Business Week names McGladrey to it's Best Places To Launch a Career List

Everyone knows that public accounting is a great place to start a career. When one joins a public accounting firm, their career growth opportunities can range from being on a Partnership-track if they stay in the industry, or they can lead to success and growth in a range of financial positions in almost any type of organization. It's no surprise when you see so many corporate leaders who started their career in public accounting.

Each year, Business Week releases it's Best Places to Launch a Career List. The magazine collects information from employers, college career service directors and from college students themselves to compile this list. Our industry typically does quite well on this list, and last year, McGladrey made the list for the very first time. This year, we are very proud to see that we have moved up almost 40 places on this list. To me, this serves as a reflection of not only the fact that we are continuing to invest in hiring new graduates , but also that we that we are a part of a great industry to launch a career.

Our profile on this list provides a great amount of detail and insight into our hiring demographics, our salary and benefit information, and our career growth initiatives. We feel that those numbers provide only part of the story however. McGladrey offers opportunities to our new Associates that are unique in our industry, including the ability to:

• work closely with top management at our clients
• work with a wide variety of clients
• achieve fast growth in an environment that promotes flexibility
• take charge of one’s own career development

Over 400 new associates will launch their career with McGladrey this Fall. If you are interested in launching your career with McGladrey in 2010, be sure to see us at a campus near you, or visit our career website to learn more about our recruitment process.

CollegeGrad.com Names McGladrey at Top 25 Intern Employer

McGladrey is receiving a lot of great recognition these days as a great place to work. Being an intern at McGladrey is certainly no exception. Recently, CollegeGrad.com named McGladrey to it's Top 25 Intern Employer list. Making this list is primarily based upon the number of interns that each company hires in a year, so at the very least we are being recognized for having a large Internship program. This does provide us however the opportunity to tell you a little more about what makes our Internship program the success that it is.

Over the past year, we have had numerous posts here about our Internship program, including a weekly series from Rachel (a Winter Intern in our Charlotte, NC office), a podcast series from Phil (a Summer Intern in Southern California) and recaps from our Winter and Summer Capstone Intern Conferences. If you are interested in what it's like to be a McGladrey Intern, I encourage you to read through all of our Intern-related posts. Here's some additional reasons why a McGladrey Internship is such a great experience:

• An internship at McGladrey is one of the best ways to be considered for a full-time, New Associate position after you graduate as a majority of our interns receive offers as a result of their internship experience.
• McGladrey Interns get hands-on experience doing client work.
• McGladrey Interns also have the opportunity to get involved with local community service events.
• Firm-wide webinars, local social events, and The Capstone Intern Conference provide excellent opportunities for our interns to get to know their peers not only in their offices but at our offices across the United States and Canada.

To learn more about how to become a Winter or Summer McGladrey Intern, please visit the Internship page on our Career Website. We also are visiting over 135 campuses across the country this year, so if we are visiting your campus, be sure to stop by and see us to ask for more information about the specific internship opportunities that will available in 2010.

McGladrey Named to Working Mother's 100 Best Companies List

For the third time, RSM McGladrey has been named to Working Mother Magazine's 100 Best Companies List, and in particular was recognized as a Best-In-Class company for our flexibility initiatives.

Despite the economy, our approach to WorkLife, performance management, career development and family-friendly benefits is focused on the key concepts of respect for the individual and a flexible work environment. Our ability to maintain these benefits, along with leadership’s commitment to flexibility, helped place McGladrey on this prestigious list. Some of our differentiating benefits and services include:

• Coach-on-Call
• New Parent Coach
• Wellness program (EAP, StayWell, GlobalFit, Intranet Wellness Pages)
• Extended Care Cash
• Adoption Benefit
• Concierge program
• Paternity leave
• WorkLife programs, tools, resources, podcasts, etc.

We believe that our commitment to WorkLife strategies is what truly distinguishes our firm from our peers. McGladrey was one of the first accounting firms to develop a WorkLife goal program, which enables employees to sit down with their managers and establish actionable life goals that they can incorporate into their performance-management process. This could include anything from coaching little league to volunteering or taking the summer off to spend on family activities.

Our Flexible Work Environment also offers a wide variety of programs, services and opportunities to support the many demands of an employee’s busy life, including the following: compressed work week, telecommuting, job sharing, flextime, reduced work schedules, and summer hours. New programs that were launched that have proven popular with employees include FlexCareer and FlexYear.

• FlexCareer enables employees to take up to a five-year leave for personal reasons and provides resources to keep participants connected with the organization and industry to help them return to employment at McGladrey.
• FlexYear is similar to a teacher’s contract and permits employees to take time off (summers, holidays, particular months) for a portion of the year.

Ultimately, this is another in a long line of awards and recognition related to our WorkLife Initiatives. Other recent awards include the Innovative Excellence Award for our Coach-on-Call program and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption Top 100 Companies List. In fact, we have received several other awards recently, and will share (and celebrate) those with you over the next couple of weeks.

Making the Most of a Job Fair

College recruiting season is well under way, and that means that job fairs are happening across the country as we speak, including at the over 135 colleges that we will be recruiting at this year. I've been to a lot of job fairs in my career. A lot. I've spoken to thousands of students and have collected thousands of resumes over the years, and as a result I've seen many great candidates, and I've seen many that have made me shake my head.

