May 2008: Tips for Auditors in their 20s & 30s
As Time Goes By
Beginning of a series of features about what opportunities are available to accountants throughout their careers, Liz Fisher focuses on those in their 20s.
You are in your 20s and newly qualified as an accountant. Congratulations! But now what? Where do you want to be in 30 years time? And how are you going to make that happen? (If you are reading this rather than Nuts or Heat, that’s a very good start).
The frightening truth is that the decisions you make in the first few years after qualification will shape the rest of your career. ‘Although your career has a long way to go when you are in your 20s, a good start means you don’t have to spend your 30s unraveling what could be some costly mistakes,’ says Max Williamson, chief executive of the recruitment website CareersinAudit.com ‘Those who make the right choices in their 20s can really give their career a flying start and crucially, begin to create some space between themselves and the competition.’
First time is the best
The first step in a glittering career as an accountant, obviously, is gaining your accountancy qualification. That does not mean scraping through the exams – the competition in the profession is such that attitude, commitment, enthusiasm and above all, and the quality of passes (i.e. first time) really matter. Remember that your qualification is the absolute bedrock of your career, whichever path you intend to take later.
Alan Stewart of the executive search agency Heidrick & Struggles adds that the first move after qualification will be, for many, the first meaningful decision they will have made. It is also the most confusing. ‘The choice a newly qualified is faced with can be overwhelming,’ says Stewart, ‘but I tell people not to panic at this stage about messing up their career.’
Stewart asks newly qualified candidates to sit down and think carefully about what part of their job they like, and what they get excited about. For some, though, the answer is that they like nothing about being an accountant. ‘A lot of graduates train as accountants simply because it seems like a good option at the time,’ says Stewart. ‘But some newly qualifieds think that they have to spend the rest of their lives justifying the time and effort they have spent getting it. Your accountancy qualification will be a good qualification, whatever you do from now on.’
The basic decision for newly qualifieds is a simple two-way choice: practice or industry? Whichever is your preference, the decision needs to be a thorough one. ‘If you make the decision to leave practice, then it needs to be carefully thought-out’ says Williamson. CareersinAudit.com believes that newly-qualified accountants should ideally remain with their employer post-qualification for between three to five years, unless there are exceptional circumstances. But, adds Williamson, staying in practice should not be considered an easy option – if you stay, it needs to be for the right reasons and apathy certainly isn’t one of them.
For newly qualifieds hoping for a career in business – and perhaps aiming for a CFO or CEO role – there is a mind-boggling array of choice. But while the traditional route to FD level invariably involved a stint as a financial controller, the nature of the FD role has changed in recent years. Alan Stewart believes that financial planning and analysis is a more useful route as it hones the forward-looking skills now expected of finance directors.
Generally, the traditional climb up the career ladder has disappeared, and that means that your options in your 20s are much wider. ‘I’ve realised over the years that there is no one route to success,’ says Stewart. ‘People have much more mosaic careers these days. The accountancy profession is a very structured environment, particularly in terms of the career structure in the first five years after qualification. But I would urge young accountants to get rid of that mentality – it’s about how good you are. Accountancy is a much more entrepreneurial career these days, if you want it to be.’
That said, if you are thinking of a long-term career in business, internal audit is still an excellent way of gaining all-round experience, even if it may not seem the most exciting option. ‘You have to take penance if you want to move forward’, says Stewart. ‘The point is that when you move up in an organisation people want to work for someone who has done the job that they were doing.’
Moving too soon
White it is important to gain experience in new roles, many young accountants fall into the trap of accepting the first well-paid job that comes along, only to regret it and move on too soon. The good news is that everyone is allowed to make mistakes, provided they learn from them. ‘You can make a bad decision the first time and it will have no impact on your career,’ says Stewart. ‘The second job you take after qualifying is the important one, because employers expect that to a more meaningful move. If your second job doesn’t last more than a year, you’re in trouble.’
Williamson agrees: ‘Moving jobs on a regular basis does not reflect well on an accountant and as you move into your 30s, there certainly shouldn’t be any more than three companies on your CV.’
With so many qualified accountants on the recruitment market, employers are increasingly looking for skills and experience that set candidates apart. International secondments can add significant value to your career prospects, but again they need to be carefully chosen. One of the major benefits of being in your 20s is that you have few ties ad commitments and so should be a prime candidate for an overseas secondment, but young accountants should also be wary of what recruiters call the ‘knee-jerk effect’.
Williamson warns that anyone offered an overseas role should think carefully about whether the job will mean more to them than year-round sunshine. The novelty of working abroad will soon wear off and important considerations such as the cost of living in a different country are often overlooked. Future employers, he adds, can often presume that an overseas secondment in, say, a Caribbean country can mean that you had it easy, even if you worked your socks (or sandals) off.
Overall, successful career planning involves just a little careful thought and a small dose of realism. ‘When you are in your 20s you may not have to do a job for a while that you are not enamoured with, but which you know will be good experience,’ warns Stewart.
For Williamson, the ideal early career can be summed up in a few words: ‘The perfect candidate enters their 30s with a qualification, a second language, proven international experience and an excellent track record of promotion with a small number of companies.’ Good luck!
This article was printed in the March 2008 edition of Accountancy Magazine.
Quantum Leaps
According to some, your 30s are the most productive years of your career. Liz Fisher continues her analysis of a career in accountancy, the opportunities and challenges.
