My intended career path - any advice welcome

MattW

Hi all,

I've recently been doing a lot of thinking of where I really want to go in terms of a career in the future and thought I'd post here to share and get some advice (to save me shooting myself in the foot in the long run!!).

I'm currently 25 and am on my 3rd Finance job (first job in industry, second in practice and third in a leading charity). I'm studying at intermediate level and hope to be fully qualified by the end of next year. I'm gaining/gained solid general accounting and payroll experience from these jobs and am fortunante in my current job where if I ask for more experience I can get it.

That's me so far, I currently work in London, however in the near future (after AAT qualified) I want to move to Pembrokeshire. Over there jobs are no where near as readily available as I am used to in London and I would probably be looking at a practice, which is fine for me as I would like to eventually work self employed once settled down & more experienced.

In terms of qualification I feel the AAT is everything I want in terms of learning accountancy and regular CPD should keep me abreast in the future. I'm not planning on studying a chartered qualification - am I shooting myself in the foot here? - as I would be more interested in going for ATT after spending some time reading the syllabus of both!

The type of client I would like to offer my services to would be small local businesses helping with start-ups, tax issues, payroll and accounting. From what I understand as a MIP I can do everything for them except:

-statutory audit (turnover of over 5.6mil??),
-offer financial services (what does that cover?),
-and insolvency practice.

I would hope the ATT qualification, which I have read (not sure how true...) is more comprehesive in Tax than the chartered qualifications, would give me enough knowledge to offer this service as well.

So, that's what I want to head for, any opinions/advice would be welcomed, especially on the qualifications front

I'm also slightly unsure if I should move over into Practice again while working in London, but I do enjoy my current job and I've just taken on preparing the full accounts from start to finish for one of our subsidiary companies. Plus I feel the money and benefits are really good and don't really want to give them up just yet!

It would be great to hear from anyone who has moved from a city to a rural area as well.

Thanks,

Matt

jorja1986

From what I understand the ATT is soley taxation so is more comprehensive than the accounting qualifications purely because it specialises in it.

You seem to have really thought through what you want to do so as long as you keep your mindset clear I can not understand why you think you may shoot yourself in the foot.

I used to work for someone who only done AAT and ATT and was very happy as they could work alongside the accountants and they gave her work as they still had to do all the completions and audits for large companys

MattW

Thanks jorja, I suppose I want to make myself as marketable as possible, without doing the qualifications I'm not sure I want to do...

...and be qualified enough in a recruitment consultants eyes to get put forward for decent jobs!

Bluewednesday

From what I understand about recruitment consulatants they are more interested in your experience than your qualifications.

kazseera

hmm

yup thats true. no body wants to give u a job if you havent got any experiance in it. i should know. ive been trying to get a job for the past year now.:crying:

MattW

thanks for the comments, I'll look into moving around a bit to get more experience in practice - I'd like to do more accounts prep work, i've had a lot of experience on high volume processing, reconciliations, managing cash books etc.