. And then it’s talking to people. I joke, but everyone always loves the recruiters who they meet. That’s great, but you’re not going to work with me. I hope they represent the firm accurately. I think I do. But talk to people who work there. People who currently work there, people who haven’t worked there, or who have worked there and don’t anymore, about what they like and what they don’t like because that will give you a real impression of any consulting firm. Because it’s really – you’re going to spend hours and hours working with these people. The projects won’t vary that dramatically from one company to another, but the people you work with, do you trust these people, do they have the same values as you. I wouldn’t say our values are better than any other firm. They may be just slightly different. And all the firms out there are wonderful. You can be successful at any one of them.

Jenny Rae:

Love that. The entrepreneurial nature – sometimes people may be misinterpret that to be that they have to have started a company. Can you talk about how somebody can demonstrate that they’re entrepreneurial without having started a company?

Sean:

Sure, sure. I think I’m a perfect example. I didn’t start a company. But I started – our global programs that I lead started myself and one of my counterparts 10 years ago. We just looked at it, realized that KPMG is a global firm, but we never talked to KPMG in other countries. At least from a recruiting standpoint. We had clients there but recruiting we never did. And we felt that there would be some – that students were interested in international rotations and those kinds of things, so what could we do. So we came up with some ideas of a global training program. A case competition, and then started reaching out to other member firms and just asking partners we knew in the U.S., hey, do you know a partner in London who can connect me with an HR person there. Or someone in Germany who can connect me with an HR person. And’s starting to build those relationships to ultimately where we’ve built these programs, one I finished earlier this week, for our 15th year. Our KPMG ideation challenge, a global case competition we do that just finished. It’s been wonderful, and what it showed to my superiors and my bosses is that I can build something from scratch, that I take something that didn’t exist and I had the idea. So it wasn’t a new company, but it was a new program in something we were doing for students. And it also made my job exciting because honestly, when I joined recruiting as a Chicago recruiter, that was fine. I would’ve have been bored out of my mind doing that for 15 years. I couldn’t have done that. But because I’ve looked at new opportunities and created some for myself, whereas others have created and I just raise my hand can I help with that. Sometimes the answer’s been no, but others have been yes. So when I say entrepreneurial, it’s willing to try new things. They don’t necessarily have to be your idea, it can be somebody else’s. But tap into those ideas, and don’t say well I was hired to do this, and this is all I do.

Jenny Rae:

I love that. I want to ask a specific question about consulting, and I hope that this is – is, you know, good for a focus area because a lot of our audience is [blank].

Sean:

Oh, I think she froze.

Jenny Rae:

Sean, can you hear me okay?

Sean:

Yep, now I can hear you. Yeah.

Jenny Rae:

Okay, great. Let me start again. Because of KPMG’s relationship in the consulting space, and the fact that you have largely and internal consulting practice where some of the other peers that you have have purchased, for Deloitte Monitor, for Parthenon EY – or EY Parthenon, sorry. So what I’m curious about is just how that internal strategy function you feel like what the pros and cons are of the fact that the strategy consulting piece has been internally built in.

Sean:

That’s a great question. And that’s something our leadership talked about often to us is do we go out and purchase. We’ve made several purchases, but they’ve been more on the accounting side and less on the consulting site. And so it’s do we purchase another consulting firm, or do we grow from within. There’s probably no right answer, but they’ve chosen to do the growth from within because what they have found is that we have been challenged when people come into the organization from the outside. Not just an organization that we purchased, but with them, we track length of stay and performance, and we’ve had much more success with people who grow up through KPMG, who we hired as interns or full-time people than people coming in from the outside. Doesn’t mean they don’t succeed. We have plenty who have succeeded. But what they have found is they’ve been more successful if they’ve grown up with the firm.

So the feeling is if we could hire more people early and help them understand our culture and the way we do things, that would help us build a client base that we can manage, and that has the right people working on it better than doing and integration with an external company. And we’ve done integrations, as I’ve said we purchased Rothstein Kass, which was a smaller accounting firm. There have been other purchases. But on the consulting side, they have just decided they want to grow that internally. I’m not in the exact meetings where they discuss that. I’m not high enough paid for that. But that is a conscious decision, and they have raised our new chairman. So our previous chairman Lynne retired this summer. Our new chairman Paul has said they are always willing to explore that, and they’re looking at purchasing external organizations where it makes sense in specific markets, but they would not do a large – but they would do a specific market. Okay, we want to get into consulting in this industry, and we don’t have expertise there so we may go after that. Those are the types of things they look at more than just broad consulting.

