I’m with you. Although accounting has never been a “sexy” career to me, I take great comfort in the near-bulletproof employability this field offers compared to others.
When I see other fields like IT and Law being uber competitive and many looking for work, accounting doesn’t look so bad. Because what’s the use of your degree if you can’t make a career out of it?
Do you have advice for someone who is in school currently with no accounting internship experience? I want to go for CPA after I graduate but currently barely have any experience.
Have you actively tried to get an internship? You should be going to whatever Meet the Firms events your school has. Join Beta Alpha Psi if your school has a chapter. Get to know your professors - many know people in public and/or industry that they can connect you with. Join your local state accountancy society and go to their lunch and learn meetings and shake as many hands as you can. There are usually free or discounted student rates. The next big push will be a meet the firms event in August/September. Go, be outgoing, introduce yourself to everyone, have a personality (but don’t be obnoxious - just friendly, confident but not cocky, and outgoing) and give every table your resume. If you need someone to proof your resume, feel free to DM me.
Private companies generally post internships elsewhere, but I’m not sure where. Look at local companies websites career pages and see if you see postings. LinkedIn may have stuff. Again, professors may know which companies typically hire interns. If you have any really big companies where you live, they will probably have some interns.
You can certainly get in the field without an internship, but internships will help tremendously.
Thanks so much for this answer man. I have activate it been applying to many internships and I unfortunately didn’t get one for this summer. I just got a rejection email today actually. My brother who works as a PM gives me the same advice on going to networking events, coffee chats which I have been, but clearly I need to ramp it up. Really appreciate your feedback this is very helpful. Cheers!
Happy to help! For what it’s worth, in my experience firms generally don’t have a ton of summer interns so don’t get down on yourself about that. This round of Meet the Firms will be the biggest one because they’re looking for January busy season, so prep as much as possible and have mirror rehearsals with yourself if necessary. Practice your elevator speech. And if you have time, try to volunteer with a cause you care about. I always notice when people add volunteer experience to their resumes and give them an extra point in my mind.
Good luck! You’ve got this!
yeah its not good here ..
how is your area? i mentioned before that firms dont care of the shortage they love it means overutilized people!
how long have you been unemployed ? me 1 year :O lol it went by like water down a drain
About 5 months. Yeah ima have to move 2-6 hours to a bigger city there are NO decent jobs in the rural area I live in. But I’m having some luck interviewing in Nashville. If I had to guess I’ll end up there
This was the key for me. I don’t like uncertainty.
I like that with accounting I can plan out my career / income with some degree of certainty.
Also, it allows you to work in high risk / high reward start ups, but still know you can always find a job if something goes south for the company.
See when I did taxes I got fucked all the time, cause clients would give the absolute shittiest workpapers.
Sometimes a box full of paper documents, 80% were useless though, and it was a game of 1,000 documents of do I need this shit.
In audit, the client is physically present so they can fuck you while making eye contact. It’s like going from stereo to spatial audit headphones; quite the experience.
It’s not.
I hate myself more and more every day I go to work. However, providing a better childhood for our daughter than we ever had makes me keep wanting to get up every morning to do so. She will never have to worry about not having enough food or hot water like I did as a kid. Ever. Thats what keeps me smiling and makes it worth it.
It’s a paycheck to me.
I am doing this as well I am currently an EMT and being in the field one day 6am-6pm if I’m lucky to get off on time still keeps me away from the kids for a whole day and can maybe come home to get them to bed. Studying accounting with the hopes of having a flexible job where it’s mostly 9-5 and some if not most WFH during the week sounds great to me. I do enjoy going out and about with my current job but I feel as though I am just skipping time away from my kids childhood and cannot even afford to live on my own working decent hours as an EMT.
I don’t understand how the market proves Accountants (more valuable than EMTs and Nurses financially , but alas here we are. During busy season I’m roughly 60h/wk sometimes 65h/wk with weekends. Non-busy season I’m 30-35h scrolling my mouse fwiw. Busy times are quarter end and year end. Been in Accounting over 10y with a Finance degree.
Accounting cycles, whether it be monthly or yearly, are like puzzles for me. The financial statement is the completed puzzle, and it’s satisfying to complete one and see what it says about financial health of the entity. I like the idea of being a “business doctor” of sorts. The financials tell you everything! Sounds nerdy, but it’s the truth!
