Vault’s Verdict

YHB is ideally looking for detail-oriented, hardworking individuals with positive attitudes who fit with the firm’s culture. For students. YHB offers a valuable internship program, providing interns with real-world hands-on experience in both tax and audit. Just about everything about the firm’s internships gets rave reviews, aside from the fact that the summers can be slower when it comes to audit work. For full-time staff, YHB offers many career development opportunities, including solid mentorship and a culture that focuses on the career growth of junior team members.

While YHB works hard to promote a family culture and provide work-life balance, tax season hours can still be long, hovering around 60 to 70 per week. The good news is the firm offers a lot of flexibility with respect to where and when you work. As for compensation and benefits, they are said to be above average, with benefits getting especially good reviews. One issue, according to insiders, is bonus calculations could be more transparent.

YHB has a very inclusive culture, with many effective employee resource groups (ERGs) in place. And despite the fact that YHB has been experiencing growing pains and some dips in employee morale, the firm’s business outlook is strong.

EMPLOYEE REVIEWS

Quality of Life

• “The firm works really hard to promote a family culture and provide work-life balance. When I first started, it seemed like there was a lot more down time over the summer leading up to a compression period. Now it seems like it’s constantly busy year-round and it’s hard to ever feel caught up.”
• “Not much negative to say; they make an active effort to spread out work to decrease the peaks and valleys so that in busy season we are a little less busy and in the slow periods we can have stuff to do. Worst part for me is really just the new software we are switching to, which I don’t really like.
• “Best aspects of the firm’s overall quality of life is that you can tell they care about their employees and value their input and feedback. They encourage a good work-life balance. Worst aspect is having to go through tax season and long hours, but that is expected of the job when working in tax.”
• “Best: YHB does offer some flexibility in your schedule, so you can work during the hours that work best for you, and not a set 9 to 5 schedule. Worst: During compression season, it’s expected you work anywhere from 60 to 70 hours per week; with 10- to 12-hour days, there is no work-life balance during these periods.”

Compensation

• “The best aspect is that firm salary is reasonable, and the benefits are great. The firm also constantly works to get feedback from the employees to continuously improve the benefits offered. The worst aspect is that the firm could be more transparent for how bonuses and merit increases are calculated.”
• “I believe my firm can offer a much higher pay when looking at pays from competitive firms. Benefits and perks are great, but just not as useful as a higher salary would be.”
• “Best: they try to be thoughtful with time off, 401(k) contributions, and absorbing health care premium increases. Work-from-home is also a huge plus. Worst: base salary is not indicative of economic changes and work quality expected.”
• “I believe the firm can do better with perks during compression period, like better meals options, but overall compensation is okay and comparable to other firms.”

Career Development

• “The firm does a good job at generating a culture of mentorship and a focus on personal investment into the career growth of its team members. One of the areas for improvement is being able to development remote employees similar to in-person employees.”
• “The firm offers strong career development through hands-on experience, exposure to a variety of engagements, and a supportive culture with knowledgeable mentors. However, career growth could be further enhanced with more structured, individualized development plans, clearer expectations, and increased opportunities for independent responsibility.”
• “There are opportunities to advance in your career. YHB does provide many check-ins and yearly evaluations to let you know how you’re doing as well as see how you feel you’re doing. They give ample opportunity to let you know what you need to work on to get to the next level in your career. However, you can exceed expectations in all areas except hours and still not get a promotion. And the flip side is there are employees working insane hours who lack the skills necessary for the next level who are getting promoted. Hours matter too much. There are also no defined niches within YHB, so the opportunity to home in on your skills in a particular area is limited until you reach a manager level position.”
• “My mentor is great, knowledgeable, and a great resource to leverage to continue learning. Clients are small, which can lead to minimal opportunity on complex topics.”

Inclusion Efforts

• “Though there are always improvements that can be made, the firm is committed to hiring diverse employees and taking on diverse clients. Additionally, the firm has established ERGs, which have been used to educate the firm and provide community to the employees that identify with the group and/or are allies of the group.”
• “I don’t believe that the firm discriminates in any way. I think all professionals are provided the same opportunities based on performance metrics.”
• “We have several employee-led resource and affinity groups, which cover many of these inclusion areas. The firm supports these and provides funds for various optional programing.”
• “We have multiple employee resource groups, include one for Women, one for People of Color, one for LGBTQ+ people, one for Mental Health, and one for Remote Workers, plus others! I think everyone at our firm has equal access!”

