How to pick your FIRST accounting job

0:00You've decided you want to work in accounting, and now you're beginning to apply for your first accounting position. You type staff accountant in the search bar on LinkedIn, and all these positions show up. How do you know which one to apply for? Well, that is what we are going to be talking about in this video because not all accounting jobs are the same, and you want to be strategic with how you navigate your career, especially in the beginning because some positions will open more doors for your career, and some may actually limit opportunities. Hi, my name is Kelly Randall. I have worked in corporate accounting for over 10 years

0:33now. I have worked for both Fortune 200 and Fortune 500 companies, and I'm currently a financial reporting manager. In this video, we are going to talk about what accounting positions you should look for when you are first starting your accounting career, including the three positions I personally recommend you apply for, whether you should work at a public company, a private company, or a startup, and a backup plan for what you should do if you are having trouble

0:58finding your first accounting position. So, if that sounds interesting to you, definitely keep watching. When you are first starting your accounting career, you want to keep your experience broad. This will allow you to build a strong, well-rounded accounting foundation. With that in mind, the three positions I recommend aiming for when you're first starting out are going to be financial reporting, corporate accounting, or audit if you decide to go the public accounting route. The reason I recommend these positions are because they allow you to touch so many different areas in accounting. For example, if you work in financial as a staff accountant or a financial reporting analyst, you will

1:36most likely be working directly with the financial statements, helping prepare the company's quarterly 10-Q or annual 10-K. You will also most likely help with tying out the 10-Q and 10-K, which allows you to see how all the numbers come together across the financial statements. This is incredibly helpful for understanding how all the different components of the financial statements work. In addition, you'll likely be helping with variance analysis, preparing journal entries, preparing account reconciliations, and helping with various ad hoc projects. When someone says ad hoc project, it just means a miscellaneous assignment. If you work in corporate accounting as a staff accountant, you'll typically be involved in the month end close process. In

2:18addition, you will also be helping with things like preparing journal entries, preparing account reconciliations, variance analysis, and miscellaneous ad hoc projects as well. Financial reporting and corporate accounting typically fall under the corporate controller's group and report directly to the corporate controller. This is great for exposure to leadership, and oftentimes these teams work directly together, and depending on the company, the way these teams are structured can have some overlap. Either way, starting your career in corporate accounting or financial reporting is my recommendation

2:52if you want to go the corporate route. Now, if you're considering public accounting, for example, and wanting to work at a big four, deciding between tax and audit, I highly recommend that you choose audit. The reason is similar, you want to keep your experience more broad. When you work in audit, you are placed on an audit team and assigned a client, essentially a company that has hired your firm to audit them. As you audit their financial statements, you'll gain exposure to how those financial statements were prepared. You'll review their tie-outs, their support files, their journal entries, and that experience exposes you to a broad range of accounting areas. And if you work

3:32with tax, you will specifically always be working with taxes. That is great if you love taxes, but you may be pigeonholing your experience by working in such a specialized area. For example, let's say you work in tax for 3 years, and you decide that you don't like it. Now, your experience and what you have

3:51been exposed to is primarily just taxes. So, when you want to pivot your career, it's going to be much harder because your experience is so specialized. Therefore, what I recommend that you do when you are considering your experience and your resume is, does this experience open doors and opportunities for me and create a broad skill set in accounting, or does it potentially limit opportunities by giving me an extremely specialized skill set in accounting? And that should help guide your decisions as you are progressing in your career. If you are liking this video so far, definitely give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. It helps me a

4:31lot as a creator and lets me know that you like this type of accounting career content. Now that you know the roles I recommend, let's talk about the type of company you should work for. Should you work at a large public company, a private company, or a startup? When you're just starting out, I highly recommend that you work for a large public company. There are three main reasons for this. The first reason is that large public companies have very established processes and procedures in place. And this is exactly what you want when you are first starting your accounting career. Instead of having to create processes from scratch, you want

5:07to follow proven processes. For example, if you work for a large public company, and let's say that you are responsible for preparing a debt journal entry, most likely, there is already a debt journal entry that you can reference when you are creating your current journal entry. That's what you want exposure to when you are first starting your career because you are a new accountant, and you don't really know what you're doing yet. So, it's good to learn by referencing proven processes and procedures. I think that's the best way for new accountants to learn. The second reason is because large public companies

5:42typically have very defined departments. For example, at a large public company, there's going to be a department like financial reporting, corporate accounting, consolidations, internal audit, tax, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, etc. However, at smaller companies or startup companies, sometimes these departments aren't as defined. So, you may be hired as an entry-level accountant, and opposed to just working on accounting, which is what you want because you are building your accounting foundation, you may also be working on things like accounts payable and accounts receivable or payroll, your position may have all

6:20those responsibilities rolled into it. You don't want that. Right now, you are a new accountant, and you want to focus on learning accounting. Therefore, when you are on LinkedIn doing your job search, and you click on a staff accounting position, and things under the responsibilities are listed such as AP, AR, payroll, I highly recommend maybe just continuing your search and avoiding that position because that means that you're not just going to be learning accounting, but you're going to be taking on all these other duties as well, which may dilute your accounting experience. The third reason I recommend working at a large public company is for name recognition on your resume. This

6:59can really open up doors later in your career because hiring managers are going to be familiar with that company and associate that brand with strong training and good experience. Now, what should you do if you are applying to financial reporting, corporate accounting, or audit and not getting any callbacks? First, it could be your resume. So, I highly recommend that you check out the video that I just made on how to write your resume for your first accounting position. That may be very helpful to you. But, if you are still struggling, definitely don't let that

7:30stop you getting your foot in the door. That is the most important thing that you can do for your career, is just get your foot in the door at a company and start gaining experience. You ideally want to look for roles that do provide you with more broad accounting experience. When you're reading the job responsibilities in the position description, look for things like preparing account reconciliations, preparing journal entries, doing variance analysis, working with the financial statements like the balance sheet, the income statement, working with the chart of accounts, sometimes called the COA, using systems like BlackLine, SAP, or HFM would all be great experience because those are super

8:10commonly used systems in accounting. So, you want to look for roles that mention any of these types of items. That is going to really help get you good accounting experience. At the end of the day, this is my recommendation for you to get the ideal first accounting position. However, the best thing you can do for your career is just get your foot in the door and start gaining accounting experience. For example, my first accounting position is not what I'm recommending here. I struggled getting an accounting job after I graduated college. I was applying to all these accounting positions, and I was not getting any callbacks. So, I decided

8:48to just get my foot in the door and start working in accounts payable. While I was working in accounts payable, I networked internally with the accounting team, and I was able to do an internal transfer to a staff accountant position on the cost accounting team. From there, I eventually transitioned to corporate accounting because I didn't want to pigeonhole my career working in cost accounting. Now, I'm a financial reporting manager. I have worked at both

9:14Fortune 200 and Fortune 500 companies. I've worked for public companies. I've worked for private companies, and I currently make well over six figures. So, although I did not have the ideal accounting start, I am very proud of my current career. Hopefully, you found this video helpful. I now offer one-on-one consults, so if that is something you are interested in, definitely check the link in my bio or the description of this video. Through these consults, I can help you with your resume. We can go over your accounting career objectives, and we can give you a solid plan to get your first accounting job. If you have any questions,

9:49definitely leave them in the comments below. The majority of my video ideas come from your questions. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs-up and subscribe to my channel. I'll see you in the next video.