The Big 4 Career Myth: Ana Garcia on What Finance Professionals Get Wrong About Their Next Move

Ana Garcia spent four years in public accounting at KPMG before doing something most of her cohort never considered — she crossed to the other side of the hiring process. Now a recruiter at Clarity placing finance, operations, and technology professionals, she has a clear view of what people get wrong when they plan their next move. The biggest myth: that everyone from a Big 4 firm is headed for the same job. 

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There’s a quiet assumption that follows everyone out of a Big 4 firm: you trained together, you were measured the same way, so you’ll all land in roughly the same kind of role. Ana Garcia spent four years inside that assumption at KPMG. She’d tell you it’s wrong.

Ana started in accounting on a professor’s advice, earned her CPA in KPMG’s private enterprise practice, and planned to pivot into something more entrepreneurial after two years. She did pivot — just not where she expected. At the two-year mark she realized she was drawn to the people side of the work more than the numbers, and that pulled her to the other side of the hiring process entirely. She’s now spent several years at Clarity recruiting and placing finance, operations, and technology professionals.

On this episode of The Next Moves, Joe and Ana get into what finance professionals consistently misread about their own careers: why your title says less than you think, why the context around a role matters more than the role itself, and the one trait that separates candidates more than anything on their résumé.

Key Takeaways

Being “Big 4” doesn’t make you interchangeable. 

The market assumes every CPA from a large firm lands in the same kind of role. The reality is that your client mix, the size of teams you worked on, and the people you managed build a skill set no one else has.

The title tells you almost nothing about the role.

An accounting manager job at a large public company looks nothing like the same title at a smaller PE-backed business. Reporting structure, team size, and how self-sufficient you need to be matter more than the words on the offer letter.

The best moves account for your life, not just your career. 

Commute, days in office, travel, a transition into parenthood — the context around a role decides whether it actually works. Candidates rarely raise this themselves. The right recruiter does.

A recruiter who only wants to fill the role isn’t doing the job. 

Ana’s view from both sides: the placement only works if it works for you. The goal is a match you can stay in and grow in for years, not a quick fill.

Curiosity is the trait hiring managers want most, and it’s a behavior you can build. 

It looks like deconstructing a problem, asking why it’s happening, and digging until you understand it well enough to apply the lesson elsewhere. It grows with tenure, and it separates candidates more than anything on paper.

Don’t run toward the obvious move. 

Everyone leaving public practice wants FP&A. Before you chase a function, get curious about the company context — size, stage, systems, who you’d report to. The right environment matters more than the label on the role.

Final Word

Ana’s path is a useful reminder that a finance career rarely moves in a straight line, and that the most valuable thing you carry into your next role isn’t a title, it’s the mix of competencies you’ve stacked along the way.

If you’re a finance professional weighing your next move, this is the conversation to start with. And when you’re ready to talk through what that move could actually look like, Ana and the Clarity team are who to call.