Picture the scene: at various points in your life you’re given the task of identifying the ultimate job you want and why you want it. Easy – ice cream tester, because no one can tell you off for eating ice cream when it’s your job. Unfortunately, you are no longer seven and this answer is no longer viable. Your choices you could have made when you were eighteen seem a lot more viable: a banker, an engineer, an advertiser, a lawyer. However, with the current market these once viable options are just, well, no longer viable.
Professions are swamped, and with more people graduating every year competition is fierce. The option to just give up and settle for anything less you’re your ‘dream job’ seems like a rather grim path to follow.
I wonder who, at seven, eighteen or even ever thought that their dream job was to become an accountant. But just because it’s not been a consideration in the past, don’t let that put you off now.
I’m going to tell you now that my dream job was never to be an accountant. In fact, if I’m honest, it’s still not my ‘dream’ job, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love going into work every day, whilst making a reasonable living.
When I was fourteen I decided more then anything I wanted to pursue a career in law and started following up all possible routes. I took GCSE A-Level Law, packed in different work experience and got an LLB. I then became exam-qualified to practise as a solicitor, throwing in more experience on top of that, with clerking and paralegal work. Still no training in the area I wanted.
I was offered some admin work in an accountant’s office. Why not? After a couple of weeks’ work, the accountants suggested that I take the ACA and offered me a training contract. Not only would this mean even more exams (and I’d already done enough of those), but I hadn’t done any maths since GCSE level, and perhaps worse, was giving up on something that I’d been working towards for over eight years.
It took me a month to decide what to do, but I took the leap. Yes, it took a while to adjust, and studying after work is not always what I wish to be doing; it can be difficult and no, it’s not my dream job. But there are many advantages to a career revamp, particularly when the switch is into accountancy.
A career in accountancy doesn’t mean sitting behind a desk all day every day adding up figures. There are a wide variety of different roles: auditing; accounting; taxation; bookkeeping; and budgeting to name a few.
Then there are the different places you can work. Do you choose a large, glossy firm where you will specialise in one area, working for well-known names travelling over the country? Do you choose a medium-sized firm, where you can move through departments with varying-sized clients on different jobs? Or do you choose a smaller firm, where the work is more varied and less specialised and you become more intimate with smaller clients? There is even the possibility of not working for an accountants’ or auditors’ firm at all; businesses need internal accountants and this opens up even more career options.
Then there are the different qualifications: for most auditing and accounting firms in England the chartered route is popular, either through ICAEW or ICAS. For international firms, particularly European ones, the certified route is often preferred, and in the industry CIMA is the most-followed path. For a career in tax, there is the ATT or – if you dare – the CTA, thought to be one of the more difficult sets of professional exams. If you have a degree, then these are the commonly-followed routes. However, if you don’t then there is the AAT, which trains you in the basics and also gives you exemptions from other accounting qualifications once you pass.
There are also options of how you sit exams. Some people prefer to find work first, and then their employer will tell them which qualification they’d like them to gain, when the exams will be sat, and in what order. They will also pay for the courses and exams, which can be pricey. However, many firms will stipulate in a contract that you must pass the exams to continue employment, putting pressure on first-time passes. Other people prefer to have more control over their qualifications and when and how they sit exams. In this case, they either temp at different accountancy practices when they wish to work, or sit all their exams and look for a training position once the exams are complete. This option is sometimes favoured, as it means you do not have to work leading up to exam periods, meaning less stress and more time to study.
There is no right or wrong path to take, and no one but you can decide which path is best for you. What I’m saying is, there’s more to a career in accounting then often appears on the face of the job title, and if you look in the right places, then there are plenty of accounting jobs around.
Kim Grossman attended the University of Birmingham and graduated with a 2:1 LLB with Honours. She then completed the LPC at the College of Law, before working as a paralegal for nine months.
She currently works for Landau Morley LLP Chartered Accountants and Tax Advisers. She is part-qualified with the ICAEW and will take her three finals this summer.
