[Anonymous]

I am a regular staff accountant working for 3 years now, and I have no public accounting experience. I am currently working at a company right now full-time, and I used to do temp work before that. A recruiter once told me that a senior accountant (in industry) is expected to just jump right in and do the job, and not get any direction, or not be shown how to do the job.

But my goal is to become a senior accountant in industry. Is what the recruiter is saying true? Because I don’t feel that I can just jump right in to anything, because I don’t have experience with certain things in accounting. And in my current job I think that my exposure to the accounting work is limited. For instance, I never reconciled fixed assets, but if I found a job as a senior accountant that does fixed assets, would I be expected to figure it out? Or would there be someone who would show me how things are done?

I am studying for the CPA exam, and I am considering to get into public accounting just for the experience, but then I heard that it’s difficult to go from private to public, and I have been out of school for a while. So, I am just making preparations in case I can’t get into public accounting, at least any time soon.

[Anonymous]

I used to hire entry level, senior accountants and the next level from senior accountants (we called them “consultants”). I definitely expected my senior accountants to be able to jump in and get the work done with little to no direction… once they were properly trained in the job. I don't know many companies that would put a new person in a new role and not explain the systems the company runs on and the processes that are used (and if they do, that's setting up that employee for failure). We also had documented procedures that could be used by new people.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by “once they were properly trained”? Like for instance, I understand the textbook knowledge with fixed assets, but would someone show me how it is reconciled? What documents to look at? What I should be aware of while reconciling fixed assets?

[Anonymous]

I typically would have someone shadow the new person for a week or two during the month and then spend additional time with them during month end. They would walk them through any recons or reports that the new person was expected to do in their job – things to look out for, how to tie out to the G/L, documents to review, and how to run reports and enter journal entries in the system.

[Martin]

BuckyCPA3, I know this is not the original topic, but can you please share what did you do different to go from 73 to 90 on Audit?

Through God all things can happen!

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;as I grow older, I admire kind people.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

FAR= 72-84
Audit= 73-82
BEC= 74-75
Reg=77

[Vern -No what I mean]

Every job will provide the basic levels of training around systems, GL chart of accounts, close timelines, etc. The main thing you should understand is that accountants are notoriously married to SALY. Same as Last Year. What this means, is that once an account reconciliation or other schedule is set up and working, not a lot of effort goes into changing it. Just updating it for the current reconciling items, new balances, etc. If you want to learn how to reconcile fixed assets, pick up the reconciliation and spend time understanding where the balances come from, what the items represent, and how you would update it each month. This is what is meant by “jumping in and figuring it out.” If you can master this skill and figure out what needs to be done with little direction, then you'll be in a better position to move up the ranks.

Now having said that, I think the main difference between a staff accountant and a senior accountant besides the ability to figure things out quickly with little direction, is EXPERIENCE. This typically comes from opportunities to do more things while being supervised and shown the ropes. This is why public accounting is such great experience and training. You start as a staff, auditing cash, auditing fixed assets, and you make your way through all of the areas of an audit learning accounting along the way. By your third year, you understand the in and outs of various transactions and balance sheet accounts/catagories. with this experience you would learn how to reconcile any type of account. A good senior is someone who has a solid understanding of accounting and knows how to record various transactions, keep account reconciliations, understand financial statements, and communicate issues up to their manager. A senior also helps to train the new staff to learn accounting.

I think the biggest hindurance to moving up is getting complacent with your current job duties and not reaching out to take on more opportunities within your company. If your not asking to help out and take on additional responsibilities, your going to be a staff accountant forever!

AUD - 90
FAR - 71, 76
REG - 75
BEC - 76 (bubble sucks)

Becker + Ninja MCQ's

[Anonymous]

@Martin – all I did was add NINJA Notes (I rewrote those things 3 or 4 times) – in addition doing crazy amounts of MCQs (I use CPA Excel)

[Zuly]

@blue_star have you tried shadowing your senior accountant or controller in the company you currently work for? I was like you and had a staff accountant position for 3 years and was promoted to senior accountant over a year ago. Thankfully I was in a position to be promoted because the senior accountant I worked with taught me a lot of different things so when he left I was able to jump right in and take over to the position with minimal training. Do you do journal entries? Familiarize yourself with the general ledger/trial balance to know the accounts and ins and outs of how they work. Maybe you can ask to reconcile a few balance sheet accounts that will help you understand the transactions flowing through the accounts and how everything works.

FAR - (11/01/14) 71 (02/07/15) 79
AUD - (04/30/15) 86
BEC - (07/21/15) 73 (10/01/15) 75
REG - (11/30/15) 55 (05/19/16) 74

[Mamabear]

I agree with a lot of the above comments. I would expect someone in a senior staff accountant role to work well independently, not need much supervision, be a critical thinker, and have some leadership skills. You may not know how to do the fixed asset reconciliation when you start, but you should already understand the purpose of the fixed asset reconciliation, be familiar with the layout of the general ledger and pick up quickly on a new company's set up, and be able to reconcile after being trained. Training is necessary, especially if you are going into a new company. You have to be trained on their Fixed Asset software and on their general ledger software. I think there are times that job titles stress us out or make us feel unqualified when we aren't. Be willing to go the extra mile and research things on your own versus asking your trainer for every little thing. Take initiative.

CPA Exam - Finally DONE (November 2014)
BEC (08/10/13) 80
AUD (08/24/13) 65 (11/13/13) 85
FAR (04/12/14) 81
REG (07/19/14) 69 (11/29/14) 87!!

[Author]

Replies