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Let's hear it for Enron. If it weren't for such spectacular corporate meltdowns--and the federal crackdown that followed--many fewer college graduates would be making good money as auditors.
Internal auditing is the hot field these days, much like electrical engineering and other tech-related disciplines before the dot.com wave crashed.
Amy Van Kirk, director of campus hiring for PricewaterhouseCoopers, says her hiring goal for the company's internal audit service practice has increased by more than half since 2004.
"Last year PricewaterhouseCoopers hired 38 full time across the county," she says. "We're looking to hire 78 this year. "We're viewing this as a good place for an individual to have a career."
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Mary Feduccia, LSU, director of career services, says that since Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 as a talisman against future embarrassments like Enron and WorldCom, LSU's internal auditing program can't produce grads fast enough.
The law created a rush among companies to get their internal accounting standards and financial reporting up to speed, driving the huge demand for skilled internal auditors. Graduates who've had internal auditing internships are seeing starting salaries in the $45,000-to-$50,000 range at private corporations, Feduccia says. The vast majority of those jobs are out of state.
Accounting grads in general are being heavily recruited. Business has traditionally topped the list of field graduates enter, followed by industry (now taking a hit due to layoffs in the petrochem sector) and education.
Feduccia says the job market for tech majors like computer science is showing signs of resurgence, though it's nothing like it used to be. When the tech industry was still booming, she says, graduates in such programs could count on eight to 10 job offers.
"It was the most pronounced, and I guess you could say the most drastic and fastest shift of the pendulum that we've ever seen," she says.
Just ask Erica Helmick.
Helmick started LSU in the late 1990s as an electrical engineering major. It seemed like a sensible decision: People she knew in engineering were being showered with job offers before they even graduated. By the time Helmick was nearing graduation, though, the world had changed course.
"When I graduated with my 'double E', only a third of the class had offers," she says. "In five years, it was night and day. It was amazing. Suddenly if you didn't have a 3.0 or higher, you weren't even considered."
Helmick had one job offer and decided not to take it. Many of her peers, with few or no job offers in sight, entered graduate programs. Some went to law school. Others, like Helmick, went the MBA route, specializing in finance. She's betting that an MBA and an electrical engineering degree will give her an edge come graduation this May.
"Accountants rule the world, so I've got to be able to speak their language," she says.
Helmick, president of LSU's MBA association, says prospects are "pretty good." She's had two offers so far from utility companies but hasn't made a decision. Some of her peers, particularly those in internal auditing, already have jobs nailed down.
You'd think that with all the swooning over internal auditors, LSU's program--the oldest in the country, founded in 1941--would be attracting more students than ever.
The truth, says Glenn Sumners, director of LSU's internal auditing program, is that it has long been a great way to land a good job or internship. Sarbanes--Oxley just made it even better.
Each year, roughly 350 students from a wide range of academic disciplines enter the program. Only about 150 complete it.
"It's a rigorous program," he says. "We're typically training students to work for Fortune 500 companies, which have high expectations. We're training our graduates to meet those high expectations."
Could today's internal auditing students wind up like yesterday's electrical engineering students?
Not likely, says Sumners. Sarbanes-Oxley has established a permanent demand for internal auditors, once viewed with suspicion by corporations but now sought after as those same corporations are compelled to greater accountability, he says.
Sumners says that while the future market for internal auditors may not be as crazy as it is today, high-paying jobs in the field should be plentiful from here on out. But for now, it's the Golden Age.
"It doesn't get any better than this. It was probably the hottest job market before Sarbanes-Oxley. Now it's scorching."
STEVE CLARK covers health care, higher education, environment and transportation. Reach him at sclark@businessreport.com.
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