Having just basically run an entire audit solo (thx for no SAUD) the feeling that comes from testing, fixing, and reconciling a years worth of a company's activity in a few weeks feels awesome.
It helped that the client responded to emails and had a basic understanding of how accounting works.
I come from a relatively poor family where when people pass away you inherit debt. No one ever bought stocks or invested. I didn’t have a college savings account at any point in my life. I wanted to make sure my family had at least someone who understood the language of business on a grand scale. I love it for myself too. I was even in the accounting fraternity
The debt is supposed to die with the debtor...I mean I guess if you get a house with a mortgage that's "inherited debt" but you would be able to sell the house and get rid of the debt?
Are you somewhere other than the USA?
I like it because numbers don't lie and they make sense. I'm a very visual person and love mapping everything out to find the problem and come up with the solution.
>I like it because numbers don't lie and they make sense.
And then you hit middle management and that suddenly stops. Office politics and turf wars all the way.
I did not initially like accounting. But over time I have come to see its true usefulness. It’s a way of thinking that allows people to measure economic activity. It’s like a measuring stick for the economy—both macro and micro.
I have accepted the truth that accounting is boring. The only people who will truly understand my way of thinking is other accountants. That’s ok with me. But I understand that can’t be all people.
It’s providing a stable happy life for my family. I hate my job and career but being able to buy something for my kids that they’ve been wanting for a long time is very satisfying. Something I never had as a child myself.
I went into this field hoping for the financial freedom and stability to fund my hobbies in the hopes of finding a purpose and sense of worth in those said hobbies (writing, music, arts etc)
Then I discovered that accounting, specifically taxes, IS my passion. I never expected to love it. Ngl, I like feeling smarter than the average person lol. Growing up, I aced school easily, but never felt like I was actually good at any "real" skills. Acing tests didn't feel like an actual talent and wasn't going to translate into any kind of occupation or career as a result. I loved all kinds of art/creative talents like writing, singing, playing instruments, acting, physical art, even dancing, but I wasn't good at any of it. It crushed my soul to think I wouldn't be worth shit bc I'd never be able to do anything as meaningful as the artists who created my favorite art.
Then I discovered that taxes *are* like acing a test. There's structure and a methodical process, and objectively right and wrong answers, but there's also creativity. No 2 returns are the same, and that keeps it interesting.
And I grew up thinking accountants were only concerned with making money and not a group of ppl who really contributed to making the world a better place in any kind of way (my dad is a CPA). And now I realize how amazing it is to be able to use my knowledge and skills to help people (mostly by improving their "financial health"/saving people money, which definitely makes most people's worlds better in a very tangible way...)
Sorry for the long rambling...just a disenchanted millennial trying to not only survive, but do something worthwhile with my life...
Thank you, your post motivates me to look into going back to school for a masters in accounting. Whenever I tell people that I want to study accounting, they look at me like I have given up all my hopes and dreams. But the reason I want to choose this path is like you mentioned, I want something that pays well, stable, that can fund my hobbies. I hope I can grow to be passionate about the subject like you do.
I was told in college I didn't have to talk to people a lot and it was an isolating career.
Turned out that's a lie every job wants you to socialize. >:(
I enjoy working but it is not my life. The way I see it is you will spend a good chunk of your time awake at work most days. Enjoy what you do to a certain degree and work somewhere you can handle. The money will come, but to me a solid work environment is most important. We had a toxic workplace but I cleaned house and now we have a close nit team with almost no turnover. A great work environment goes a long way and makes people want to be at work instead of dreading it.
Corrupt sales people, and getting laid off as a result, made me passionate about getting to the bottom line and looking under the hood. As dumb as it sounds the expression “it is what it is” made me want to actually know “what it is.” Job stability was also a major plus.
It's lucrative and the skills translate to many different things.
Even if you start an unrelated business a deep knowledge of business and accounting just adds to your chances of success over an average person.
At the current time, having accounting skills and good networking can lead to great opportunities. The accounting shortage is real despite people complaining that they can't find jobs. I've turned down former clients of firms I worked at who reached out to hire me specifically after I left. There's just not enough qualified people for the need right now.