Jenny Rae:

Okay, that’s helpful. Well, I have two final questions.

Sean:

Sure.

Jenny Rae:

The first one is for our audience. So if somebody is applying for a role at KPMG, what’s one great piece of advice that you have in order to help them best to succeed in their application.

Sean:

So the best advice I would give is to try to connect with someone who, and I mentioned this earlier, who’s already working there, or who has – who’s worked there in the past because we get a number of applications. But if you can make that connection, not only does it help you understand the firm because we write job descriptions, but I’ll be honest, our lawyers write a lot of the job descriptions. So there’s a lot of legal words there that you’re like this doesn’t mean anything. And like I know. Sorry to any of you who are lawyers on there. But you really get the inside scoop from talking to someone who’s done it and what they do. But they can also help refer you. We love employee referrals. We would prefer to get most firm hires from employee referrals because the feeling is if we hire someone and you are working really well, and you have a friend who you recommend, you’re probably not going to recommend someone who’s bad because that would look bad on you. So if you’re going to recommend someone who is good, we would love that. So it doesn’t mean that’s the only way to get in, but making those connections through people you’ve met at school, through jobs, even just reaching out on LinkedIn is a great way to make that connection and help you know about the firm, and help the firm get to know about you.

Jenny Rae:

I love that. So you really do value the opinions of your people.

Sean:

Oh yes. Most definitely.

Jenny Rae:

The last question is you’ve been at KPMG for a number of years, and you’ve seen changes inside the organization. What are one or two of your favorite surprises about the way that KPMG has handled something, whether it’s an economic downturn, the crisis that we are going through right now, just hiring, you mentioned diversity and inclusion earlier. I’d love to know a little bit about how it – just actions that the organization or specific people even have taken that have really impressed you.

Sean:

I think one that really impressed me is when our previous chairman – chairwoman was named Lynne, again, she finished up her five-year term and retired. But she didn’t come from the audit background. She was advisory. She was consulting. She was audit her first like three years of her career, but hadn’t been in audit in 25 years. And I never thought they would name a chairman who wasn’t an audit person. And I was impressed that they did that, and I think she really helped us grow and brought a new perspective rather than audit, which is a very compliance heavy business. She really helped us – one of her mottos she had when she came in was fail fast. They’d come in and say look, we’re going to fail. But an audit you can’t have that methodology because you can’t fail. The government will get you in trouble and you’ll have all sorts of problems. You’ll turn into Arthur Anderson. So we have to be careful of that on the audit side. But she really brought us, I think moving forward and growing our business. Audit grew, but grew all of our businesses which I really liked. The other thing that I’ve been really impressed with is the commitment to hiring. So whether it was the downturn in 08 – 09, or what we’re going through right now. Our hiring numbers have not dropped dramatically. I referenced this earlier, but they did put a freeze on for the last few months of the fiscal year, which happens in a partnership sometimes. But we have our tax hiring numbers for next year and they’re above this current year. We have our audit hiring numbers and they’re the same as they were in 2019. We have our consulting numbers and they’re only down 2% when we thought – I was anticipating they’d be down a lot more. And again, that’s the campus numbers. We don’t have the experienced numbers yet. But at least from MBA, law school, and all the student numbers. And because the firm has realized and I’m really impressed that when they go through these downturns, and this is my second downturn to go through in the economy with the firm, is that they recognize that as a people business, you need to continue to bring in those people because when things do turn around, if we don’t have the people there, then the clients are going to hire Deloitte. They’re going to hire Bain. They’re going to hire Accenture. They’re going to hire someone else, so even if we don’t have work for people right now, training and development of those people is really important. So bringing them in, training and developing them really matters.

