One of the biggest questions about the big 4 is travel. How much do big 4 professionals travel? Some people think they travel all the time and other people are convinced that big 4 professionals don’t travel all the time.

I’ll provide some insight into travel in the big 4 as there are many misconceptions. Travel in the big 4 relies on several factors. I think there are 3 main factors that are worth covering.

1.The first factor is the size of the client. The one way you can reduce or increase the amount you travel is by the size of the client that you will work on. If you have a large client, there is a chance that you won’t have to travel much other than to that client. This is because you will have one main location to go to if the client provides you with enough utilization. Alternatively, if you want to travel a lot, you should get on a lot of small clients that way you will have to travel to multiple locations. If you want to figure out the clients of the big 4 firm, that you will be joining then make sure to visit our big 4 clients pages.You should then look up the locations of those clients to see whether they are located in the city or area that you will work in.

2. Another factor that effects how much travel you will have to do is the size of your practice. The size of your practice in the big 4 will impact how much you travel. If your practice is new or small, you will probably have to travel more because there will be less people in your practice that will have to cover a large region. This is especially true if you group is small practice nationally. If your group is a small group nationally then you will also have to cover a large region of the country other than the city that your home office is located in.

3. The next factor is the location of your big 4 office. If you work in the new York office, you might have to travel less as all your clients will be in the new York area. If you live in the los angeles area, you will have to travel a lot. One because you have to drive everywhere in LA and two is because clients are located all around LA and southern California. Additionally, if you work in a small office like Memphis, you will probably have to travel to multiple cities since Memphis doesn’t have enough major companies headquartered there to keep associates utilized for the whole year.

Ok now let’s talk about misconceptions about big 4 travel. Many people think that you can avoid travel by going into tax or audit. It doesn’t matter what line of service you go into the big 4. I’ve known people in tax that travel a lot. I’ve known people in tax that don’t travel at all. The same goes for audit and advisory. I’ve known people in audit and advisory that travel a lot and those that don’t travel either.

In conclusion there are several factors that effect how much you will have to travel in the big 4 .

  1. One is the size of the practice that you will be joining
  2. Another one is the size of the client that you would be assigned to
  3. And the last one is the location of your big 4 office.

Depending on how much you want to travel you need to ask questions about all these factors during your big 4 interview. For example, If you don’t want to travel very much then you would want to work in a large office like New York in a group that has a lot of people nationally and you’d want to work on their biggest client. This would decrease the chances that you have to travel. The opposite would apply if you want to travel a lot.