A Career in Accounting?

Gotcha! From the limited amount of folks I have talked to, a lot of it seems to depend on the company or corporation you work for...or so it seems.

 

Gf is in college for accounting. Will be interested to see what she does with it since she wants to work for a non-profit company....

 

Certainly something to think about. Before I even enrolled in classes I met with an adviser and did some searching through different job and career listings in my state...a lot of them that I seen would accept a variety of different degrees, so long as they were business oriented (ex. finance, accounting, business economics, etc).

Thanks for the input!

 

great advice from people thus far. i agree though, after a couple of semesters full of accounting courses come back and see how you like it. After intermediate accounting 1 & 2 it should be a pretty easy decision weather or not thats the direction you want to take.

I am studying accountancy and finance, and I recently got a job/internship at a firm in Boise and i'm loving it more each day. However i would say thats rare. My enthusiasm is not shared by many even in my degree class. why? no clue haha.

I can say already though, i am not a fan of tax, nor do i plan to take my career that way. Some people really enjoy it, I do not. However its tax time and that is how this new firm is going to bring in money this time of year so i will be doing a ton of tax work and I will enjoy it another stepping stone in my career.

 

If you do complete your degree in accounting or finance, you will likely open many doors even if you choose not to be an accountant. Many will look at your degree and see that you have a lot of analytical skills, and who knows what that could lead to.

 

Yea, I cannot imagine I will be a big fan of tax, but then again there are probably very few who like it. Intermediate accounting I will begin in the fall, and Intermediate II next spring. So like you said that should give me a good basis to figure out if its for me. Atleast by that time I will have an associates in it.

 

FWIW the degree I will receive is entitled "Bachelor of Arts Major in Accounting & Financial Management"

 

Why not a bba?

 

I am going to a community college and they are partnered with a university and that is what they offer...

 

I currenlty work in state and local tax consulting. Tons of opportunity here if you're willing to put the work in.

 

Lol your screen name says it all. That's kind of why I decided to pursue this degree as there seems to be a ton of opportunities for accounting. Do you like what you are doing? Anything I should know now before continuing forward with it?

The only thing I am finding out is that while I enjoy the classes so far, I am a person who likes to be on their feet and doing something, so some I have talked to told me it may not be the career for me. However, I feel that even if I don't choose to be an accountant, the degree itself, seems highly marketable and transferable into different business opportunities and so forth.

 

You're also asking this question at a bad time of year. Many of the folks you'd most want to hear input from are absolutely booked/swamped/buried from January 1 until April 16, and won't be checking in on any BBS type systems.

 

good point

 

It definitely took some time for me to get used to not being on my feet all day and not working directly with customers on a constant basis like I had become accustomed to from my previous jobs. If you would like to work for the accounting firms, you do have to be prepared for the idea that you typically start out spending most of your time working in a cubicle. However, that slowly changes, as you spend more time in the industry you are typically given more and more face-time with clients and state/local auditors. At some point things change and you will actually spend more time in front of people, or on calls with people, than you will in front of a computer. When you're just starting out you also need to realize that you have to put in the work, I've seen countless recent college grads expecting to casually put in a 40 hour week and think that is sufficent. You may survive doing that but your career will not flourish.

One thing to note about an accounting firm, to really get far you not only need to be technically proficent, but also have social/sales skills. Generating business is paramount to reaching the partner level, where the bigger dollars are.

Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions, I obvously can speak most directly to a career with an accounting firm, but I can also give you insight into what I've seen from people who work in industry and in the government (auditors) as I regularly work with these people.

 

Allow me to offer some insight on the whole accounting spectrum.... Once I graduated from college in 2011 I went to work for PwC in New York. Granted the hours were grueling during busy season, but the compensation was pretty good. After working there for a year I decided working for the big four was not for me. I just didn't like the hours and I didn't like doing the same work each and everyday.

Upon leaving PwC I decided to work for a smaller company as a staff accountant.... Mind you I had a job within 3 weeks of searching (thanks to an accounting degree). I enjoyed working as an entry level staff accountant, but I still didn't enjoy doing the tedious journal entries and tying out accounts each and everyday. Redundant work.

So I chose to look for another job. I currently work for a private railroad company and I handle the financials for 50 or so projects. Managing budgets, invoicing, tracking progress, forecasting. I love my job because I am able to get involved in the projects, meet with customers, track various projects, and do different work each and every day. Case in point with an accounting degree you don't necessarily have to do tedious staff accountant work for the rest of your life. I would suggest you take a job as a staff accountant for your first two years to get the basics down and then move over to finance. Remember with an accounting degree you can move into the finance world, but with a finance degree you can't necessarily hold an accounting position. An accounting degree will open a door for you in any industry you choose. Every industry needs accountants.

Anyway that's just my advice. Take it as you please.

