From Public to Private and Back to Public Accounting
David Rim, CPA, CGMA, senior manager at Mazars USA LLP, didn’t immediately know he would love public accounting, but after sampling the waters in private practice he came back to public accounting where he remains.
Working at Mazars came easy for him after having worked in private accounting at an environmental services company in Newark. It’s there where he honed his communication skills away from accounting jargon. “A lot of times there were accounting and financial reporting issues that I was used to conveying to other accounting professionals. Framing these matters in operating and general business terms went a long way in helping to get my point across,” says David. “It provided the opportunity to learn more about the operations of businesses while partnering with the plant managers and operations folks.”
This communication came in handy when he eventually decided to head back to public accounting and join the ranks at Mazars. While David enjoyed his time working in private accounting, he missed juggling various clients and the fast pace. He thought at the time that private practice would provide a better quality of life for him and his wife, Kimberly, a teacher in Old Bridge, but he missed the hustle and bustle of public accounting more than he anticipated.
At Mazars, David enjoys being a trusted advisor to his manufacturing, distribution and life sciences clients, not just a compliance person. “I like to be someone who’s asked to be there at the meetings and help clients solve problems.”
Niche specialties like his are important, he adds, especially as more public accounting firms expand into advisory capacities. “I feel very much at home with any manufacturing and distribution company. The production process always fascinates me,” he says, adding that process improvements and cost accounting are really exciting to him.
His first job in public accounting at EOS Accountants LLP in Hackensack also helped train him in this field. As an auditor, he worked with chemical manufacturers throughout the Northeast who were mostly wholly-owned Japanese subsidiaries. He had a full, hands-on experience with clients, even climbing chemical silos as part of inventory counts.
Other Lessons Learned
He wasn’t always so set on accounting. Prior to landing his accounting jobs, he originally wanted to try his hand at law. “I actually wanted to be an attorney,” he says, when he worked at a part-time job while attending Ramapo College. But, according to David, “it didn’t seem like the life for me.” He soon realized he favored accounting work more than any legal projects.
He also has military experience which didn’t provide him with the technical side of accounting, but it did give him an invaluable worldly perspective. As part of his four-year enlistment with the U.S. Army after high school, he was deployed in the Republic of Korea for two years and also patrolled the streets of Baghdad in 2005. As David describes his time in the military, “it’s four years of your life finding out who you are as a person.”
Growing up in Bergen County in a Korean-speaking family helped while being stationed in Korea. Though the Americanized Korean language can be somewhat different, being able to communicate “came in handy at times,” adds David. His basic training in Oklahoma also helped prepare him for Korea and Iraq. “It was quite an experience,” he says.
Though David continues to thrive on being busy, his daily tasks just increased tenfold — David and Kimberly welcomed their first child, Jonathan, in September 2018.