Kevin’s path to an analytics auditing role in the United States
Learn how an MQM degree from Duke (Fuqua) coupled with his previous accounting education and Big Four auditing experience helped Kevin transition to an analytics-focused audit role in a multinational company in the US.
Do you recall your original motivation that made you interested in analytics when you were in Taiwan?
While working at one of the Big Four Accounting firms as an auditor back in Taiwan, I was intrigued by how auditors could bring much more value if they knew how to incorporate analytics into audits. At that time, most of the audit work was done on Excel. When it came to finding the risks in huge datasets, what auditors usually did was extract samples from the whole population to perform audit testing. This method has its drawbacks: the hidden fraud could never be recovered because the anomalies were always only a fraction of the total transaction. With an understanding that acquiring more advanced data analytics skills might help me improve audit quality, I began my programming self-learning journey. The first programming language I learned was Python. I grew more and more excited when I saw that the little script from Python could turn a huge amount of data into a useful format. I immediately knew I had enthusiasm about data and wanted to further my analytical skills and therefore I decided to pursue my master’s degree in Business Analytics.
You applied for MSBA programs about four years ago. Do you have a favorite memory from your graduate school application experience or takeaways from that period?
My favorite memory from the application experience was the moment when I clearly set up my short-term career goal. Pursuing an MSBA was definitely a big moment in my life, not only because it’s a huge investment but also because Business Analytics/Data Analytics was a new area for me. I spent four years in college learning Accounting and passed the US CPA exam right after graduation. To some degree, I didn’t want to give up all the hard earned knowledge I had acquired. However, I decided to take the different route from other traditional accounting career paths; therefore, setting up a clear goal was necessary. Eventually, I was able to clear my mind and put down my goal: landing a Data Analyst job in the US where I could analyze data by leveraging my finance and accounting knowledge. I felt that made perfect sense because of my accounting background and audit experience.
Do you have any tips for people that are considering whether to pursue an MS in Business Analytics degree but are not sure whether to apply or not?
I would recommend people who might be interested in data analytics to go on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) to start to get familiar with programming. There are tons of online courses available that allow you to learn for free. Taking advantage of these free resources is a great way to find out whether you like analytics or not. If you like it and you think this is something you are willing to constantly do and continuously learn, MSBA would be your choice. If you don’t like it, I’m sure there are better routes for you to explore.
If someone is planning to apply for an MSBA program in the near future and has limited technical skills (and limited time), what do you think is the most important thing they should do to prepare?
Based on my observation, MSBA applications have become more and more competitive. Most of the MSBAs require some technical skills, and if not, at least an analytical mindset. This is something you may want to highlight in your essays. Providing some examples of analytical work you have done, regardless of how technical they were, can give you an edge in demonstrating your potential. However, setting aside some time to learn programming to prepare yourself is still very important. Include in your essays that you’re constantly learning analytics and are very passionate about data, that should also help.
Can you share one of your favorite memories from your life at Duke Fuqua?
My favorite memories were hanging out with my cohorts in Boston during the break. They all became my close friends.
What type of people are a good fit for the Duke MQM program?
People who are good team players and can exhibit effective collaboration are a good fit for Duke Fuqua. That may include resolving teamwork problems and conflicts, communicating effectively, actively making contributions to the team, supporting team members, etc. In terms of the MQM program, giving examples of what you have done to demonstrate your passion about big data and clearly explaining how your career goal is aligned with the program can make the applicant stand out. Also, highlighting your personal brand in the 25-random-things essay might help. In other words, you may want to talk about what you are good at and what you can bring to the Fuqua family as the program is always doing its best to promote diversity.
You did the Forensics Track during the MQM program. Can you talk a little bit about what that track teaches students?
The Forensics Track is mainly focused on learning internal control over operation, risk identification and fraud analytics. To be more specific, half of the curriculum is about learning the concept of risk management, internal control and fraud. The other half is more practical: leveraging R or Tableau to identify the risks within transactional data. There are a couple of cases involving data where students will need to use data tools to detect the hidden risks and also apply the business knowledge they learned to solve the problems.
Based on what you know now from your post-MQM career experience, if you could go back and be a student again is there anything you would do differently? (Such as, focus on courses in a different area…)
For me, I would have spent more time on absorbing knowledge outside the accounting or audit world. For example, I would have chosen more elective courses such as Operational Analytics and Strategic Management. Actually, I spent too much time on job searching in the first half of the year because I was too worried about finding a job in the United States. The reality is that most employers will not wait over six months for you to be on board. When they learn that you’re still in school they either reject your application or ask you to apply again when you graduate. In the first six months, I should have focused more on campus recruitment as those opportunities are real and they are willing wait until graduation. The rest of time, I would have strengthened my data analytics skills, taken electives and even participated in a data competition.
