I graduated with a bachelor degree in Business Administration and Master in Professional Accounting from UT-Austin in just four years in 2011. During my last semester in college, I started working at Retailmenot in a team of three people. By the time I graduated, my team members left and I was in charge of training and managing team members. In addition, after noticing that our competitors can monetize on sites like Amazon and Ebay that do not go through a third party marketing company, I asked my boss for permission to implement the click-through links customized on Amazon and Ebay that I learned from researching on the web. Once we employed these links, the company started receiving money that was not earned before. I realized that the key to contribute successfully is to look for improvement in the current process and figure out a way to yield the desired result. In this case, I used the Internet to help me achieve my vision. Since then, I have found the Internet to be a powerful tool for my career. Whenever I need to know how to write certain excel macros or find best practices, I go to the Internet to help me do my job more effectively and efficiently.
Even though I was offered a full time job in Austin, I decided to join EY Assurance group in Houston, to be with my family and to apply my Accounting degree. At EY, I was exposed to clients of different size in variety of industries. The different assignments strengthened my analytical and problem-solving skills. After enjoying this productive and educational experience, I wanted to learn the operations side. I accepted the offer from Goodman Manufacturing to work in Internal Audit Department to be exposed to company’s operations, and SOX-IT and SOX Financial Controls testing. In my first few months at Goodman, I worked on P-Card audit with a senior and also performed SOX-IT controls testing. Testing SOX-IT controls was challenging for me since I studied Accounting and my exposure to IT was limited. I relied on my soft skills to learn how a system was designed and to test the controls around it appropriately. While testing a control relating to approval of timesheets, I noted from my discussion with the IT programmer that a supervisor can approve timesheet for any employee in the company, not just the ones been assigned to him as previously documented in prior year workpapers. This issue came up as I confirmed my understanding of the control instead of relying on prior year work. We recommended that a review of supervisor’s time approval should be implemented to detect any inappropriate timesheet approval by supervisors I appreciated the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and add new skills to my repertoire. Before I know it, testing SOX-IT controls was not so difficult after all.
Moving forward, I asked for more responsibilities to prove that I can handle challenges. I led two other team members in an audit that includes review of several departments related to Logistics. My team members happened to be a recent international college grad with no work experience and a new coworker with no internal audit experience. In addition to executing my portion of the testing procedures and ensuring that the audit would meet the deadline, I also trained my team members and advise them in difficult situations. . I always discussed problems encountered to my team members. This step helped my team members see my logic and add in their inputs, which I appreciated greatly. There were many instances when our solutions were better because of my team members’ inputs. I was also being a role model since my work ethics and hard work set the tone of our productivity during the audit. I tried to create a fun working environment since I saw from my personal experience that the more enthusiastic the team members are, the more productive the team is. We finished the audit on time and provided many valuable recommendations that management embraced. I learned the key to success is to do my job, do it well, and foresee and fix issues before they happen.
Around the time I joined Goodman, the company was acquired by a Japanese company. Although this was viewed as a good opportunity and layoffs were not expected, the reality was different from anticipation. I enjoy working for Goodman and hope to remain with them as long as possible but I do not want audit to be my only function. I want to continue brainstorming and improving our processes but I have a degree in Accounting and want to familiarize myself with global business. There have been many attempts of synergy by American and Japanese managers. Some have been very successful, when related to reducing costs. However, from my observations and audits, these synergy attempts created mass confusion in sales, accounting, and finance. I hope that the Capstone Consulting Project will give me the knowledge and skillset to solve those issues. Eventually, I want to be in a leading position where I can practice effective decision making. I feel that an MBA, along with dedication and hard work, will help eliminate possible obstacles.