How to Become a Partner

Yes, it's hard to become a partner at a Big Four company. Becoming a partner at a Big Four firm is highly competitive because of the perceived status, undoubted financial rewards, and an endorsement of one's skills and experience in the accounting profession that comes with working as a partner in a Big Four company.

First of all, the Big Four accounting firms attract bright and ambitious people, and the competition for these positions is fierce. Most people take ten to 15 years to become a partner at a Big Four, which includes working 50 to 70 hours a week as a standard.

During this decade-plus journey, the path towards a partnership will be a long winding one that is complex and full of many hoops that will need to be jumped. Only one out of five senior managers make it to partner.

The main hoops that you need to jump through are:

• To keep performing in order to progress. If you're hitting or exceeding your targets, you will move up the ranks. If you're not - and we are talking about only one or two or quarters of lower performance after many years, this can be enough cause for termination.

• Develop a strong business case -- as you progress from manager to senior manager, you'll need to cultivate a winning business case that can demonstrate your value as a partner.

• Make it through the partnership admissions process gauntlet -- three or more partnership panel interviews at sector team and geography levels.

It takes 15 to 20 years to become a partner at Big Four. When starting your career, it may take several years of work experience before landing an entry-level position at a Big Four. After that, it takes at least ten to 15 additional years of Big Four managerial experience before being eligible for a partnership at a Big Four.

The reason why it can take this long are many:

• Big Four partners need to normally build up a $2m+ client portfolio before they are considered ready for partnership. This size of client portfolio takes time to build.

• Most of the Big Four type of work is often won by very senior decision-makers in large corporations. Therefore it takes a certain amount of technical competence, gravitas, and authority before you can get to the point where you're able to cultivate these types of relationships.

• Big Four partners require many years of work experience in order to gain the skills needed to move, from being technically competent to being able to lead a team in one of the Big Four companies.

It takes ten to 15 years to become a partner. This is the time it takes for someone to typically become a partner at the Big Four, either at the national or regional firm. This does not include the time needed to earn a college degree.

One factor that impacts how long it will take to become a partner is the size of the firm that you work at. Smaller firms, for example, can offer young CPAs a quicker path to partner because there are fewer levels of seniority to climb your way up through.

It also takes many years to learn the skills needed to become a successful partner. A prospective partner, for example, should be highly technically competent and specialized. A real go-getter who seeks out challenging projects, the ones no one wants, and who takes ownership of the project and knocks it out of the park.

Developing a reputation as a rainmaker also can help young CPAs reach partners earlier than usual. A lot of your ability to make partnerships will come down to whether or not you're exceeding expectations and targets and your ability to network and engage with others within the leadership team.

To be a partner means that you go from being an employee of the firm (and being paid a salary) to becoming a part-owner of the firm and sharing in the firm's profits (and liabilities). However, this is not always the case. Because of changes in the law industry, what it means to be a partner has changed.

The majority of those who achieve the position of partner with their firm become non-equity partners. This is a relatively new concept in the legal field.

There are different tiers of partnership in most law firms now, which means less job security for non-equity partners. As a partner, they are still expected to bring in a certain amount of business to the firm just like non-equity partners are expected to. If the non-equity partners do not bring in enough new business, they can be dismissed from the firm.

Non-equity partners are essentially middle management and equity-partners-in-training. They get a bigger salary than regular lawyers and a nicer-sounding title, but in most other ways are not any different than non-partner lawyers.

On the other hand, equity partners do have job security. It means you are performing consistently at the level your law firm expects, and as long as you continue to do so, your job is secure.

Once someone is made an equity partner, they are given a loan to "buy-in" to the firm. This means they become a part-owner and get part of the firm's profits in addition to their salary. The cost to "buy-in" is usually in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Those who can afford to pay it on their own can do so without getting a loan from the firm. Equity partners, in this light, are more invested in the success of the firm because they have a financial stake in it. When the firm does well financially, they do well financially and vice versa.