College Accomplishments

In my 4 years here at UCSB I have accomplished quite a lot. I decided to list out some of the major feats in celebration of my graduation in June. UCSB offers a lot of opportunities and you have to be active to take advantage and reap the benefits!

1. secured full-time employment for after college
2. maintained the same job for 4 years at UCSB Rec Sports
3. spoke in front of 300 students and professionals at the 2012 Accounting Awards Banquet
4. organized the largest-to-date UCSB Meet the Firms, with over 600 attendees
5. received the Maxwell Pellish Award for Outstanding Service to the Accounting program
6. completed roughly 250 units in my time at UCSB including the Economics and Accounting major and Technology Entrepreneurship Certificate

lovin’ life- kelsey.

Google Yourself

Today in my New Venture Finance class for UCSB’s TMP certificate, the first thing out of my professor’s mouth to start the class was “How many of you guys googled me? Well I googled all of you.” He then proceeded to call me out for having the best search results page and the 2nd highest amount of LinkedIn connections of students in the class. He then mentioned random facts about select students that he found on the internet. Throughout the class he continued to make references to all the information that he found about me, which made it kind of awkward, but I am very proud of my accomplishments and my personal marketing. My professor noted that anyone who is looking to hire you or fund you (venture capitalists) will google you to do background research. Because of this, I knew that I wanted anything that showed to be controlled by me. This idea of personal branding became very apparent to me during my sophomore year as I was preparing for the fall accounting recruiting season. I made a personal website, blog, focused my twitter account and used google analytics to optimize my search results.

The world is becoming ultimately digital and you must be prepared for people to see everything you have posted on the internet. I hope to inform more students about the value of LinkedIn and personal branding to encourage them to get recognized for their unique talents.

lovin’ life- kelsey.

Resumes

I recently led a professional development session to the Rec Sports Marketing Team on how to improve a resume. The team seemed to enjoy it so I decided to post my recommendations here. I would be happy to give additional assistance to anyone based upon these points.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional Hiring/Recruiting Manager, but I do all the hiring on the Rec Sports Marketing Team so I have seen tons of resumes pass through in the past 3 years. I am currently taking a human resources and management course through UCSB TMP and I, myself have also recruited and been successful in the accounting industry so I am especially competent in that realm.

Things to include:

•Name and contact info

•Education

–school, major, grad date, gpa

•Experience

–work or volunteer

•Extra-curricular Activities/Leadership

–Org names, time involved, positions held

Optional Items:

•Objective

•Current Courses

•Projects

•Research

•Skills/Interests

Additional Tips:

•If submitting digitally/email, always use “.PDF”

•Create multiple resumes for different job types

•No more than 5 bullets per item

•Start each bullet with a past-tense action verb

•Use numbers and metrics to quantify success whenever possible

•No high school info

•Do not use more than 1 page

•If applicable, create an online portfolio

•Update your resume often

•Be prepared to explain every item on your resume

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Internship Last Thoughts

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my internship experience. I was able to try out my future career and I felt like I was learning the entire time.  The internship experience was great to learn about the firm, public accounting as well as network with countless professionals. It was a fun 8 weeks and I am happy to begin full time with BDO next fall.  8 internship applications, 7 first round interviews, 4 second round interviews, 1 internship, 1 job offer.  Through the process I obtained countless business cards, sent so many networking emails, attended socials and dinners all to lead me to here.  It takes a ton of work to go through the public accounting recruiting process but the reward of starting senior year already knowing you have a job for after graduation is awesome.

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Internship Wk 8: Mon-Wed

Monday, I was in the office unscheduled. This allowed me to listen in on my first Engagement Team Discussion, finish up some exit items, and work on my proposal presentation for Tuesday.  Overall, it was a quick day as being unassigned allows you to work independently, complete your tasks and end the day at your own schedule (at least for me as an hourly employee).

Tuesday I met the other interns at 8am to get set-up for our presentations. We were assigned a project during the internship to research and prepare a presentation to make a proposal to a company for BDO’s audit services.  I had an entertainment/audio company and it was interesting to then research BDO and all that they have to offer as an auditor.  After the presentation, my advisor took me out to lunch at Gulf Stream for a yummy scallop salad and to discuss my performance thus far and give advise on the accounting profession.  After lunch, I drove to my next client for the remainder of the week.  I was at this client at the beginning of the internship to do an inventory observation, so it was neat to be back for my last days.  The Controller remembered me when I walked in and the team I was working with was really nice.  On this day, the BDO manager was out at the client as well as an experienced staff (who I did the inventory count with) and a staff who has been working since October and is a UCSB alum.  The day went by really quick as I was getting instructions on my tasks and learning from the BDO team.

