Consultant - Financial Reporting Group
We are looking for an energetic professional with a strong finance and accounting background to join us in transforming stock-based compensation reporting and fair value services.
With over 80 professionals and experience serving hundreds of publicly traded clients (including 35 Fortune 100 companies), Equity Methods seeks to combine the best of a large professional services firm with the best of an entrepreneurial, technology-enabled company. We work hard in the quest to have high impact and deliver exemplary client service that supports our client retention and overall growth story. We have consistently been rated a Top Company to Work for in Arizona.
About the Successful Candidate
If people describe you as…
- Efficient, decisive, and ready to lend a hand;
- Eager to solve complex problems;
- Interested in finding better ways of structuring a process;
- Focused on creating impact and willing to bend-stretch to deliver an A+ outcome;
- Comfortable with ambiguity and high in problem-solving resourcefulness; and
- Intellectually curious…
Then we might be a good fit for you.
Typical Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or another quantitative field
- 2-5 years of exemplary performance in an accounting or finance role. Preference for public accounting, litigation consulting, or other professional services experience. Candidates with more or less experience may be considered for other roles as well
- Track record of self-directed learning and mastery of new concepts
- Comfort with technology
- Clear, gracious oral and written communication
The Financial Reporting Services Group at EM
Our award-winning Financial Reporting team specializes in developing controlled processes to manage the external and internal reporting for publicly traded companies’ share-based payment programs.
- External reporting needs span compensation expense, diluted EPS, and deferred tax (ASC 718, 260, and 740, respectively). We also assist clients with ASC 805, 820, 470, and 480 matters.
- Internal reporting needs span forecasting and budgeting, international tax management, and related varieties of management accounting.
- You can read more about our Financial Reporting Service offerings here: http://www.equitymethods.com/reporting
If you don’t have specific technical experience in the above areas, but you otherwise think you’re a good fit, please apply. We have years of experience getting new hires up to speed. (See the Launch Period section below.)
The Consultant Role
The Consultant role serves as the primary day-to-day contact to clients. You’re knee-deep in getting the work done alongside associates and senior consultants, and ultimately are the core point-person to a client. Supporting new implementations, tackling ad hoc client questions, reengineering processes, and reviewing deliverables are part of your job.
As an experienced hire, you will start in a “launch period” to catch you up on the experience you need to have in order to play the role of Consultant successfully. Then, as a Senior Consultant, you will:
- Manage day-to-day client interactions in a way that demonstrates accountability, upholds quality standards, and ultimately improves the stickiness of clients through ongoing improvement of the client experience.
- Design, implement, document, and troubleshoot processes in order to proactively manage risk and inject thoughtful control measures to ensure adherence with accounting regulations, plan specifications, and client’s needs.
- Manage project scope and maintain a proactive client service cadence through constant familiarity with process strengths and weaknesses, project deadlines, and client expectations.
- Review deliverables and own successful client service outcomes. Complete reviews in a timely manner, offering high attention-to-detail feedback, insight on packaging and framing to clients, and astute identification of process improvement opportunities.
- Support client implementations by understanding client financial reporting and tax needs, data structures, award granting patterns, and customization expectations; support process engineering, implementation timeline management, deliverable walk-throughs and more to arrive at a high-impact, low-friction outcome.
- Re-engineer process improvements to eliminate superfluous steps while reducing risk.
- Participate in practice- and firm-level initiatives involving client service, thought leadership, business development, channel relationships, and risk management.
- Promote a low-drama, collegial environment in which results are the ultimate benchmark of success.
Launch Period
You’ll need a launch period to learn our processes and get productive. During the launch period, you’ll be responsible for:
- Enhancing your subject-matter expertise in stock-based compensation and related accounting literature. Through independent study and formal training, gain mastery over accounting rules, regulations, and industry practices that are relevant for stock-based compensation reporting (e.g., ASC 718, 260, 740, 805, 470, and 480; IFRS 2, etc).
- Developing programming skills. You’ll complete assigned exercises and engage in self-directed practice to develop the skills necessary to understand and build processes in our technology environment.
Life on the Financial Reporting Team
Like any other company, ours isn’t the right fit for everyone.
- We solve novel problems on tight deadlines. Thus, a proactive, ownership-based work style is expected for all members of the engagement team, regardless of seniority level.
- We create positive impact by delivering results for clients as a team, which requires a graceful, forthright communication approach and tight, ongoing internal collaboration horizontally and vertically.
- Small teams = big responsibility. Good judgment is required. The upside is you have excellent autonomy.
- All employees work from our headquarters in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. Scottsdale is part of the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area and boasts a high quality of life—despite the HOT summers.
- Travel is generally light (<20% in most cases). Since clients are located all over the country and our users are around the globe, we use phone, email, and WebEx heavily.
- We move fast as part of our focus on having high impact. This is not a slow-paced 40-hour-per-week position.
More about Equity Methods
Equity Methods provides valuation, financial reporting, and human resources advisory services related to equity compensation and other complex securities.
At Equity Methods, we believe in the power of equity-based compensation to advance a company’s strategy. We tailor reports and the processes that produce them to your specific award types, compliance objectives, reporting requirements, and systems. Since 1998, we have assisted 35 Fortune 100 companies and over 400 clients with their most pressing equity compensation valuation and reporting challenges. From pre-grant Monte Carlo modeling for relative TSR awards to fully outsourced financial reporting, we’re dedicated to bringing insight, control, and expanded capability to financial reporting and human resources teams.
We’ve served a diverse array of companies, including hundreds of publicly traded firms (including 50 Fortune 100 companies) and an eclectic mix of private firms. We have three core practice groups: Financial Reporting, Valuation, and HR Advisory. The Financial Reporting Practice primarily serves large, publicly traded companies in the external and internal reporting for their stock-based compensation. The Financial Reporting Group has been rated #1 in client satisfaction and loyalty by the 2018 Group Five Stock Plan Administration Benchmarking Study.
Equity Methods Careers
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