Business Outlook

• “The firm has gone through numerous changes during the past year, some based on the decisions of the firm and some out of the firm’s control, which have lowered the morale of some employees and created some uncertainties about the future. However, the firm has been transparent of these changes and put a lot of effort towards boosting morale. Overall, despite these changes, the firm and employees have maintained a positive outlook for the future.”
• “Employee morale has taken a bit of a dip over the last year due to struggles with systems and software changes, plus the shutting down of one of our firm’s offices. I believe the internal culture that we have cultivated over the years will pull us through these challenges and I believe the overall financial direction of the firm remains strong.”
• “There has been a lot of consolidation by firms bigger than us and those changes often lead to lower client service levels by the bigger firms and opportunities to bring in new clients who are willing to pay our high fees. The next 12 months look fine, but the medium-term and long-term outlooks for the industry in general look scary and difficult to foresee.”
• “YHB’s business outlook is strong. We are headed in the right direction towards meeting our goals. YHB has been transparent about how they intend to reach those goals in the next couple of years. However, our leadership is comprised of very capable individuals, as well as some not-so-capable individuals.”

Intern Experience

• “The best part of my internship experience at YHB was the exposure to both tax and audit. Being able to learn and participate in both areas gave me a well-rounded understanding of public accounting and helped me better identify my interests. The team was supportive and willing to teach, which made the learning environment encouraging and valuable. One challenge of the internship was that there could have been more emphasis on individual-based work. While group collaboration was helpful, having more independent assignments throughout the internship would have allowed for greater personal responsibility and a clearer understanding of individual strengths and areas for improvement.”
• “It was good to be able to get a sense of the company’s culture and meet some of their clients. Sometimes work would be a bit light since it was the summer and a bit of an off-season time for the team I was interning with, so it would have been nice to potentially have a simulated/practice audit to work on. However, I did get to help with/observe a few internal audits that were being conducted.”
• “The people made the intern experience truly one of a kind. We got real-world scenarios handed to us as well as a project on how to make the firm better for the changes coming in future years. We also got to bond with our intern class with different events.”
• “I enjoyed the people that I worked with at the firm very much and that was one of the big deciding factors for coming to work full time. It was a little bit harder to get hands-on experience because the audit/assurance work was a little slower during the summer.”

Hiring Process

• “Firm is seeking detail-oriented, hardworking individuals with positive attitudes. We will teach you what you need, but you must be willing to learn with a great attitude.”
• “We are looking for driven, self-motivated, trainable problem solvers who fit in with the office culture.”
• “I believe the ideal candidates our firm is seeking include recent accounting graduates, as well as seasoned professionals to take on more advanced roles. Ideally, the candidate would be a good fit for the work, as well as the culture.”
• “The HR team generally seems to fine decent folks. The ideal candidate is someone who has a handful of years of experience at a smaller public accounting firm doing tax returns of all shapes and sizes, hasn’t pigeonholed themselves into a specific niche, and is willing to learn and do anything.”

Interview Questions

• “What made you interested in pursuing an accounting decree? Tell me about a time when you had to work on a group project. Name a time when you showed strong leadership. What is a scenario where you had to take charge and lead?”
• “What are your professional goals? What are your strengths? How well do you work under pressure with multiple tasks? Are you a self-starter and how do you stay organized?”
• “If you were in a scenario where your plate was full and you were asked to complete something urgent by one manager and you were handling something urgent for another manager, how would you handle that? How have you handled an unhappy client? In what environment do you work best?”
• “How well do you work under pressure with multiple tasks?”

UPPERS

• “The people and culture—the firm genuinely cares about their staff.”
• “Flexibility to work where and when I want.”
• “The learning opportunities—I have learned so much from working here.”

DOWNERS

• “Busy season hours”
• “The compensation.”
• “Not so much the firm’s doing as it is the industry as a whole, but just a lot of constant change at the moment.”