If you are preparing to attend a job fair (on-campus or even experienced-level job fairs), here's a few tips that should help you, and in my experience, help to separate the best from the rest:

1. Do Your Homework - As soon as you can identify which employers will be attending the job fair, learn as much as you can about them. Job fair guides usually have brief descriptions of the attending companies, but go the extra mile and visit the company's website to learn even more. The last thing that recruiters want to hear when you visit their booth is 'I don't know anything about you'. They will be impressed if show that you have taken some time to learn something about them.
   
2. Keep an Open Mind - Don't just limit yourself to visiting the name brand companies that you are familiar with. Find a few additional companies that you are not so familiar with and visit them as well. The best jobs are not always with the companies with the most recognizable names. Also, be open to what the recruiters tell you in regards to where they see you possibly fitting within their organization. You may have a specific career in mind already, but your skills and education may fit well in other careers you haven't considered yet too.
   
3. Always Be Prepared - Do you have an elevator speech? If not, you need one. Have it prepared, memorized, and ready to share with anyone at a moment's notice. Also keep your resumes within easy access. If you are planning on visiting a booth, you should even have it ready to hand to the recruiter as soon as you meet them. I've seen too many job seekers arrive at a booth not ready to say anything about themselves, or fumble through their bag for a copy of their resume, wasting the time of the recruiter and everyone else in line. If you have multi-page resumes, have them be one-sided, and have some stapled and some not stapled. Different companies have different preferences (if they prefer that you submit a resume online as many do today, understand that is the company's process for a good reason, and be willing to follow that process).


4. Don't be a 'swag' collector - Never visit a company's booth just to collect the shiny giveaway that they have to offer. It's tacky for one, and second, companies bring their branded pens, stress balls, water bottles, etc. to share with you after they have spoken with you and collected a resume. You are at the job fair to make a great impression, not to collect branded trinkets.


5. Good hygiene is a must - Dress professionally and comfortably. You will be on your feet for a long time and you will probably be nervous, so make sure that your attire looks sharp, but won't make you perspire excessively. Avoid heavy perfume/cologne as some people are overly sensitive to those scents. Take along some breath mints as well, bad breath does not make a good first impression.

The more prepared you are, the more professional you will appear, and the more you will separate yourself from the rest. Remember that a job fair is just the first of many steps at most organizations. Hopefully these tips will give you the edge that you need to succeed and be considered by the companies that have the best opportunities for you.

Podcast: Flexibility and Working a Compressed Work Week

On a monthly basis, we will be posting new podcasts highlighting work-life success stories from McGladrey employees, as well as podcasts from work-life experts. In this months, podcast, Kristi, a mother of twins, and a Senior Associate in our Chicago office, describes how she has made a compressed work week work for her. Take a listen as Kristi explains how she was able to set work-life goals and ultimately develop a plan with her career advisor and her family that has provided her the flexibility that has resulted in her being equally successful at work and at home.

Click here to listen to the Podcast

McGladrey's Charlotte Office A 9 Who Care Finalist

In the past year, over 40 employees from McGladrey's Charlotte office have volunteered their time with The Relatives, a transitional youth shelter based in Charlotte, NC. Efforts have included monthly dinner and entertainment with shelter residents and staff, as well as supporting a variety of fundraising activities. For the support that McGladrey has provided, The Relatives has nominated McGladrey for the Nine Who Care program, sponsored by local ABC Affiliate WSOC, which recognizes individuals, groups and business for outstanding volunteer service.

Nine finalists overall have been selected, and anyone can vote for their favorite finalist by visiting the Nine Who Care website. The Grand Prize winner will be $2000 awarded to the non-profit organization where the Grand Prize winner provides volunteer support (the 8 other finalists will have $900 donated to the non-profit organization they support).

If you would like to help McGladrey and The Relatives win the Grand Prize donation, you can vote once a day up until next Tuesday, September 15 (and un-check the box that you do not agree to receive marketing email from the station unless you wish to do so.) Support a great cause and vote today!

New McGladrey Locations in Atlanta and San Jose

This week, McGladrey saw two new offices open in two major metropolitan areas, Atlanta, GA and San Jose, CA. The Atlanta office doesn't currently have any job openings available, but if you are interested in career opportunities there, be sure to check back at http://www.rsmmcgladrey.jobs/ often as positions will become available at some point in the future.

The San Jose office however does have two openings in it's Tax Practice. Click on the job titles below to learn more about the new opportunities at this new location!

Tax Senior Associate - San Jose, CA
Tax Manager - Private Client Services - San Jose, CA

September Poll: Accessing Facebook at Work

Facebook is clearly the most popular online social networking site, but it is also clear that more and more companies are restricting access to Facebook. Although companies are finding more business uses for Facebook, such as groups and Fan Pages (like McGladrey's for example), Facebook is still primarily used for social purposes. It's because of this and other factors that companies are increasing their scrutiny of whether Facebook and sites like it should be available to their employees through their networks.

Our September poll asks you, how would you feel if your employer did not provide you access to Facebook through the company network? Would you not even work for a company like that? Would you be disappointed, but not devastated? Do you access Facebook on your personal devices only anyway? Do you not even use Facebook at all? Take the poll and if you have any specific thoughts or comments on the subject, please comment here as well.