 

Very informative, thanks! While I don't dislike the accounting classes I am taking now, I can sure see where you are coming from in regards to the tedious work referencing journal entries and so forth. I would like to do what you are currently doing as far as being able to get involved with different projects. I consider myself a pretty active and involved person, so constant sitting may drive me nuts! But, nonetheless, as you suggested the accounting degree could open up many of doors for me, which is why I am pursuing it. At this time next year I should have my associates in accounting, by that time, I will then be giving the option to complete my Bachelor's with a university through partnership with community college. The associates can transfer into one of the following:

1. Bachelor's of Arts in Accounting & Financial Management
2. Bachelor's of Business Administration in Business Management
3. Bachelor's of Business Administration- Double Major in Information Systems & Supply Chain Management

Like I said, I still have a full year left to decide what I want to pursue, however, I'd like to have the most information gathered to make an informed decision. Option #1 is what I was initially going to pursue, but the cost of the degree is much higher, and requires an additional 6-8 classes. Option 2 requires the least amount of credit hours at 33, while option 3 requires 48 credit hours, but provides a double major...

The other options seem attractive as well. I'm sure you learn the general principles in each one, I'd like to complete the degree which would give me the most bang for my buck if you will, or the one that would provide me with the greatest opportunity for a career and advancement. Also, I was thinking option #3 due to the fact it incorporates both business and IT, which could be very beneficial due to the constant advancment in technology.

Suggestions?

 

bump for words of wisdom, thoughts, comments.

 

Week 4 of classes, liking accounting still, but damn, microeconomics sucks... unreal the amount of ridiculous graphs and terms used in this book. lol fml.

 

There is no silver bullet, no one class or degree path will make everything fall into place. Based on my own anecdotal experiences, people who majored in accounting are the best off from a career and financial point of view, starting out from the gates of graduation the business degree seemed too general, but when I graduated everything was pretty abysmal.

1. Bachelor's of Arts in Accounting & Financial Management-> First choice
2. Bachelor's of Business Administration in Business Management-> too general, 10% of people do really well, the rest it takes quite a few years to bloom
3. Bachelor's of Business Administration- Double Major in Information Systems & Supply Chain Management-> Are you good at IT? Are you interested in supply chain? This is outside the realm of expertise for accountants.

I started out in Big4 audit. I hated every day of it. It is just a big giant grind- imagine sitting 14+ hours a day in a chair, not moving, and you don't even get up for lunch or dinner because someone on your team is the dedicated runner so everyone else can stay behind to be more efficient, and your only exercise is when you walk from your car to your bed to pass out. Then imagine working the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, to meet a pointless deadline, and being so tired you can't tell what day it is or when you last talked to someone you love, and the only time you can collect your thoughts is when you escape to the bathroom to pass a bowel movement. Don't get me wrong, Big4 was a great experience, and it OPENS doors for your career like you wouldn't believe. You can really tell the difference when someone has a Big4 background vs someone who never went through the trial by fire. Big4 is good right out of college when you are full of piss and vinegar and ready to conquer the world. If you are older it will be a tough life.

Accounting isn't what it used to be. I've been through two layoffs. It isn't fun, it is a rather terrible experience, and really opens your eyes to how fragile your existence is. I have seen accountants get moved or pushed into finance, and I have seen finance people let go because they don't have an accounting background. I agree 100% with the poster above who said you can make an accountant a finance person, but not the other way around. Outsourcing has become a huge deal, especially with large multinationals. Pick a big multinational and look at their career postings- let's just pick Amazon for an example. Looking at their accounting positions, half are located in Beijing. It is very common- lots of accounting jobs go to India, China, Malaysia, Philippines, and so on. The brains/ technical accounting stays in the US, and everything else such as recurring, manual (by manual I mean booking manual entries), AP, and staff level work is sent abroad where wages are 1/3 of what they are here. Finance is no different in this regard. Even Big4 is doing this- all of the firms use some sort of outsource function to send work abroad (mostly India) to perform the grunt tie outs, confirmations, or whatever, meaning in the long term they do not need to hire as many US based associates.

Does your college offer an excel class? At my school we had an accounting class that was dedicated to excel- It was extreme and I hated it at the time, but it was probably one of the most valuable classes I took in college, I use specifics from what I learned in there every day.

I actually like accounting, but let me give you some serious advice. Go set up a desk in the corner of a room, and sit down at it facing the wall for 8 hours. Do you like it? Is it fun? Can you imagine that as your career? I have a good friend who was in accounting with me, he was going back to school and doing accounting because it "was the right thing to do" and "had the best employment prospects". At the end of the day he just didn't like accounting all that much and didn't like sitting there in that corner by the wall chasing around numbers. It took him two years, and he had to move to a small town out in the middle of nowhere, but he found himself a police officer job. Now he is out on patrol and was recently assigned a drug dog. He loves it and finds great fulfillment in his career. When we talk he always has a story about some adventure he was on, and the most exciting thing I can tell him about work is the most recent accounting memo I wrote.

To sum it up- accounting is a safe choice. For the most part, it is steady, stable, and generally easy to find some sort of work. You won't be rich, but you won't be poor either. Everyone I know in accounting, even those at the top of the game, talk about how they should have done a technical trade or been a farmer (half joking, but not really), especially when dealing with some of the archaic rules that come with accounting.