By Renee Baker
“It’s definitely not for everyone, but accounting is less about math than most people think.” As someone who has loathed and dreaded math for the vast majority of their life, this is not a sentence that I can believe easily. For Jenny Chan (Class of 2009), however, it is an honest truth displayed in her everyday life.

Jenny majored in Commerce and Accounting at the University of British Columbia. In 2012, she did an internship at KPMG, and subsequently became a full-time employee. She had gone into accounting because not only was UBC’s program excellent, but some of the major accounting firms recruited directly from their graduates and it would make getting a job insurmountably easier. A quick survey of KPMG’s website reveals that they are part of the Big Four: the four largest international professional services networks in the world. Their revenue totals up to at least $24.8 billion, and their employees number around 162,000.

“My internship was a lot lighter than my current job. We had rotations so we could try different departments within the firm such as audit, tax, enterprise (which are private companies), marketing, and HR,” Jenny says. “I did audit and enterprise. There were also a lot of social events to bond with the intern group and meet various people in the company.”

Currently, she is an auditor – officially, a staff accountant. “We audit financial statements for companies. We’re essentially independent parties to make sure that the financial statements are accurate for the users. We do a lot more intricate day-to-day stuff, but that’s basically what our role is.”
Contrary to popular beliefs about the daily duties of auditors and accountants, Jenny says that her job is actually more about teamwork and client service than crunching numbers all day. The most interesting thing about Jenny’s job is that she gets to travel to a variety of places, from Arizona to Wichita to Toronto. This is not something one would imagine as part of an accountant’s job description!

“I get to travel a lot because one of my clients has hotels across the States and another has hotels in Toronto. Sometimes we go to these individual operations to get the necessary information,” Jenny says. “Technically you could do this through the phone or internet, but usually it’s private info and this is more efficient. And a little traveling never hurts!”