30 year old w/ only internship experience looking for entry role?

If I were an employer, and I saw a web-developer who studied accounting 5+ years ago applying for an accounting related position today, I'd have the very obvious question going through my mind: “Why now?”.

If they have other candidates available who are less risky, then you're probably going to the bottom of the pile. Your challenge is to get in front of people and SELL yourself.

If I were in your shoes, I'd focus completely on passing the exams. If you can pass all of them (ideally), or at least 2 of them, it will go a long way to show that you are serious about changing your career. More importantly, it will demonstrate that you haven't forgotten all your accounting knowledge.

Age isn't important. It's not legal for an employer to ask in most (all?) states. No need to bring it up.

If I were you, I would aim for small public accounting firms. partners at small firms are more likely to look for someone who is going to stay long term. The cost of hiring and training new hires is expensive. small firms tend to put more focus on this area than bigger firms. I don't think you need to try to hide your age. Surprisingly a lot of partners actually appreciate older candidates because they tend to be more career minded and stay long term. Public accounting has high turnovers and there are a lot of firms out there that are desperate for any help they can find because one of the senior snapped and quit, or staff on maternity leave…etc. This is actually a not a bad time to ask around. 5 weeks before 9/15 deadline. This is the time partners and managers realize they have a lot more work than it seemed and panic kicks in a little.

if you are someone with basic accounting knowledge and some computer skills – someone who can rollover prior year workpapers to current year and data entries (k-1s and 1099s), I think you got a shot at finding a entry level position right now before 8/15!. good luck

Do not put the year you graduated on your resume. It's completely irrelevant unless you're a new grad with no experience.

Be sure to tailor your resume to your audience. Don't care how great you are at web design, very few people will grasp the technical jargon that is impressive to you. Stick to your soft skills, customer relations, problem solving, etc.

Neurons I agree with your reasoning above however the first person to review a resume is generally HR or a recruiter who actually is looking for certain keywords and homogenous traits. You have to go through them first to get to the partner or manager who will be impressed with the niche skillset. Load up a resume with terms like binary language or SQL language (bad examples, not IT inclined) and the person filtering the resumes through doesn't make the “hey this could be an asset to our clients” connection.

Resume gets you an interview, the wow factor comes during an interview.

I respectfully disagree but do what you feel is right for you. I have a highly technical niche background (no accounting experience) and received two Big 4 offers (interviewed with three) and more interviews with mid-size and smaller firms than I could attend precisely because my resume really stood out.

I had the same concerns you did but chose to differentiate knowing that I couldn't compete by trying to look like more of the same.

Best of luck either way!

@Ronsoness Audit, I considered consulting but I wanted to keep my options open with respect to exit strategies. If I can hack it for more than two rounds without going insane I might consider moving around.

FYI, bright lines on your service line preference during the interview.