[JustJen]

Hello everyone! I have been lurking around for awhile and finally decided to post something. I have been finding these forums very helpful so far.

I will be graduating with my BS in Accounting in spring of 2014 and plan to do the exams right away. I am in my early 30s and have more than enough prior education to meet the requirements. My only hangup is I have no experience. I have been working in the legal support (corporate law) and title industries for the past several years, but no accounting work.

My question is whether I should apply for a job right away after graduation to get some experience and then get to work on exams, or should I get through exams first and then look for work. I have young children and a very supportive husband and, though I’m not afraid of long hours and hard work, I’m not sure Big 4 is the way I want to go. I’m thinking either smaller firms, industry, or govt may be the direction I take.

Any thoughts on the best way to go about this? I have a steady job with a decent (not great) salary now so I’m not necessarily looking for some giant salary leap right away. I just need to maintain a fairly stable income while I’m doing all of this. Thank you everyone! I look forward to being more involved the closer I get to exam time.

[Keely]

My advice is to get the exams out of the way first, then look for a new job. Studying is extremely time consuming, so it would be hard to focus on both the exam and a new job at the same time, in my opinion.

If you don't want to do public, don't. I always said I never wanted to work in public accounting, but I accepted a job anyway and I hated it and lasted no time before I quit. However, I now work at a very small public firm and it's a total 180 from my old job. There was nothing wrong with the previous firm, it was just so ‘typical' if that makes sense, and I dreaded going in every day. Where I now work, I enjoy my coworkers a lot, the atmosphere is laid back, and that's made all the difference for me. So even if you are super anti-public, as I was, you might find something that fits your personality.

A lot of people work in public first because you can go in at entry-level, make decent money, get your experience, and qualify for a high paying job pretty quickly. Just from my personal job search experience, private companies are not as prone to hiring an entry-level accountant, or if they do, it's more of a bookkeeper role which wouldn't get you the experience you need for your license. Very large companies probably hire some entry level accountants, though, so you could look there.

Anyway, good luck! Hope the advice helped a little. It's just my personal experience, though, and I'm sure there will be a lot of people who have more advice. You've come to a good forum 🙂 🙂

BEC: (4/2012) 88
AUD: (5/2012) 91
REG: (8/2012) 82
FAR: (1/2013) 78 🙂

VA CPA #42010

[Anonymous]

Completely agree with Keely. I'm trying to deal with exam, full time job at a Firm (1 year now) and have two kids. It's been really tough. I'm glad to be working at a small firm – although some days are better than others – but I wish I had waited to pass my exams first before trying to get through my first year in public. Good luck!

[Noct]

Exams first. Having passed will improve your employability even if you aren't licensed yet.

FAR - 79 - 07/2012
AUD - 65, 78 - 11/2012
BEC - 76 - 11/2012
REG - 78 - 01/2013
ETH - 98 - 01/2013

Material: Wiley books

[JustJen]

Thanks for the posts so far. My current job is tedius, but I don't have to take it home with me. It would be easy to stay there and study for exams. I just worry I will fall into that overqualified trap when I start to hunt for a job. The good news is that I wouldn't be in a super rush to find something and I have a network started already. The other good news is that I'm in an area with a lot of large companies so there is potential there as well.

[Anonymous]

Exams first! I know from experience. Consider it an investment on the front end that will pay u dividends. Only other advice I can give u is to stay away from government.

[Author]

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