Nailing a job at a Big 4 firm in New Zealand tends to be one of the key aspirations of students entering University (particularly for those that study Commerce).

Naturally, it is quite hard to eventually get the job and the students tend to be the cream of the crop from Auckland, Otago, Vic, etc. However, in saying this, it is definitely not impossible. As a rough numerical figure, I would say that out of students that study BCom, about 1 in 10 students end up pursuing a career in the Big 4 Professional Services firms.

It is also worth noting that various degrees and majors increase your chances of getting a job at a Big 4 firm. For instance, for teams such as auditing, the majority of graduate jobs are taken up by students that have studied accounting; similarly for tax, quite a large proportion of tax graduates are law students due to their familiarity with compliance. However, for teams such as Management Consulting that are quite broad in the scope of work that they do, the floor is really open to anyone with any kind of skills, but this subsequently means that it is a tougher team to get into.