Accountancy jobs - what's yours?

PepPop

geek84 wrote: »

Hi PepPop

Thanks for your reply.

I tried googling but could not find the manual which you are referring to.

You don't remember the website address by any chance?

Thanks in advance.

Pmd you

geek84

Thanks PepPop

Hastobe_Katt

I'm ACA (Chartered Accountant rather than Chartered Certified Accountant). I changed career back in 1986 from being a clinical scientist working for the NHS (specialised in nuclear medicine). The decision to change career was a hard one - I loved my job passionately but I had a disability and was struggling with the physical aspects of the job. I used my degree / MSc to join KPMG's graduate training programme and, once qualified, specialised in tax taking the CTA exams (was ATII). Since then I have worked in practice and in industry. My specialist areas are international tax, cross border transactions, transfer pricing, ex-pat tax, structured finance etc. I still really miss working in NM - accountancy is simply not as rewarding. Nevertheless, I have enough experience now to command £80+ an hour so just temp for a few months and then travel / chill for the rest of the time (which is good as my health has really deteriorated.)

Shark

Hi, I am looking for some advice on what to do. I graduated in June 2010 with a 2:1 Economics degree from a good university and have good A level results. I have spent the past year doing some travelling and some financial trading, which I can not write on my CV. I have applied to about 20 accountancy firms for trainee chartered accountant positions (ACA and ACCA) and had 4 interviews, 2 of which were with Top4 companies and I got to the final stage each time, but was not offered the job either time.

Is it worth me keep on applying and hoping that eventually I pass an interview and get a place as a trainee chartered accountant?
Would I be better off studying for an an ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualification, funding it myself and then applying for places as I get passes for the exams, which should make me seem more desirable.

Any advice would be very welcome, thanks.

donquine

Shark wrote: »

Hi, I am looking for some advice on what to do. I graduated in June 2010 with a 2:1 Economics degree from a good university and have good A level results. I have spent the past year doing some travelling and some financial trading, which I can not write on my CV. I have applied to about 20 accountancy firms for trainee chartered accountant positions (ACA and ACCA) and had 4 interviews, 2 of which were with Top4 companies and I got to the final stage each time, but was not offered the job either time.

Is it worth me keep on applying and hoping that eventually I pass an interview and get a place as a trainee chartered accountant?
Would I be better off studying for an an ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualification, funding it myself and then applying for places as I get passes for the exams, which should make me seem more desirable.

Any advice would be very welcome, thanks.

Do you mean Big 4? In which case, they would have provided detailed feedback at AC stage, as to why they did not make you an offer. What was the feedback given?

If you're run out of accountancy firms to approach without moving somewhere you don't want to, have you tried looking for graduate schemes in industry? You would almost certainly be studying for something like CIMA rather than ACA, but it sounds as if you're flexible on this point. Off the top of my head, I think Sainsbury's, Tesco and Arcadia run graduate schemes for trainee accountants. I'm not saying those schemes are still open (I'm pretty sure Tesco shuts their scheme at the start of the year), but it gives you a different angle to try.

As previously said, being exam qualified but with little or no experience puts you between a rock and a hard place. Employers either want a fully qualified accountant (or in some circumstances, very qualified part-qualified accountant) or a brand new trainee. You would be best to keep applying for now, taking into account all previous feedback received. If you are getting to the final stage, you clearly have all the skills required - you're just stumbling at the last hurdle, rather than anything important being missing from your work experience or personality.

Hastobe_Katt

Shark wrote: »

Hi, I am looking for some advice on what to do. I graduated in June 2010 with a 2:1 Economics degree from a good university and have good A level results. I have spent the past year doing some travelling and some financial trading, which I can not write on my CV. I have applied to about 20 accountancy firms for trainee chartered accountant positions (ACA and ACCA) and had 4 interviews, 2 of which were with Top4 companies and I got to the final stage each time, but was not offered the job either time.

Is it worth me keep on applying and hoping that eventually I pass an interview and get a place as a trainee chartered accountant?
Would I be better off studying for an an ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualification, funding it myself and then applying for places as I get passes for the exams, which should make me seem more desirable.

Any advice would be very welcome, thanks.

My advice - try the tier two firms. IMHO many companies are switching to tier two firms as they get better (more proactive) service and just as good advice (technically). As they are second tier you are likely to get a really good mix of experience - large and small clients - which will give you an excellent basis from which to choose your future career path. When I was training, ACA was head and shoulders above the other qualifications. Subsequently, the ICAEW have diluted their training (you used to have to pass everything at one sitting) so I don't think there is so much difference now. Nevertheless, there is still a certain amount of 'prestige' associated with the firm you train with - but that is not a barrier.

geek84

Good Morning folks

I hope you're all well.