You are unlikely to experience long stretches of unemployment in this field.
Problem solving - I work in a public firm. Majority of my work is to help small local businesses clean up messy books.
Also - there’s always something in the public space lol 401k audit work papers (personal files) can be hilarious. Majority of 1040 work papers are useless but still have to go through them in order to get what I need. So I see a lot of people stuff that and it’s crazy what they got on the receipts 🤣
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I’m with you. Although accounting has never been a “sexy” career to me, I take great comfort in the near-bulletproof employability this field offers compared to others. When I see other fields like IT and Law being uber competitive and many looking for work, accounting doesn’t look so bad. Because what’s the use of your degree if you can’t make a career out of it?
Do you have advice for someone who is in school currently with no accounting internship experience? I want to go for CPA after I graduate but currently barely have any experience.
Have you actively tried to get an internship? You should be going to whatever Meet the Firms events your school has. Join Beta Alpha Psi if your school has a chapter. Get to know your professors - many know people in public and/or industry that they can connect you with. Join your local state accountancy society and go to their lunch and learn meetings and shake as many hands as you can. There are usually free or discounted student rates. The next big push will be a meet the firms event in August/September. Go, be outgoing, introduce yourself to everyone, have a personality (but don’t be obnoxious - just friendly, confident but not cocky, and outgoing) and give every table your resume. If you need someone to proof your resume, feel free to DM me. Private companies generally post internships elsewhere, but I’m not sure where. Look at local companies websites career pages and see if you see postings. LinkedIn may have stuff. Again, professors may know which companies typically hire interns. If you have any really big companies where you live, they will probably have some interns. You can certainly get in the field without an internship, but internships will help tremendously.
Thanks so much for this answer man. I have activate it been applying to many internships and I unfortunately didn’t get one for this summer. I just got a rejection email today actually. My brother who works as a PM gives me the same advice on going to networking events, coffee chats which I have been, but clearly I need to ramp it up. Really appreciate your feedback this is very helpful. Cheers!
Happy to help! For what it’s worth, in my experience firms generally don’t have a ton of summer interns so don’t get down on yourself about that. This round of Meet the Firms will be the biggest one because they’re looking for January busy season, so prep as much as possible and have mirror rehearsals with yourself if necessary. Practice your elevator speech. And if you have time, try to volunteer with a cause you care about. I always notice when people add volunteer experience to their resumes and give them an extra point in my mind. Good luck! You’ve got this!
IT is struggling rn? Yikes
WHAT LMAO ive been fired for 4 times in accoutning i fear fired daily
That means you’ve also been hired four times
<3 i teared a bit im unemployed looking for the 5th Ty for a change in perspective
I feel you. I’ve been looking for a job hardcore for the past two months
yeah its not good here .. how is your area? i mentioned before that firms dont care of the shortage they love it means overutilized people! how long have you been unemployed ? me 1 year :O lol it went by like water down a drain
About 5 months. Yeah ima have to move 2-6 hours to a bigger city there are NO decent jobs in the rural area I live in. But I’m having some luck interviewing in Nashville. If I had to guess I’ll end up there
wow nashville is niCE good luck champ
This was the key for me. I don’t like uncertainty. I like that with accounting I can plan out my career / income with some degree of certainty. Also, it allows you to work in high risk / high reward start ups, but still know you can always find a job if something goes south for the company.
I do it to make ends, and no other reason.
Realest response here
What about meat, or *meet? Whatever they say…
Nah just ends as in "the ends justify the means"
IDK; but I get super hard every time I walk into the audit room.
that cuz you know you're about to get fucked.
I get hard when I get fucked, but at work I do taxes, so it really only happens after I go home
See when I did taxes I got fucked all the time, cause clients would give the absolute shittiest workpapers. Sometimes a box full of paper documents, 80% were useless though, and it was a game of 1,000 documents of do I need this shit.
In audit, the client is physically present so they can fuck you while making eye contact. It’s like going from stereo to spatial audit headphones; quite the experience.