Jenny Rae:

Love that. Thank you, Sean, for that really amazing and insightful conversation that we’ve had. I’ve appreciated it so much. Now I’m going to move over some of the audience questions, and we’re going to begin with the ones that are in the chat bar. And then if time permits, we will go to a couple of the live questions, and also if technology permits. When we get a – when we get a small group of a few hundred people together, things seem to break. But I want to go through a few of the questions that are in the chat that I think are different than what we talked about so far that might shed some additional light on what KPMG is like as a firm. And then we’ll dive into a few others.

The first one is that you mentioned earlier that there is this kind of virtual recruiting process for firms, or sorry, for schools that are specific in key areas, that are post only schools. But there are even some schools that aren’t on that list. So we would call them nontargets in general, right? So they’re not the premier schools that you mention, they’re not even the local schools, and they might not even be in the posting category. When someone’s going to a school like that, is there education just counted as does it become only work experience, or what would you recommend in that experienced hire track, or from somebody that’s in that kind of situation. What would you recommend that they think about.

Sean:

Yeah, I would say the school is not discounted in any way. It’s not that we discount them. Usually a school is in that case because it’s just, I’ll give an example. I grew up in Elmhurst, a suburb of Chicago. Elmhurst College is a perfectly good small, liberal arts school with about 2000 people. They have like 10 accounting graduates and 10 IT graduates a year. So we just don’t do anything. We would not discount a student from that school, we just would not actively target because there’s just not going to be a lot. So I say if you’re from one of those schools, or you graduated from one of those schools in the past, that’s not going to hurt you at all. It means you probably won’t have a dedicated recruiter for your school, so you may have to reach out to build some of those connections. But we do promote our positions on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, all the different job boards out there. We do all kind of things like that, so the jobs are out there for everybody. The smaller schools, the difference is you’re not going to get that one-on-one connection necessarily, but we do invite people – anyone – we host an open session, we have one coming up right after this. I get a half hour break and then I’m presenting on our global opportunities for students. And that’s open to all students. Any student can attend that, it doesn’t matter what school they go to. So we do have plenty of things that are open to all that are not school specific.

Jenny Rae:

Amazing. Thank you, that’s helpful. What do you think, if any, there will be a shift toward remote degrees related to the fact that it COVID is necessitating the gaining of a remote degree. Will there be a different value for them, or a different differentiation in remote degrees.

Sean:

That’s a good question, and that’s come up for the last couple years because of more online schools. And it’s trying to understand – we don’t have a good answer for you. Trying to balance something I said earlier that in the business like ours, it’s not just – we don’t hire back room coding people, you know, who write websites. Maybe we have a few of those. Same with our tax people. We have a few of those. But the majority of people have to be client facing, either client facing physically, or via things like this. And one of the benefits of it at a typical university is you’re forced to work in groups, and forced to work with other people. So as we start to evaluate online universities, or online degrees, or zoom classes, what we’ll be looking for is what did the people do that still forced them to work with other people. If you got an online degree, like I took one summer class at a junior college when I was an undergrad just to get a marketing class done. I did talk to anybody. It was a video way back in the day. Videotape would get sent to us; we’d watch the videotape. I’d type up some answers on the computer and mail them back in. That’s how old I am, sorry about that. But the – but there was no interaction with anyone else. So something like that would not be valuable to us because that didn’t show how I could – it showed I know – knew marketing, but it didn’t show I could work with any other people. So if you’re doing something online, that’s fine. But be prepared to talk about how you were forced to work with people in different time zones, different backgrounds, or whatever it is. Even in the same city as you, it doesn’t matter. But being forced to work with others because that’s what our jobs are.

Jenny Rae:

Love that. Next question is around PhD hiring. Where do PhDs fit inside the KPMG organization. Are there places that are more attractive for PhDs.

Sean:

Yep, we do hire PhDs. They tend to be – we hire them from campus right out from PhD programs as well as more the experienced hire. They tend to fit in – we hire some economics PhDs into a – we have a valuation services group. That’s where some of the PhDs fit. As well as some of our consulting groups hire PhDs. It’s not a lot, I’d say nationally you’re talking 10 to 15 PhDs a year. So not large numbers compared to the 20 – 15 – 20,000 people overall that we hire. But we do hire them. But they’re posted on our website and we will list them. It’s just limited PhDs, and mostly in the economics or finance area, with a few technology related.