So, you have qualified as an accountant and have followed the rules for a successful start in your career – you haven’t switched employers too many times while in your 20s, you’ve gained good experience and identified the area you want to work in. Now you’re in your 30s – what next?
Your 30s are when the grown-up years start. You should have worked out what you want to do and where you are aiming for – this is the time to really transform your ambitions into reality. But that will take focus, and hard work.
‘Your 30s are the most fertile and productive years of your career,’ is how Max Williamson, director of the audit careers website CareersinAudit.com, puts it. ‘Things really start to happen. You should have all the skills you need by now, so it’s a question of consolidating that and pushing yourself forward quite aggressively. People can make quantum leaps in terms of career advancement and pay, and I would really expect to see the high flyers start to pull away from everyone else.’
Too Late
Williamson pulls no punches – if you don’t get your career sorted by the time you are 40, it’s probably never going to happen. ‘That’s an unspoken understanding in the profession,’ he says. ‘There’s no pointing keeping your powder dry at this stage for use in the future because there’s nothing else to keep it dry for.’
That does not necessarily mean just aiming for the best job you can, though – it’s about positioning yourself where you want to be. ‘Your 20s were about getting as much experience in different areas as possible, but now it’s about narrowing that experience down and focusing on what you really want to do and where you want to be,’ says Alan Stewart of Heidrick & Struggles.
So what does this mean in cold, hard career terms? The 20s are all about getting qualified and expanding your options,’ says Williamson. ‘In your 30s it’s about being a manager. You need to step up and manage people rather than just contribute to what they do. You really need to have pulled away by your late 30s and you should be in a senior managerial position, otherwise what you will end up with is a career rotation rather than career lift.’ In other words, any move you make will be more sideways rather than up.
For an accountant working in industry, ‘making it happen’ means being in charge of a department – perhaps as a regional or divisional finance director or, if you are really one of the high flyers, a CFO position, in time for your 40th birthday.
Stewart adds, though, managing is not for everyone. ‘We see plenty of people who feel they are not suited to managing people,’ he says. ‘The alternative is moving into a consultative role, or perhaps a chief accountant role or more of a technical specialist in their 30s.’
No one should make the mistake though, of thinking that their career progression will be automatic as their superiors miraculously notice how good they are. ‘There are the gifted few to whom great things happen, but that’s the exception rather than the rule,’ says Williams.
He recommends ‘mapping’ out your CV, making sure that the size and complexity of the teams you are managing increases steadily throughout your 30s so by the end of the decade you should be the top choice for the number one spot in the finance team (or in your chosen department if you are in practice).
For some people, though, the route to the top may not be smooth, perhaps because management levels in their organisation are overloaded. If that is the case, says Williamson, your only option may be to leave. ‘If you do find that you are being blocked in your current company, for whatever reason, you need to have the courage to step up. If you don’t, time will pass and the opportunity may be gone.’
Family Ties
A seamless rise to the top is, inevitably, more of a tricky prospect for a woman who also wants to have a family. Williamson acknowledges that your 30s are difficult for an accountant of either gender who is likely to be juggling career progression with a young family, but women are paced at a fundamental disadvantage. When asked what the advice would be for a female accountant who was aiming for a top job but also wanted to take a career break to have a family, Williamson said: ‘In a word, don’t.’
While more employees are offering flexible working and the situation for ambitious working mothers has improved drastically over the years, it is ridiculous to pretend that taking a career break for motherhood will not, at the very least, slow your career prospects. The best advice is to choose your employer carefully – the Big 4 accountancy firms, for instance, are among the most progressive employers in terms of flexible working and are making genuine attempts to make things easier for working mothers. It is also important to choose your immediate line manager carefully, as they will be the ones making the decision about what you will do when you return to work.
‘My advice would be to treat maternity leave as you would any career break – think about what you have learned about yourself and what you want to be different when you return to work,’ says Stewart. ‘A lot depends on your attitude to why you are going back to work – it makes a world of difference if you convey your enthusiasm for the job.’
A question often considered by accountants in their 30s is whether am MBA would help their future career prospects. Williamson argues that it would not. ‘I think that the ACA qualification holds firm as an excellent business qualification and if you have experience as well to back it up, I don’t see why you would need an MBA. Good people are generally moving too quickly to allow themselves time out to take an MBA anyway.’ He adds, though, that if you have plans to move into a more general business role, an MBA can be a useful way of repositioning yourself. Stewart agrees, saying that an MBA is generally a better bet if you are considering a career change.
If you still haven’t quite worked out shat you want to be doing with your career, don’t be afraid to take advice from the experts. Williamson points out that a good recruitment consultant will be more willing to advise you on a career plan, even if you’re not looking immediately for a new job.
Above all, try to think about what you want to be doing, rather than what you should be doing. ‘A good job is about what makes you go the extra mile,’ says Stewart. ‘You tend to be better at the things you are interested in – and if you are good at your job, money comes along anyway. If you are approaching your 30s now, I’d say think about your current job and the parts you like about it, and then try and replicate that in the future.’
Top Tips for Managing your Career in your 30s
• If you don’t have a managing role already, start looking for one
• Aim to increase the complexity and size of your team steadily
• If your prospects for progression look poor where you are, move
• Don’t wait to be noticed – push yourself forward
• Set a future target for where you want to be, and move towards it
• Take advice from a professional if you think you need it
Look out for ‘Managing your career in your 40s’ coming soon!
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