Would you like to share any tips for people that are searching for analytics jobs in the United States?
As more and more business analytics graduates come out from schools each year, there’s no denying that landing an analytics job in the US has become increasingly competitive. However, leveraging some of the resources from schools, friends or networks is one of the most important steps. Let’s say you have already spent hours and hours practicing interviews and coding challenges. The next step would be reaching out to people in the analytics field to learn more about the industry, job market, position requirements and the company. This step is crucial as there is a high chance for you to get interview opportunities through these networking activities. Once you kick-off the interview process, it all depends on how you convince hiring managers and the team to hire you. In other words, when you are in the job market, make sure you’re on top of your interview skills such as technical capabilities and communication skills. To sum up, building a strong network opens up the door and exerting your strength in coding and communication increases your chances of getting hired.
You are a data analyst supporting the finance/audit departments at a large manufacturing company in North Carolina. Can you talk a little bit about what you do in this type of risk/internal control analyst role?
Previously, my team was mainly focused on supporting auditors to organize and manipulate financial and operational data to fulfill requests. Some examples of tasks I deal with are: “Please provide potentially duplicated invoices list from 2020 to now”, “Give me a list of top 50 customers who have the largest overdue amount” or “What are the sales orders in 2021 that have not gone through the approval process but have been released?” As you can see, these questions are highly related to accounting and auditing. You will need to understand what the requests mean and what data is required to answer the questions. Once you have data at hand, you will need SQL skills to transform data and Tableau skills to create dashboards for visualization. Our team has been expanding to different areas. Now we are internal business analytics consultants assisting the Treasury team with forecasting, Tax team with anomalies identification, Legal team with fraud detection, HR team with report automation, Pricing team with price optimization and so on.
When we talked you mentioned that there are not as many forensic auditing-related jobs in the US and that it is competitive. Is that correct? For people with accounting backgrounds do you still think this is a high potential field?
Audit analytics is a new area that more and more companies want to invest in to maximize the effectiveness of audits so auditors can gain more granular insights as their audit evidence. What’s more, analytics permits more frequent and continuous monitoring of business activities; therefore, operational professionals can also benefit from being able to identify potential issues in an early stage. The Big Four accounting firms started to provide internal audit analytics services to their clients a couple of years ago and now more and as they see the value more companies are willing to hire in-house audit data analysts. Take my company as an example. It was a team of 12 when I joined the company and now it has nearly doubled within two years. Many big companies like Google, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Spotify, and Coca-Cola are also putting more emphasis on the combination of data analytics and accounting/audit and have openings for similar positions. All in all, I think this is the trend.
For people who have an accounting or business background, it is an area that can be considered as one of their career paths since audit professionals with advanced analytical capabilities are in high demand in the job market. However, the number of positions for audit analytics is not as high as those for marketing or strategy for now, but I do think this is a field with a lot of potential.
When we talked you mentioned that you would like to move toward a more technical (data science) related role. What motivates you to do this?
I learned machine learning models and different algorithms in the Fuqua MQM program and found them quite interesting. Diving deeply into the concepts from the mathematics and statistics perspective allowed me to leverage the models and advanced analytics more effectively. Therefore, I’d love to put more time and effort into learning these skills. I know pivoting into data science is not easy but I’m glad that my company supports me to keep learning. If I’m equipped with solid data science skills, and have an understanding of the business concepts inside out, I’m sure I would be able to bring more value to the team and to the company which is one of the main goals that I want to achieve in the short-term.
What is the most important knowledge or skill you learned in the Fuqua MQM education that has benefitted your career?
My coding skill. I learned R and SQL in the MQM program. In my current job, I use R and Python from time to time and use SQL and Alteryx heavily almost every single day. Knowing how to write R code allowed me to pick up Python easily. It’s about the syntax difference. Same concept as SQL versus Alteryx: translating SQL knowledge into Alteryx workflow is not difficult. The coding skills I built in the MQM program helped me flatten the learning curve when onboarding and allow me to make a positive impact very quickly.
What is one skill that you think you still need to improve to be a really good analyst?
Sales skill. As I mentioned before, our team has shifted focus from fulfilling requests for auditors to providing consultancy services to different teams. Therefore, being able to tell a persuasive story to stakeholders becomes one of the most important skills. Our role is to leverage technologies to make their life easier by saving costs and improving efficiency. Most importantly, it’s about letting them know how powerful big data can be and how much they can benefit from our services. This is done through presentations and day-to-day meetings. This is something I’m still constantly learning and improving.
What do you miss most about Taiwan? 🙂
My family, my friends and Taiwanese FOOD of course.