Jenny Rae:

Awesome. We’ve mentioned a little bit about recruiting in general, but we haven’t differentiated between internship and full-time recruiting very actively. Can you just talk about whether or not KPMG is thinking about the two in the same category, or if they are thinking about those separately for next year.

Sean:

Sure. Great question. So for our audit and tax practices, 95% of our full-time hires come from the internship. So we really try to get those through the internship. The feeling is that 9-10 week work experience is a great interview for us and for the student. On the consulting side, it’s about 50%. So our larger consulting groups, our deal or mergers and acquisitions group, our forensic group, some of our technology groups. They are very big in the internship world. So they really like to get their people from the internship because again, it allows them to test the student for 10 weeks, allows the student to test us. So the groups that tend not to be big on internships are ones that just don’t have seasonal work that they can plan for. Because so some of our supply chain work, it’s not seasonal, so they can bring in 20 interns in the summer, but they may not have a project that kicks off in June, and then the interns would sit around surfing the internet all day. So the ones that do internships tend to be the ones that have either annuity work that they know they’ll always be work, or seasonal work where they know they’ll need people during a certain time. For those others, we do hire direct full-time right out of school, so you don’t have to be an intern. And even those audit, tax, and other consulting ones. It’s not 100% from interns. We do have spots for non-interns too.

Jenny Rae:

Amazing. That’s helpful, thank you. One final question from me and then I’ll turn it over in case anybody wants to ask a live question for the last five minutes. This question is just related to gender equity at KPMG. So I love the fact that you just mentioned that you have a recent chairwoman that just retired. She’d been there for five years. That’s obviously fantastic. But can you just talk a little bit about what your diversity inclusion practices are, and if in particular you have any different pathways that people are in specific diversity and inclusion groups should target, folks that they should connect with, or questions that you would recommend they ask, that would be very helpful to understand.

Sean:

So we have what we call BRG’s, business resource groups focused on all – on a number of different diversity groups. Certain groups tend to be more diverse than others. I’ll say our hiring from campus is like 53% female, so we actually hire more women than we do men from campus. But it’s going to vary by discipline and degree. It’s probably not a surprise that in our technology groups, we have a lot more men than women. I don’t think that would shock anybody there. But we have groups focused on all sorts of different areas. And what they do, they’re focus is different things. Some of it is on recruiting. So how do you, whether it’s partnering or going to an organization like Grace Hopper for females in technology. And working with them to help showcase the opportunities we have. But also develop with them. So whether it’s development days for women in technology, or black and African-American people, or Hispanic, or veterans, or LGBTQ, or whatever it may be. We have – not only do we have the groups, they are active in all – all our major offices. Smaller offices may combine them into one because they just don’t have a large volume. But we also started a program called Accelerate 2025. Our new chairman started this in July really to try to up our game with our diversity recruiting and diversity efforts. I think we’ve done a great job bringing in people. Where we have failed, and I think a lot of companies have failed, is training and nurturing and developing people. Because at the end of the day, our organization still has more white than nonwhite, it’s still more male than non-male. If you come in as a black student, we do everything to bring you in and that’s great. But if you are not from one of the key schools, it doesn’t mean we look down on you, but you just don’t have as many alums in Chicago from Eastern Illinois as you do from Illinois, DePaul, Wisconsin and Notre Dame. So you’re already in a little – I don’t want to say outcast, but in a little other group. So we recognize that and trying to do things to better on-board people and bring them in, regardless of where they’re coming from and really help give people – build the network. Because the network really matters in an organization like ours, and some networks are just normally formed because you are alums of an area, but we have really put an emphasis toward trying to build that network outside of just the alums.

Jenny Rae:

Awesome. Sean, one question came in a couple of times repetitively in the chat so I do want to ask that one as well, about international students. How is KPMG thinking about international students studying in the U.S. Is there a differentiation between OPT and non-OPT visas. Can you just tell us a little bit. I know that’s a constant situation in flux, but we’d love to know.

