By Amanda Fryzek
Associate, Manufacturing Group
Wichita, Kansas

Friends, Food, and Fun. It definitely sounds like a commercial for the famous gaming restaurant, Dave & Buster's, rather than the first day working as a professional with the accounting firm of Kennedy and Coe. However, Kennedy and Coe is not your average accounting firm.

Within an hour of arriving at Kennedy and Coe's Learning Center in Salina, Kansas, you have the opportunity to reconnect with familiar faces from your first and second interviews and meet a slew of new friends along the way. You will be introduced to the many facets of Kennedy and Coe, learn about our industry groups and meet many of the members and managers, as well as the firm's CEO, Kurt Siemers.

After brief introductions, you are escorted to your training station for the week, where you are faced with your new best friend — which just happens to be thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment! As a recent college graduate, you are thinking that you have just hit the jackpot or won the lottery. Much to your surprise, you have been given a laptop with two monitors. What can you possibly need multiple monitors for? Well, in your next few months with Kennedy and Coe, you will quickly learn their value!

Within my first month at Kennedy and Coe, I worked on an audit of a million dollar company. Who would have thought? A million dollar client! Boy, was I in for a surprise. Not even two weeks later, I had the opportunity to work on a multi-million dollar audit. Of course, you cannot do an audit by yourself. Working with Kennedy and Coe, you quickly become one of the gang and join a network of family and friends. The line of communication is direct and all members have an open-door policy. It is refreshing to walk down the hall and have the CEO remember your name!

We have all heard the saying, “there is no such thing as a stupid question.” As true as this may be, as a new hire you will be faced with many “less than intelligent” questions that linger in your head. Kennedy and Coe helps to ease your transition from college to career by providing you a mentor who is never too busy to answer all of those questions and more. And speaking of questions, just when you thought you knew it all, you have another week of training to learn that you really don't know anything. In your first year with Kennedy and Coe, you will experience sales training, computer software training, and up to 120 hours (3 weeks) of on-site training to help you prepare for your next big project.

To expel one of the world’s oldest accounting myths, ALL accountants do not spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, preparing tax returns. According to my 85-year old Grandmother, accountants don't work 52 weeks of the year, but more like 14 weeks, because tax returns should only be filed between January 1st and April 15th. Everyone knows that! Although I wish this magical world of working only 14 weeks a year was the case at Kennedy and Coe, my Grandmother was slightly confused. In the past year, I have had the opportunity to work year-round on many different projects and in many different areas of audit and tax: working on reviews, compilations, financial statements, and inventory observations. As you can see, Kennedy and Coe is not your average accounting firm.