Hi, students. My name is Kelsey Lona. I graduated from Delaware in the spring of 2019 with my Bachelor's of Science in accounting and finance. I was a TA for BYUI edu 110. I also was a tutor and proctor for the accounting and MIS department. And I was on the exact board of women in business for all four years while I was there and I was actually the president. My senior year. After graduation, I decided to pursue a career in public accounting. So currently I work at KPMG Philadelphia in their audit practice. And I also live in Philadelphia now to basically auditing is ensuring that a company's financial statements and internal controls are working correctly. So when they want to get a loan from a bank or when people want to invest in the company. The people who are trying to invest or get them alone, have an adequate understanding of what the financial statements are. Um, and there isn't a bunch of numbers that are misstated or false. So it's basically supposed to be a job that helps protect stakeholders and accompany. I just recently got promoted to be a senior associate. So I spent a lot of the day coordinating things on my team. Basically, in public accounting, whether you choose audit, like I'm in tags or advisory, you're working on a team. You're working very closely with clients. And on my team, there is a manager and a partner and then there's some staff below me. So I spent a lot of Isaiah coordinating between all those people on my team. I also spend a lot of my days communicating with the client about certain matters, setting up meetings, talking to them, and then the rest of my days usually spend evaluating evidence provided by the client, doing classwork over the evidence that they provided in order to ensure that their financial statements are fairly stated and don't have any fraud. Something that people should know what there they want to get involved in public accounting or pursue a career in auditing is you will have to get your CPA certification if you want to get promoted past a certain point. And it's just good to have in general if you choose a career in accounting, It's a very sought after certification and it automatically makes you stand out from most people when applying for jobs. Most C-Suite members accompanies are CPAs like CFOs and CEOs, usually their CPA. That is a test that is pretty rigorous. So I personally started studying while I was an undergrad and I finished it while I was taking getting my masters at Ohio State and now I'm CK Certified. Another thing you should probably know if you want to work in this field is you really should get a good handle on Excel. I think that is probably safe to say for almost any job in the business world. Excel is used for so many different things. But getting a good handle on Excel and knowing certain shortcuts and formulas definitely will help you excel in this career path. You also have to be comfortable speaking with clients. A lot of times you're speaking with the CEO of a company or the CFO of a company on a day-to-day basis, or the controller. You're working with a lot of really high up people in these companies they are auditing. So you have to be comfortable and confident and be able to speak to these people. You know, on a day-to-day basis, most people don't get a chance to speak with C-Suite members, accompany them when you're an auditor, you work very closely, closely with those people. In order to do your classwork? Do you have to be comfortable working in a team? A lot of people, a common misconception about accounting is that you're just working by yourself all day in an office, like not talking to anybody, but actually you work on teams like an any any public accounting practice, tax advisory on it. You're working in teams with people of different age ranges and you're working with them on a day-to-day basis. Nothing is really just on YouTube. Like you're communicating with people every single day. So if you're not comfortable working in a team or you don't like the team environment. Maybe this isn't a career path for you. After you get a job in public accounting. Some other past people may choose r will. Firstly, they may stay in public accounting. And if you stay in public accounting for your career, you will end up becoming a partner at a public accounting firm. But accounting is such a versatile major. A lot of people don't realize that. But basically, if you can do accounting, you can, you can really apply that skill to a lot of different business roles or data analytics roles. So a lot of people leave public accounting and we will go into private accounting for companies. That would be like an accountant or an auditor like for forward or something. Or the other way. Government accounting. So the work for like a state Accounting Office or the federal government, or a lot of people maybe go into a consulting role after their time doing auditing a public accounting firm. Some people open up their own practice. If you had your CPA, you can open up your own CPA firm and have your own business or your own consulting firm. And then aside from that, I mean, you can go into data analytics role. You could do more of a forensic accounting role where you look for criminal activity. There's so many different things you can do with accounting. It's not just bookkeeping and recording, debits and credits and making financial statements are so many different things you can do with accounting. Firstly, get involved early, like I know your freshman year is extremely overwhelming and time-consuming, figuring everything out. But it's really good to get involved early with clubs and even going to career fairs. So the one thing I'd say about clubs though, is a lot of people will take quality over quantity for clubs, a lot of people will just join a large quantity of clubs with barely actually have any involvement in the actual club. Like they don't hold, you know, a membership position like President are on the exact bored or they're not they don't have a specific role on the club. And I think it looks better to maybe pick like two to three tops different clubs that you're like very involved in. And you spent a lot of your time doing because that will make interviews easier. And a lot of interviews when employers look at your resume, they're going to want to hear about the different clubs that you're in. And if you're not actually really involved in the club, you're not really not much to talk about in the interview. And then it's going to be kind of awkward and look prove out on you. So I would say get involved early and pick like two or three clubs and just that you really like get really involved in them and like try to get a position on the exact board in those clubs. And then I would also say, another important thing to do your freshman year is to go to career fairs early as well. Most companies will not have any sort of internship or job available yet for you since you're a freshman. But getting your name out there early and late, giving recruiters your resume, building a relationship with different recruiters. Whether it's Meet the Firms which is the accounting specific accounting MIS specific career fair or just any general career fair. It's good to get your name out there with the recruiters because these same recruiters will likely be people who could help you land your internship, your junior year or whenever they start offering the internship process. That's what I did with KPMG my freshman year. Once you meet the firms, I actually talked to all the big for a bunch of different firms, made relationships with all the recruiters even though they had nothing to offer me freshman year. They had suddenly case studies and different events that I would go to just to again show my face. And then when it came time to get an internship, I felt a lot more comfortable. I thought it was a lot easier than if I never taught anybody from the firm before. And at that point, aside from just making yourself look good to the firm, it allows you to make a better decision when you're deciding where he wanted to do an internship. Because if you network with these firms before you get the offer, you'll know maybe which one you like the best. So I'm say that's important as well. And then the last thing I would say, don't forget to enjoy your time while you're at UT. You know, obviously school and doing various clubs and being involved is important. But at the end of the day, you have to remember to enjoy your time there as well, because it flies by.

BUAD 110 Alumni Videos Kelsey Lona - Senior Audit Associate

From Alice Pawlowski August 06, 2021

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Graduation Year: 2019

Majors: Accounting and Finance

Current Employer: KPMG

Current Position: Senior Audit Associate

Graduate Degree: Masters in Accounting and Data Analytics at Ohio State University

Appears In: Lerner Alumni Videos

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