Sean:

So for a student perspective it’s going to vary by group. Our audit and tax groups do hire some international students, especially when we have a Korean practice and a Japanese practice. So if you speak Korean or Japanese, those are very hard positions to fill. The rest of audit and tax, it’s going to be market specific. Some markets will hire international, some will not. Our advisory consulting group, for the most part, doesn’t hire international students off campus. They will if it’s an experienced higher. I won’t get into all the details, but there is legal reasons and paperwork and things that have to go on if you travel a lot with your job and you are not a U.S. citizen. So audit and tax can manage it a little easier because they don’t travel. But consulting, because the projects change so much, it’s a very challenging with all every – for every I think 60 hours or something you work, you have to file new paperwork, and change your salary, and it’s very complicated. So they will do it for experienced professionals, but at the campus level, consulting pretty much is not hiring international students.

Jenny Rae:

One follow-up question to that. What should they do? Does that mean KPMG in their home country, can you just explain a little bit about the strategy should be from someone’s home country.

Sean:

Yeah, wonderful. Definitely if – we take rotations all the time from other countries and transfers, so we have operations in 160 countries, 800 cities across the world. So if you’re willing and interested in going back to work in your home country, we have a lot of opportunities there. So you can just go to KPMG.com, our website, and within there there’s a careers page, and on the careers page there’s a drop-down for every country with an email address for every country’s recruiting team. And they do monitor those because I’m part of the team that helped create that. So they do monitor it. So there’s students all the time who are interested. I’m from Brazil, and I know I can’t get a visa to work in the U.S. and I want to go back to Brazil. Great. We’ll put them in touch with the recruiting team in Brazil. I will say the timing and things can be slightly different because like in the UK, they do apprenticeships, not internships. So they work while going to school. So the education system can throw things off a little, but they also have certain – less restrictions. We require an accounting degree to work in audit. In the UK they’ll take any degree. So it just varies by country.

Jenny Rae:

Super helpful. And just to confirm, we’re saying all international students regardless of visa. So they’ve been OPT, same story. Or is OPT in a different class?

Sean:

Correct. Yeah, correct. Same thing.

Jenny Rae:

All international students.

Sean:

Yep. Including Canadian and Mexican who are on the TN visas, I think it is. It’s the same thing.

Jenny Rae:

And then final piece of that was just around internships and full-time. Also same story?

Sean:

Yeah. For internships, to be eligible for an internship, you have to be eligible for a full-time position in that group because our hope is to convert you to a full-time.

Jenny Rae:

Great, fantastic. Well, Namaan and Japheth, I don’t know if you guys had any final questions, and I realize that we just with all of the questions in the chat ended up taking a lot of the time up, but are there any that you guys wanted to make sure we’re asked that I didn’t ask yet?

Japheth:

No, I think you covered them.

Jenny Rae:

Okay, awesome. Alex, you said hello. You want to say something quickly?

Alex:

Sure. Just a quick question. I have a background similar to yours where it was kind of more of a stem-based background, but my Masters is kind of more on the business side. My question was what is the typical applicant for someone in the life sciences in healthcare division look like?

Sean:

That’s a good question. They are a mix. We’ve got people who have done previous consulting working there, we’ve got people with biology, chemistry, those kind of degrees. We’ve got people come directly out of – they’ve been working as a doctor somewhere. So it’s a mix of those. We don’t hire a whole lot of those from campus, I will say. When you’re talking about hiring from campus what you are doing is looking at positions where we have work that can be done at a lower level, and a lot of the life sciences work, there just isn’t a lot of low-level work for an entry-level person to do. So they tend to hire more experienced people. But those experienced people come from all sorts of backgrounds. So yeah, I think a stem background – and I’ll throw in there, Jenny, for anyone I know that other people have questions, connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to – I can’t promise I can get you a job everywhere, but I can at least point you in the right direction, send you the right links. I’m happy to answer questions from you. Send me a LinkedIn request, I’ll connect with you anytime and happy to have a conversation.

Jenny Rae:

Thank you, Sean. We really appreciate you. Thank you so, so much for your time. We value it a lot. It was really insightful, and honestly just fun to talk to you. So thanks again for joining us today, and we’ll look forward to seeing great things from KPMG in the year to come.

Sean:

Very good. Thanks everybody. Enjoy your weekend.

Jenny Rae:

Absolutely. Thank you everyone. Appreciate everyone coming. We’ll talk to you guys soon.