 Hello, everyone. Today I'm going to be interviewing Liz Wiesel, the co-founder and CEO of WayUp. This company was named one of the 30 most innovative startups that's going to be changing the world. WayUp is a free resource for college students in the U.S. as well as across the globe. It's an easy platform. You can input your information fairly quickly and they have a long list of attractive clients that they are looking for you. You are the user of this. A little bit about the company. The company has over 6 million early career professionals, thousands of employers. Liz was named one of the coolest 18 women in Silicon Valley. She appeared on TETTA, TETCrunch, CNN, ABC, The Washington Post. Her company was featured in The Wall Street Journal as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post Financial Times. I'm pretty sure I'm not mentioning all the newspapers and magazines that you appeared in. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to do this. Thank you. Absolutely. What I do is I have accounting students and CPA candidates. What I would like to do is how does WayUp help recent accounting graduate and CPA candidate start a career, get a job, get an internship? Please let me know how you can help. Absolutely. Whether you're looking for a public accounting role or a private accounting role, WayUp has no shortage. So many. It's probably one of our top five most popular types of majors that employers are looking for on WayUp. First of all, I know it's really frustrating when accounting students go to a job site and they look for jobs and every job requires five years of experience. That's not going to happen on WayUp. Everything on WayUp is specifically focused for college students or recent graduates. So we have jobs with some of the most incredible accounting firms out there from EY to RSM to Crow and the list goes on, but we also have great accounting roles in-house at some private companies. So what I'll start with is we'll help you get a job by just promoting opportunities you might not have known about, but we'll also help by giving you advice. A lot of companies, it's funny and you might be surprised to hear this, but companies who work with us then give us materials to give to our users that literally are some of the tricks for how to get a job. Like they want our users to get hired, especially because on WayUp we tend to attract a really diverse range of students. So for example, if you go to wayup.com slash apply slash EY, which is the EY application on WayUp, you'll see all kinds of content that if you read through that and you allude to that during your interview, you're going to do better. And so I think one of the ways we help outside of just promoting jobs you might not have known about is certainly helping with content and advice that might help you actually land the job once you get the interview. Absolutely. It sounds like inside information, but that's a great value for the users. And you mentioned EY, so you do have access to at least one of the big four because that's the dream job for most accounting graduate and CPA firms. So that's excellent. Yeah. And EY is one of my favorite accounting firms. I think they're incredible. They really value diversity, innovation. They're fast paced, but I will tell you, there are great companies out there that are hiring accounting majors in totally different industries. Companies like RBI is hiring accounting firms and RBI is the company behind many of our favorite fast food brands and so on and so forth. So I guess I just want to plug that if you want to work at an amazing accounting firm, we have so many, as I mentioned, a few of them. And if you want to work in-house in accounting, we also have great opportunities there too. Yes. Yes. That's a great way because many colleges, they don't have a career service, and if they do have a career service office, they're not as active. So I strongly encourage everyone that's listening, check out WayUp. Now, when should students apply? How early? Freshman year, senior year, junior year? In your opinion, when is the best way to do it? Great question. So most of the more serious internships tend to start for rising seniors, meaning juniors, or sophomores. So I would say definitely start looking for internships, your sophomore year in the fall. I know it sounds crazy. You just got back from your freshman year and your summer, maybe you were a camp counselor, maybe you had a local part-time job, and you come back to campus and now you have to start applying for careers. But trust me, the earlier the better. However, even for freshmen, even if you're not declared an accounting major and you think you're going to study accounting, I can't recommend enough looking at some of the early identification programs are called EID that many of the large companies out there do. I know EY is one example of an organization that does incredible freshman programs. I'm KPMG does as well. Often these are programs that are either focused on underrepresented minorities. Sometimes it's open to anyone who's studying accounting, but they're great programs that either the organization will fly you out for a week during the summer to learn from some of the business professionals. Sometimes they're organizations that are just doing online content like virtual events, which way up does a lot of virtual events with our accounting firm clients. So I would say start looking freshman year. There's never a reason not to look at least once a month, check into way up. We'll ping you about opportunities as well, but get really active starting sophomore year, first semester, and even junior year, first semester. It has to be a top priority. Thank you for sharing this information because if the big four don't recruit from your college, it's very hard to get in touch with them. So way up could be a way like a backdoor to get in touch with the big four or big accounting firms for that matter. Please, if you guys are listening, you heard me right. If you want to get into the big four, this is one way, maybe one potential route at least you should try. And many of my students are non-traditional, not my students, but many of my viewers are non-traditional. They were a chef, they were into sociology, they were mathematicians. Now they're switching to accounting. So they're not early career individuals. Can you also help with this group of people? Anyone who considers themselves entry level into a career space? So we have people who are, I had someone on way up, I saw who was in her 80s, and she was wanted to enter a new field for the first time. I forget which industry it was, but she said, you know, I'm early in my career in this field and that's fine too. We don't discriminate on how many years of college you are or what your age is. I don't care about that. If you're looking for an entry-level