On Wednesday I was back at the client site for a day of working on prepaids and some revenue testing.  I also got to have some discussions with the client about matters that I found.  For lunch, myself and the other 2 staff went to Quiznos for a quick bite before heading back to work.

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Internship Wk4: Tuesday

Today I arrived at the client for another day of work.  For the first part of the day I worked on some outstanding check reconciliations and documentation. I also know now how to correctly fold letters to have the address show thru an envelope! The senior manager showed up and took the audit team out for a sushi lunch.  After lunch, 2 of the audit partners and some tax professionals arrived for a planning meeting with the client.  During their meeting I was able to ask the first-year staff some questions about the job, client, etc.  To conclude the day, I folded more letters (to be sent for audit purposes!) and reviewed some files.  I am back at the client Wednesday and Thursday and someone mentioned some AR test work.

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Internship Wk3: The Rest

Tuesday I headed out to a hydraulic machining factory to do my 3rd inventory count.  I am really enjoying these count as it allows me to get a deep look at the business in a short amount of time.  After performing our count, I typed my data, and did a roll-forward of the memo.  The firm was closing the office early on Tuesday so I got to take advantage of that and do some shopping and errands before ending my day.

For my day off on Wednesday, I started by sleeping in and then I went to a couple of the shopping malls in the area and then some relaxing.

Thursday I was unscheduled so I was in the office with another intern for the day. This allowed me to do some more work on my project. Later in the day we walked around and introduced ourself to partners who were in the office that day.  It was cool to meet new people and get advice from them.

Friday, I was also in the office so I finished up most of my project, got it checked by the Business Development Director and finished my day getting prepared for the client that I will be working on for the next few weeks.  I don’t know much about them yet, but I will be out in the field starting tomorrow so I am hoping to learn a lot and get some true audit experience.

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Internship Wk2: Thursday

Today I was unscheduled for a client so I headed to the office to be available to help out other teams.  It worked that I got to assist the team I worked with for inventory on verifying and documenting some numbers to financial statements.  It was pretty interesting to see everything that is involved with the company and all the auditor’s work along the way.  For lunch, my advisor asked me to tag along with him and the other managers in the office to a farmers market.  One location was grabbing all the traffic, so we went there to get our lunch. It was a Hawaiian bbq chicken place and with a standard combo plate you got chicken, rice, and salad.  We took lunch back to the office, ate and then got back to work.  I also worked on an intern project that BDO assigned all the interns and I ended the day helping out the recruiter with a few things.  It was not a typical audit based day, but the random things kept me busy. I am off to more inventory counting tomorrow!

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Internship Week 2: Tues & Wed

Tuesday I met an associate at one of our clients to do my first inventory observation. Basically we walked the aisles of the warehouse and counted lots of boxes.  The first location was interesting as we were inside a refrigerator counting produce items.  The second location just included random items, but the work was interesting to learn about the client’s business.  The final thing was to document the count results, which then allowed me time to finally complete all of my required trainings.  I felt like a had a productive day and I will be back for more inventory tomorrow.

On Wednesday, I arrived at the client at 8:30 to begin the inventory count of their largest warehouse.  At this location I was strapped into a harness and rode on a forklift around the warehouse to select items to count.  It was quite interesting to see the entire warehouse and see how daily operations occur.  Though tedious, I found inventory observations quite fun and a nice break from sitting in front of a computer screen.

lovin’ life- kelsey.

BDO Regional Intern Training

On Wednesday morning I headed to the BDO Costa Mesa office to meet 13 other interns from the west region for a regional training.  Day 1 was full of introductions to the technical material to build a baseline knowledge.  This type of training was a bit more interactive which made it enjoyable to learn by doing.  After a long day, we went to Maggiano’s for a yummy family style dinner, which allowed us to network with other firm professionals.  Day 2 started at 7:30 with some breakfast and then right into detailed “how to audit” trainings.  It was cool to actually see what my day-to-day job will be.  We became overwhelmed with information during the day but were able to relax that night at Disneyland.  Day 3 was short but also included more technical training, soft skills training and we received our internship project, which I will speak more about in another post.  Friday was a quick day, but it allowed me extra time to make the drive back to Santa Barbara for a relaxing weekend with Scott.  I think I have some interesting work assignments for this week so I am excited to keep you updated as new things happen.

lovin’ life- kelsey.