I am studying the AAT qualification at the moment and I have just recently completed my level 2 in book keeping, and in the process of sending out letters & cv copies to local book keeping businesses in the hope of landing a suitable job role in book keeping, until I complete my AAT. I would ideally like a role which I get paid for, but equally don't mind helping out voluntarily, just so that I can get the experience.

Can you suggest how I should interpret that in my letter. Obviously, if I say that I am willing to help voluntarily, then even if a prospective employer did have a pauid job role to offer me, they would naturally want to take me on voluntarily so they don't have to pay me anything!!

Any advice would be grately sppreciated.

suicidebob

geek84 wrote: »

Good Morning folks

I hope you're all well.

I am studying the AAT qualification at the moment and I have just recently completed my level 2 in book keeping, and in the process of sending out letters & cv copies to local book keeping businesses in the hope of landing a suitable job role in book keeping, until I complete my AAT. I would ideally like a role which I get paid for, but equally don't mind helping out voluntarily, just so that I can get the experience.

Can you suggest how I should interpret that in my letter. Obviously, if I say that I am willing to help voluntarily, then even if a prospective employer did have a pauid job role to offer me, they would naturally want to take me on voluntarily so they don't have to pay me anything!!

Any advice would be grately sppreciated.

Are you looking at recruitment agencies? I think some of them might give you an opportunity when you qualify, or even during qualifying.

There's plenty of administrative roles you could be considered for such as payroll, which is basically data input and only requires some basic accountancy skills

SuzieSue

geek84 wrote: »

Good Morning folks

I

. Obviously, if I say that I am willing to help voluntarily, then even if a prospective employer did have a pauid job role to offer me, they would naturally want to take me on voluntarily so they don't have to pay me anything!!

Any advice would be grately sppreciated.

If you don't have any practical experience and can afford to work voluntarily, then I would definitely do so. I would look at charities as although there are differences from other sectors, the basics are the same.

Re your question about an employer taking advantage of you, well, they could, but at the moment, you aren't much use to them without experience, so you have nothing to lose by volunteering. Once you have got some experience under your belt, they might want to keep you in which case they will need to pay you, or you should be able to move on somewhere else.

I have just employed a 21 year old who is AAT qualified but has no practical experience at all in an admin role. There is no way I would have employed him in an accountancy role immediately.

Total_2

Hi I’m wanting; like many on this thread; to become an accountant and I’ve done a fair bit of reading on the subject, but have many questions I hope can get answered here. I’m very interested in running my own business and see working as an accountant a good route to gain some solid business experience. I love working with numbers and using maths that involve money (can’t explain why I like it so much, but just fine it very interesting in understanding a business through its numbers) but don’t like using maths for other things, such as, angles, theory etc like in GCSE/ A-level. I’m very likely to get a 2:1 in my business related degree and have 200UCAS points (going to do maths A-level when finished with university)


My ideal job would be working for a medium accountancy firm who deal with the accounts of SME’s, so I could get a full understanding of the financials of a business and help advice them if need be; as this is what interests me the most.

Ok, so I’m thinking ACCA would be best suited for me but have also considered ACA and CIMA. Basically I have a lot of questions so I’ll post them here and if people can on answer one or two that would be fine.

1) Is there a real disadvantage to studying ACCA over ACA, as I’ve read a lot about ACA being better etc? But can someone please give me a decent idea of the truth to these claims? Also, I’ve read ACCA students after 5 years can join ACA, so would this mean there really isn’t much in it at the end of the day?

2) What is the difference between industry and practise?

3) I’ve read that 60% of CFO and high level finance positions in large firms are ACA qualified; does that mean it is harder for someone who has studied ACCA to gain one of these positions?

4) What are the true pay potentials for each qualification and is it possible for an accountant to become a millionaire without setting up their own practise? For example, by becoming a partner or CFO and also is this effected by the type of qualification? In other words if you were aiming for the top of the accountancy industry what types of roles are available and what do they involve?

5) How many hours a day would someone need to be studying for the ACCA exams to do it in three years as well as working full time?

6) How much essay type questions are in the ACCA exams?

7) Do I have the right idea that becoming a qualified accountant will allow me to gain solid business skills that can be used to start a business in the future?

8) Does this industry have a higher percentage of females than males? I only ask this as from reading this thread it seems like most on here are women. Doesn’t bother me either way just interested


Anyway that’s all my questions for now and like I said not expecting people to answer them all at once, but if you can that would be great.


Thanks for the help