job in an industry, an entry-level we define as either zero to five years of experience in that way up is perfect for you. Excellent. Yes, I do have many success stories. For example, I used to know a mechanic and hopefully he's listening to this. Now he's a CPA. He's going to be a manager soon. I used to know a chef that did a transfer from being a chef to being a CPA. So I helped many non-traditional. With my resources, you know, I find it difficult that I try to help them as much as possible, connect them with CPA firms, but I hope way up can help in this process as well. That's excellent. Yeah, we would love to. And you're not limited to any particular type of colleges like Ivy League or top tier school. You know, you went to Penn, I know you went to Penn, so it doesn't matter where you go. Definitely not. We welcome anyone from any school. We don't charge schools, so it's not like we have a bias towards universities that can afford to pay us. I don't want to charge schools. Employers pay us to reach students from a diverse range of thousands of schools, from community colleges to, you know, obviously for your institutions, master's programs and so on. So I don't care what school you go to. Come on over. Yes, absolutely. And I heard you talking about the community college in one of your interviews, I believe, either with the Washington Post or ABC, you had somebody from Stanford or not Harvard, what's that school across from Harvard, across the river? There's a bunch, Tufts, BU, BC. One of them. They're competitors to Harvard and you were mentioning MIT. MIT, MIT had that guy from MIT who was recruiting and you told him that even we recruited students from a community college that's working with Ivy League students. That's very interesting. Is there anything else you would like to share with me, obviously with my, with my, with my viewers, subscribers, that's going to be a benefit to them as a career advice? Obviously, most of them, they go to school to get a job. So please, anything that you can add value to that. Absolutely. I think something that's so important that I will say is while your hard skills are incredibly important, you're not going to get the interview sometimes for an accounting position unless you have those basic hard skills. You know, maybe it's a CPA, maybe it's a few, enough credits in your accounting major. What I will say is soft skills are incredibly important, too. I can't encourage everyone enough who's watching this to make sure you're also brushing up on your interview skills. Be yourself. Show your why you're unique. During any interview, someone should walk away and say, that person's unique because of this. And they should walk away saying that person is going to be a pleasure to work with. They're going to be a culture add at my organization because of this. And if you feel as though you haven't made that clear during the interview, then go back and start practicing your interview skills more, because I think so many people who are applying for accounting positions, for example, show up to the interview and say, you know what? I studied the major. I have all the credits. I read the job description. I'm good. So I don't need to prepare that much outside of my accounting skills. And they show up and companies like EY or RSM or Crow or Dixon Hughes-Goodman, DHT, these are very competitive organizations. You have to show up and really be prepared to explain why, what makes you unique versus everyone else in your major or everyone else who has the same credit. So I think that's the piece of advice I would make sure I encourage everyone to do. If you're looking for advice on how to just bring your A game to an interview, definitely feel free to go to wayup.com slash guide. And we have a whole range of interview tips that are not specific to accounting just for anyone. Things like how to do research for your interview, how to show enthusiasm, and so on and so forth. Yes, I would like to add, I always advise based on my limited experience to brand yourself. You need to know who you are. You ain't like who are you. You should have a social profile, a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn. You have to be a little different. You have to differentiate yourself and whatever knowledge you know, whatever skills you know, even if it's not related to your field, make a video on YouTube. Show the potential employer that you're in someone who's interesting to just so you can add value, you can add diversity means so many different things. But this is one way of being diverse, is knowing something else and sharing it with the world. I totally agree with that. Absolutely. And you know, I will say not everyone is as extra. I mean, you are such a great personality and some people are a little more quiet or shy or introverted and that's okay. But during the interview, make sure you come out of your shell. And I think if you can create YouTube videos like Montsour does, that is amazing, amazing. But not everyone can and that's okay too. But just bring it, bring your A game as you just said so eloquently. Bring your A game during your interview. Absolutely. Absolutely. One last question for you please. If you don't have nothing to share, you know, if there's nothing else you would like to add, what's your favorite Seinfeld episode? Oh, man. That was a trap. Oh my gosh. I think probably Chinese restaurant because I grew up in New York City and just could totally relate to that one. But there are so many good ones. However, I will tell you if you watch Seinfeld today, like 90% of the situations that they were in are totally irrelevant now. You can't relate. You can't relate. Yeah. Like the garage with the parking, it's like, no, you know, there's a lot. The phone, the messages, checking your phone messages. But actually, I watched one of his shows in Atlantic City. Now he uses the new technology, uses the iPhone. So his new jokes are modern based on today's work. And it hasn't been, I mean, if you think about it, it is old. I mean, it is old, but it's even with the technology. It makes even older than it is. But yes, it's interesting. Liz, thank you so much for coming to farhatlectures.com and giving us this opportunity. I'm sure my students are going to be grateful and I hope they will breach out to weigh up, fill out an application. They're not going to lose anything. It's a good way to start a career. That's what I always tell people, explore your options, especially when it's free and there's no risk for you to lose. Thank you very much for having me. And thank you for what you're doing for students around the country. It's incredible. And around the world. Absolutely. Around the world. I'm sorry. Around the world. It's incredible. And I hope people really take your advice because it's great advice. Likewise, Liz. Thank you. Thank you.