[HuynhCPA]

Hi everyone,

I am recently offered a staff auditor position at a small CPA firm (2 partners, 4 staff). I am currently working as an accountant in a college within a big state university mostly doing budgets and grants (non-audit, mainly proposal prep and expenditure management)

With the staff auditor position, I will do audit for government, non-public organizations, and small businesses.

I am also studying for the CPA exam. I certainly want to have public accounting experience. So far, I have not received any offers from other CPA firms. My long term goal is either establish my own firm or controller/CFO in private accounting.

The university job is stable and not stressful and I also have the state retirement plans. The CPA firm job will help me learn a lot and they said that they are very flexible and not as stressful as bigger firms.

Please advise me on what I should do to further my accounting career. Thanks!

[Tux]

Keeping a job because it's “stable and not stressful” won't necessarily get you where you want to go in the future. If you want to start your own business, then the university retirement plan is not relevant (unless you want to wait 20 years to do it, but then – will this job give you the skills and knowledge to be able to do that?)

Although the university job sounds like a good job, think about long term. If you want to keep it because it's easy, then taking the easy way never gets us very far.

I'd focus on the actual experience and job responsibilities. Which choice will build the skills in you that you'll need for your future opportunities?

If you want to be a controller, then what experience do you need to be a great controller? What steps/jobs do you need to take to get there?

If you want to start your own firm, then what kind of firm? What kind of specialty? Focus on whatever job will give you the skills to build your knowledge in the direction that you want/need to go.

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[HuynhCPA]

Thanks Tux! I think if I stay with the university, I will be stuck with the job and cannot learn more things. I decided to go with the CPA firm offer. Although it is small, I will learn more about other business entities and develop my skills!

[Anonymous]

Personally I think you learn a lot more at a small firm than a large one. Congrats on the new job! 🙂

[fuzyfro89]

You mentioned two very different things.

Starting your own firm requires a background in individual tax/business tax/tax planning/financial advising/etc. If this is your goal, you would be best suited to develop those skills by working for a CPA firm that does those things until you feel you have the ability and skills that people are willing to pay for.

If you want to work in corporate setting (accounting manager, controller, etc), working in a CPA firm will be of no use to you in the long term. You will want to work in a public accounting setting (probably audit would be best if you want to work in financial reporting) and eventually make the jump into a private company setting. This firm will need to serve clients in a similar size-range of a company you may want to work for some day… you can't really go from auditing non-profits and govt accounts in the <$30 million range to working as a controller at a $200 million manufacturing company. The skills won't overlap.

If you aren't quite sure yet, then public accounting is the best place to start (at some point, anyway).

[HuynhCPA]

Thanks fuzyfro89!

Right now, I only have two choices: working in the university or working in the CPA firm (audit). I finally decided to leave the university job and go for the CPA firm job to at least learn something about public accounting which will provide me another skills set than working in the university (not “real” accounting). I hope the CPA firm job will open many doors for me in the future. 🙂

[Author]

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