I did a few of those too cause we would do audit and tax work at the same time 😭 Had to be nice to the client while I was internally sobbing
Hahah; it’s life changing
hahahahhahahahah
I, personally, do this job for the direct deposit
Dr cash Cr labor
It’s not. I hate myself more and more every day I go to work. However, providing a better childhood for our daughter than we ever had makes me keep wanting to get up every morning to do so. She will never have to worry about not having enough food or hot water like I did as a kid. Ever. Thats what keeps me smiling and makes it worth it. It’s a paycheck to me.
I am doing this as well I am currently an EMT and being in the field one day 6am-6pm if I’m lucky to get off on time still keeps me away from the kids for a whole day and can maybe come home to get them to bed. Studying accounting with the hopes of having a flexible job where it’s mostly 9-5 and some if not most WFH during the week sounds great to me. I do enjoy going out and about with my current job but I feel as though I am just skipping time away from my kids childhood and cannot even afford to live on my own working decent hours as an EMT.
I don’t understand how the market proves Accountants (more valuable than EMTs and Nurses financially , but alas here we are. During busy season I’m roughly 60h/wk sometimes 65h/wk with weekends. Non-busy season I’m 30-35h scrolling my mouse fwiw. Busy times are quarter end and year end. Been in Accounting over 10y with a Finance degree.
For real though, I can't describe how nice it is to see the number in my bank account go up.
Numbers go brrrr
Accounting cycles, whether it be monthly or yearly, are like puzzles for me. The financial statement is the completed puzzle, and it’s satisfying to complete one and see what it says about financial health of the entity. I like the idea of being a “business doctor” of sorts. The financials tell you everything! Sounds nerdy, but it’s the truth!
Having just basically run an entire audit solo (thx for no SAUD) the feeling that comes from testing, fixing, and reconciling a years worth of a company's activity in a few weeks feels awesome. It helped that the client responded to emails and had a basic understanding of how accounting works.
As a hopefully future accountant I love this answer.
This is why I like tax. It genuinely scratches the same itch that puzzles do.
NERD!!!
Pretty much my answer
Looks like you need to be put on a 90+ hour a week client away from your family friends in a small crappy motel in Nebraska
After 30 years in retail I don’t have to talk to retail customers. 15 years restaurants, 15 years car business
I do it so I don't end up losing everything
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Most people did not read his username and it shows
Getting yelled at by irrational clients is my kink.
I won’t let the money change me. I’m better than that. I’m better than everyone. I’m rich as hell.
All these answers makes me wanna do accounting.
Do it. I'm going back to school this fall. I really really want out of warehouse hell and fast food.
I come from a relatively poor family where when people pass away you inherit debt. No one ever bought stocks or invested. I didn’t have a college savings account at any point in my life. I wanted to make sure my family had at least someone who understood the language of business on a grand scale. I love it for myself too. I was even in the accounting fraternity
The debt is supposed to die with the debtor...I mean I guess if you get a house with a mortgage that's "inherited debt" but you would be able to sell the house and get rid of the debt? Are you somewhere other than the USA?
Accurate. Even my therapist told me I'm motivated by money.
I like it because numbers don't lie and they make sense. I'm a very visual person and love mapping everything out to find the problem and come up with the solution.
We both know numbers can be manipulated with a liberal understanding of gaap
Touché. But people manipulate them. People lie, numbers don't.
>I like it because numbers don't lie and they make sense. And then you hit middle management and that suddenly stops. Office politics and turf wars all the way.
Do you work for my company because that's exactly what's going on now....
I love it when I tell people who ask what I do and see their instant "oh" of disappointment / regret
😂😂 everytime!! I literally will be like yep yeah super exciting, so how's the weather?
All of the above - I love getting paid with a paycheck giving me money in the form of cash hitting my bank account.
Job security. Feeds my OCD-riddled brain well. I need the structure and discipline this field requires. I like to have nice things.
I like auditing it is cool
I did not initially like accounting. But over time I have come to see its true usefulness. It’s a way of thinking that allows people to measure economic activity. It’s like a measuring stick for the economy—both macro and micro. I have accepted the truth that accounting is boring. The only people who will truly understand my way of thinking is other accountants. That’s ok with me. But I understand that can’t be all people.
It’s providing a stable happy life for my family. I hate my job and career but being able to buy something for my kids that they’ve been wanting for a long time is very satisfying. Something I never had as a child myself.
Solving puzzles makes my brain produce the happy chemicals.
