[Anonymous]

My firm hired 3 staff accountants recently and none of them are licensed CPAs yet. 2 are studying and 1 needs a year of experience to receive her license. I’m a CPA with 6 years in public accounting experience and 3 years with the predecessor firm (let’s call it ABC). ABC merged with XYZ in August 2013 and XYZ hired these 3 new hires in January.

We all are paid hourly and receive overtime pay during tax season for all hours worked. It sounded like a sweet deal when they announced the firm merger.

Through an indiscretion of a coworker I discovered that 1 new hire makes $3/hour MORE. The partners have reassigned his work because he doesn’t complete assignments. A coworker said he is blogging, playing computer games, etc. all day. The other 2 new hires are recent college grads without any experience. They’re earning just $1.50/hour less than me.

In the past 8 months, I’ve absorbed over 50 additional tax returns plus 30 more accounting clients with the promise a raise was coming after tax season. Now the partners are saying the firm needs to get its “head above water”. So it looks like they’re stringing me along.

As I know you can’t say bad things about an employer, does “seeking new challenges” sound too cheesy or cliche?

And in an effort to practice what I preach about networking importance, please critique my places for networking- local Chamber of Commerce events; alumni events; LinkedIn; young professionals group. I’d consider PICPA’s local chapter but there’s not many events outside of an annual golf event.

If you’ve made it this far with my post, thank you for reading. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Wow did I ramble in my post. I'm a little upset over the salary issue because for 8 months a raise was promised and when they assigned more clients to me they kept referencing a coming raise after tax season.

I'll stop ranting now.

[mla1169]

It depends. If you're applying to a very similar position elsewhere and you say seeking new challenges it sounds cheesy. If you're applying to something significantly different (going to industry, moving from tax to audit, applying to a senior position if your current title isn't senior) it's a perfect response.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[fuzyfro89]

Agree with mla1169.

You can't apply for a very similar job and say you are seeking “new challenges.. more responsibility…etc”, unless the job is for a much larger company, public vs private, or different in some meaningful way.

However, there are a number of avenues to take.

New challenges, more responsibility, new industry, larger company, complexity, regulatory complexity, whatever else.

You are welcome to get another offer and bring it to your current employer, but you have to be willing to walk if they say no.

[Author]

Replies