Vocation Vocation Vocation

At the start of 2008, Badenoch & Clark ran a survey amongst accounting and finance staff on a wide range of work-place issues. A number of themes emerged, but one of the strongest messages was a lack of any clear career path for a worryingly high number of people.

The research showed that over half of employees in the sector would move jobs tomorrow if it meant clearer career progression. It’s a statement that would startle many from the old school of accountancy, who qualified at a time when company loyalty was the norm and career progression was crystal clear.
It’s a surprising figure for the rest of us as well, especially in a market where employers are facing a growing retention crisis. It seems the country is littered with accountants sitting at their desks without any real idea of what the next couple of years will bring them.

Prospects

This is set against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and a business community that seems to be collectively holding its breath through the credit crunch. You’d be forgiven for thinking the outlook is pretty bleak for the ambitious young accountant.

But, if previous economic downturns are to be held up as an example, there’s little for talented accountants to worry about.

The wider economic context aside, why are we still seeing so many accountants seemingly adrift in a career black hole? There’s clear guidance for pre-qualified accountants, but why does that support break down later on in people’s careers?

Nomad accountants

One of the reasons can be found by looking at more general career patterns. The job for life no-longer exists. The bastion of the previous generation that saw our parents build their entire careers within the same organisation has become a distant memory for most and an alien concept to the graduates coming through our doors today.

And accountancy has not been immune to this. A startling 48% of finance professionals say they plan to change jobs this year alone. Over a third say that they wouldn’t think twice about leaving their current employer if another opportunity came along.

A startling 48% of finance professionals say they plan to change jobs this year

In a job market filled by nomad accountants, it’s no wonder many are finding it difficult to make long term plans about their careers. The onus is now on accountants themselves to be the masters of their own destiny, plotting their own way through a business world that is more fluid and fast paced than ever before. Accountants are no longer passengers on the well worn paths; they are now drivers, deciding which way their careers should go at every turn.

Increasing Options

What’s more, increasing numbers of accountants are moving sideways into non-financial roles, seeking out positions in other industries, quite often using their qualification as a grounding for a non-financial career.

We asked three qualified accountants to share their experiences on how their qualification has helped their rise to the top in local government, an investment bank and a multi-national recruitment business respectively.

David Oliver is now Chief Executive of East Northamptonshire District Council and started on the road to his ACA at Arthur Andersen in Liverpool. After six years with Coopers and Lybrand in Papua New Guinea and London, he joined Anglian Water in 1991.

“I mixed project work with line responsibility, including a spell as Director of Networks, responsible for water distribution and sewerage. I’d moved fairly quickly out of a strict finance role to more strategic work where instead of looking at finance as a means of recording what we were doing, I was using my skills to look at all aspects of our business performance. Each move felt like a natural progression, and it wasn’t too much of a step to be looking at numbers as a way to decide what needed to be done and influence change.

“In 1999, I moved via a manufacturing firm into local government. It provides the social responsibility element I really enjoyed at Anglian. What’s stayed with me since my ACA study is how at the start of every auditing assignment we talked to the people involved in the organisation to understand their take on the business and point of view before ever looking at the numbers. This is something I impress on my staff now – we have to treat each customer as an individual.”

The audit environment had built up my confidence and honed my intuitive mind

Gordon McCulloch, Deputy CEO at Renaissance Capital in Moscow first studied Politics at Edinburgh, before joining Andersen in Bristol. “I thought long and hard about pursuing a career in practice, but I wanted to work in London and in financial services. The audit environment had built up my confidence in interacting with people, but had also honed my intuitive mind.

“I got into investment banking with Morgan Stanley. Fate and luck played a strong part in steering me towards Options Trading and I built my career with Nat West and then Goldman Sachs. I’ve always sat in meetings with my accounting, regulatory and risk colleagues, and no doubt my accountancy background has helped me speak their language. But what has always fascinated me is investment banking. ACA was the lever to get me in, but my simple desire to push myself and see how far I could go in any role is probably what’s helped my career most. That and stickability – I’ve always stuck with roles long enough to learn all I can and to give something back.”

John Melbourne, Senior Vice President International Operations for Badenoch & Clark’s parent, MPS Group certainly didn’t set out to be an accountant. “I did economics at university before starting my career selling pet food. I moved into Marketing but soon realised you needed to be able to speak finance to really get on in business. So I joined Ernst and Young. It enabled me to get a great insight into how business works. As well as the technical training, ACA forced me to build my interpersonal skills. This really helped later as Financial Controller for Bovis. It was a different world to the niceties of practice. But it was invaluable in helping me move up to my current role via Wolseley who helped me gain an MBA. These days I mainly manage people managing businesses.

“ACA gave me the discipline to keep on delivering and the appetite to keep on learning, but the right letters after your name aren’t enough to open the doors to more senior jobs. It was easy for me to get a finance job in industry from practice. But every step since has required technical expertise, consistent delivery and commercial credibility.”

So what final advice would our trio have for ACAs aspiring to industry’s boadrooms? “Build some depth,” John said. “Be honest, consistent and not a CV builder.

Gordon added: “There’s plenty of time early in your career to consider what you want to do. But get involved, stick with things for as long as you’re learning and gaining experience.”

“Everyone needs someone who can manage money well, but it’s not the full package,” David concluded. “Grab every experience and opportunity that will help you – although many won’t give you letters after your name.”

Get a Grip

There are some key points that will help any accountant – indeed and career professional – get a better grip of their personal development:

The golden rule has to be take responsibility for your career. It isn’t going to plan itself. Once you’re qualified, the onus is very much on you to choose your own path.

Decide where you want to be and plot practical steps to achieve it. It sounds obvious, but if your career is to stand any chance of going in the direction you want it to, you need some clarity of purpose. Keep an open mind on how to get to where you want to be. Fixing on the end goal and planning your route is helpful, but realising there’s more than one way to get there is vital.

Choose an industry that interests you and go from there. Set yourself strict deadlines. For example, you may want to move into a certain role within three years, or gain specific industry know-how within the next twelve months. Whatever your deadlines, keep them in the front of your mind when looking for development opportunities

Keep your eyes open for opportunities to add to your skill-set; don’t stop when you’re qualified. The more training you have, the more routes you’ll open up towards your end goal.

Network and gather advice. Use other accountants, colleagues and managers to find out if the goals you’ve set yourself are realistic and to discover other ways to achieve them.

Challenge yourself. Comfortable roles are almost always the ones where there’s little progression, so make sure you choose a path with ambition.

What can you do now?

A lot of people don’t mind clocking in, clocking out and picking up a pay check, but if that’s you, you probably won’t have read this far.

As an employee, the path forward is clear. If you don’t have a good idea of your own career progression, take control of it. It’s not likely to fix itself. If your employer isn’t receptive to the idea of sitting down and planning where it sees your future, it’s perhaps time to seriously consider whether or not you’re at the right company, or even in the right industry.

For employers, it’s a bit more complicated. It means taking a structured approach to your people. Attracting talent is one of the most difficult business skills to conquer – it takes time, money, energy, skill and no small amount of luck.

It makes much more sense to keep the talent you’ve already got. If our research is anything to go by, that means helping them to see what their career will look like if they stay.

Whichever side of the fence you fall on, the issue of career planning is unlikely to go away for accounting and finance professionals. It was taken for granted by previous generations of accountants, but as a result has been neglected for too long. Other industries put a great deal of effort into making sure that the route to the top, whilst not always crystal clear, is at least visible. It’s time accountancy got its own house in order as well.