Planning doesn't necessarily make things happen, but it certainly encourages things to happen.
Having some sort of career plan is as important in accounting as it is in any profession. Having a career plan means having a reasonably specific idea of where you eventually want your career to take you and how you intend to get there. Having such a plan does not necessarily mean being locked into that plan and never deviating from it. But, without such a plan, you are in the same boat as someone trying to build a house without blueprints.
What is more, career planning is not something you do once and forget about. It is something you monitor throughout your career.
CAREER PLANNING: SOME GENERAL THOUGHTS
Most peoples’ primary career goals in accounting are twofold: making enough money to have financial security, and then some. At the same time, you want to derive a sense of fulfillment from what you are doing. To be sure you can achieve these twofold objectives in any number of ways in accounting, here is the key point: make the career plans that truly reflect what you want.
To make such decisions, you have to know yourself. You have to know what you want out of accounting, what you are willing to do in order to reach that objective and whether you have (or can develop) the skills and personal traits required to achieve this objective.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to give you some idea of whether your career has a plan:
- Do you have a career plan? Have you established a specific career goal and a general strategy for reaching that goal? If not, you run the risk of drifting from job to job without building toward anything.
- Is your goal a realistic one? Have you taken the time to evaluate realistically your chances of achieving your goal? For instance, if your goal is to set up your own practice, do you have the contacts and the money you will need to go out on your own?
- Are you following your plan? Is your present position on the career path leading to your goal? If not, is it leading to a position that will bring you closer to your goal? If you are not following your career plan, is there a logical reason?
- How satisfied are you with your present job? Do you have the responsibility and are you receiving the salary you think you deserve? If not, are you in a position to do anything about it?
- Are you satisfied with your pattern of progress in your present company? Relative to others in your company, how would you assess your advancement rate?
If you answered "yes" to all of the questions above, chances are that your career path is on target. Each "no" answer, on the other hand, indicates the possibility of a detour. You would do well to examine the reasons for the "no" answer and to think about what steps you might take to deal with the problem.
CAREER PLANNING: EARLY DECISIONS
Many accountants who are looking for career success have their early decisions made for them. Because being a CPA is an important credential for career advancement in both public and private firms and in many states the only way you can qualify to be certified is to get CPA firm experience, you are most likely going to start with a CPA firm. This is true whether your long-term career goals are in public accounting or in management accounting. Most of you reading this have probably long since passed this stage of your career, but some of you may still be in college, in which case the decision lies in front of you: which type of firm is best to start with—a large, well-known national firm, or a small to medium-sized local firm?
There is no clear-cut choice between the two. The larger, better known firms do offer more prestige and usually pay better starting salaries. Generally, too, when you are working for a very large firm, certainly at the beginning of your career, you do not have to concern yourself too much with client development, although as competition keeps heating up in accounting, even the larger firms are going to have to concern themselves more with staff assistance in client development. Finally, if you meet the requirements, you have a chance at becoming a partner somewhat faster in a large firm than in a small firm.
The main advantage of working for a relatively small firm is that you can learn more in a shorter period of time than you can in a larger firm. To sum up, the size of the firm you join when you take your first job in accounting is not nearly as important as the quality of the firm and the relevance of the experience you are likely to have to your long-term career goals. Make the choice carefully, for it could have far more bearing on your career success than you might imagine.
CAREER PLANNING: OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Even if you have chosen (or been chosen by) a firm that fits well into your career plan, you still have a number of decisions to make that will go a long way in determining your ultimate career success. Here are some of the considerations and what you should bear in mind about each:
THE CPA CREDENTIAL
Many accountants, who have never become CPAs, have nonetheless done very well in accounting. Then again, these accountants represent a vanishing minority. The CPA credential has always been a useful career. It is not only that being a CPA automatically increases your earning power, it is more that not being a CPA limits your career options. If you are not certified, you can almost forget about becoming a partner in a CPA firm.
THE CMA CREDENTIAL
The Certified Management Accountant has neither the prestige nor the numbers that the CPA license can claim. Even so, the CMA is an important credential and well worth pursuing.
Interestingly enough, the CMA exam may be more difficult in some ways than the CPA exam because it covers a broader range of areas, among them economics, statistics, banking, and finance. Thus, passing the exam indicates to prospective employers that you have achieved a certain level of expertise.
HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU SPECIALIZE?
Becoming knowledgeable in one particular specialty—taxation, for instance—can undoubtedly be useful as a career strategy. Specialists often earn more money than non-specialists, and the reason many clients switch auditors, according to changes listed in the Public Accounting Report, is to get the services of a firm that specializes in their particular industry or discipline.
But if specialization can earn you a slightly higher salary and can benefit the firm you work for, it does not necessarily benefit you in the long run. It may actually limit your career options, for your appeal is limited to firms that have a need for your specialty.
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE MBA?
More and more young accountants are getting their MBAs. Timing has a lot to do with the relative value of the MBA. If you can afford to get your MBA before you start to work full time, go ahead and do it. However, given a choice between concentrating full time on your first accounting job or dividing your time between work and graduate studies, you are better off devoting your energy to the job.
GOVERNMENT
Accountants in the United States work for the government, many of them in agencies such as the IRS, the FBI, the SEC, and the GAO. More and more today, municipalities are switching from fund accounting to GAAP, which means that the work is much more interesting and challenging. Even though government salaries for accountants are not quite as high as salaries in the private sector, the salaries are higher than they used to be, and there is not the same degree of pressure.
TEACHING
A teaching career is hardly the target you want to set for yourself if your goal is purely to make money, but most of the accountants I know who teach would not trade places with anybody. What the accountants who do it seem to like best about teaching are, first, the academic lifestyle and, second, the process of teaching unto itself.
One thing is certain. If you have reasonable credentials and can demonstrate basic teaching ability, you should not have too much trouble finding work on many of the university campuses across the country. Given the differences in pay scale between teaching and other areas of accounting, there has always been a shortage of teachers and given the nature of human beings, that shortage is not likely to ease very soon.
CAREER PLANNING: SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Career planning is probably the most difficult aspect of the accounting profession on which to offer specific advice. It is difficult, for one thing, to know what your ultimate goals are, and, once you establish these goals, it is no mean trick to chart and follow the path most likely to reach these goals.
If there is a key to successful career planning, it is being willing to take the time, periodically throughout your career, to re-examine your situation carefully. You continually have to ask yourself if the career goals you formulated two or three years ago are as important to you today. You have to take a hard look to determine whether you are closer today to those goals than you were when you first formulated them. You also have to be alert to any new situations that may have arisen in your job or in your firm that could have an impact on your career goals.
Above all, you need to be flexible, and you need to keep in mind that no one career path can qualify as the model.
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