I went into this field hoping for the financial freedom and stability to fund my hobbies in the hopes of finding a purpose and sense of worth in those said hobbies (writing, music, arts etc) Then I discovered that accounting, specifically taxes, IS my passion. I never expected to love it. Ngl, I like feeling smarter than the average person lol. Growing up, I aced school easily, but never felt like I was actually good at any "real" skills. Acing tests didn't feel like an actual talent and wasn't going to translate into any kind of occupation or career as a result. I loved all kinds of art/creative talents like writing, singing, playing instruments, acting, physical art, even dancing, but I wasn't good at any of it. It crushed my soul to think I wouldn't be worth shit bc I'd never be able to do anything as meaningful as the artists who created my favorite art. Then I discovered that taxes *are* like acing a test. There's structure and a methodical process, and objectively right and wrong answers, but there's also creativity. No 2 returns are the same, and that keeps it interesting. And I grew up thinking accountants were only concerned with making money and not a group of ppl who really contributed to making the world a better place in any kind of way (my dad is a CPA). And now I realize how amazing it is to be able to use my knowledge and skills to help people (mostly by improving their "financial health"/saving people money, which definitely makes most people's worlds better in a very tangible way...) Sorry for the long rambling...just a disenchanted millennial trying to not only survive, but do something worthwhile with my life...
Thank you, your post motivates me to look into going back to school for a masters in accounting. Whenever I tell people that I want to study accounting, they look at me like I have given up all my hopes and dreams. But the reason I want to choose this path is like you mentioned, I want something that pays well, stable, that can fund my hobbies. I hope I can grow to be passionate about the subject like you do.
Accountant is the only class that gives good growth for both bank and weight stats.
I was told in college I didn't have to talk to people a lot and it was an isolating career. Turned out that's a lie every job wants you to socialize. >:(
For me it's more the money hitting my account rather than the check, because we have direct deposit.
I love accounting because most people I work with are afraid of numbers and just do what I ask them to do.
It's the debits and the credits that keep me coming back.
I hate accounting. It's just a way to make money
I like rule systems - like I’m playing a game. I like numbers. I like stability and being employed.
“Stable career”
It’s no lol
I figured if accounting doesn't work out, I could do the bookkeeping for whatever business that I would need to start up to sustain myself.
I enjoy working but it is not my life. The way I see it is you will spend a good chunk of your time awake at work most days. Enjoy what you do to a certain degree and work somewhere you can handle. The money will come, but to me a solid work environment is most important. We had a toxic workplace but I cleaned house and now we have a close nit team with almost no turnover. A great work environment goes a long way and makes people want to be at work instead of dreading it.
I happen to be really big into the voyeurism of watching other people's money.
Corrupt sales people, and getting laid off as a result, made me passionate about getting to the bottom line and looking under the hood. As dumb as it sounds the expression “it is what it is” made me want to actually know “what it is.” Job stability was also a major plus.
I do it because I have nothing else to do ! currently uenmployed lol but Dont need $$$ so considering leaving yall ") you all will be okay
[Because I do what I have to.](https://youtu.be/pKwnNn_t86w?t=14)
Whoever isn’t saying money is a horrible liar
It's lucrative and the skills translate to many different things. Even if you start an unrelated business a deep knowledge of business and accounting just adds to your chances of success over an average person. At the current time, having accounting skills and good networking can lead to great opportunities. The accounting shortage is real despite people complaining that they can't find jobs. I've turned down former clients of firms I worked at who reached out to hire me specifically after I left. There's just not enough qualified people for the need right now. You are unlikely to experience long stretches of unemployment in this field.
I’m very passionate about maintaining a middle class lifestyle, it’s true.
Problem solving - I work in a public firm. Majority of my work is to help small local businesses clean up messy books. Also - there’s always something in the public space lol 401k audit work papers (personal files) can be hilarious. Majority of 1040 work papers are useless but still have to go through them in order to get what I need. So I see a lot of people stuff that and it’s crazy what they got on the receipts 🤣
Hit the nail on the head there bud
I found the love for accounting when I found out I was good with numbers 😂 and the fact jobs are out there
I do it because I like auditing people, instill fear into them every time they open my emails.
I do it to make good money, stable career, etc. It's definitely not my passion. I work to live, not live to work.