[Anonymous]

I am reaching to all of you because this is the only place I feel understood career-wise.

I have been thinking on changing my career path to Project Development. I am currently a Staff Accountant at a Renewable Energy company. I have always been attracted to Project Development because is a career that keeps you moving, have a lot of contact with people, keeps you on your toes with deadlines, travel quite a lot and at the end you get the satisfaction of getting a project done. However, Accounting was the career path that presented itself as an opportunity, so I stuck with it, got my bachelors and now perusing my CPA.

I am at a moment where I feel I have reach a plateau. It’s only 2 years in this position but I feels like eternity. I drag myself to work everyday. And there is no room for growth because this company is so small. I don’t see myself doing this for another 30 years or so.

I have been thinking on telling the CFO to consider me for a future position in Project Development, but I don’t know how should I approach him, and how to tell him I will be a good asset for that department.

Has anybody ever felt like Accounting is not your THING? Will Project development will be a good fit for a not so good accountant? How do I tell my boss I want to move to a different department? Will I regret doing the move? Should I look for another Staff Accountant position in another company to try something NEW?

Any advice will really be appreciated. Thank You

[fsugirl2005]

If you have only been doing accounting work for 2 years, then you are jumping the gun on this. First of all, renewable energy sounds boring. Secondly, pick an industry that you would find interesting and then try the accounting department there.

Have you tried shadowing someone in Project Development or worked as a PD assistant or something? You need to do that before you settle on that path. A

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[Anonymous]

With the caveat that I'm not very familiar with Project Development…

It sounds like you need a job change, but that doesn't mean it's time to throw out the whole career and start over. “Staff Accountant” jobs can vary greatly, so I don't know what your day-to-day duties are like, but I can conclude that your day-to-day duties don't satisfy you. But, that doesn't mean that nothing in accounting would. “… a career that keeps you moving, have a lot of contact with people, keeps you on your toes with deadlines, travel quite a lot and at the end you get the satisfaction of getting a project done.” Have you considered auditing? This sounds like some of the things that auditors complain about, so if it's things that you like, then you might love auditing (public not internal). Some staff accountant jobs are basically just data entry all day, and if that's what's driving you crazy, then maybe looking for a smaller-firm auditing opportunity. (The reason I say smaller firm is because my impression is that in big-firms, 1st-year employees do lots of really boring work, but in smaller firms, they have to use everyone to do everything, so I think that a smaller firm would get you out of the most boring, annoying part of the transition to audit. If I'd realized how much better smaller firms were, I might have tried for an audit job myself when I was starting out in my career, but now I wouldn't want to take the step backwards at this point in time.)

If you want to move to Project Development, then I think your first step will be to look into what's required in that field and how to obtain what it requires. I can't find any job postings for Project Development that isn't for Manager level positions, so I'm not sure what would be required to begin in that field. However, I'm guessing that you're more familiar with the field than I am, so I'll leave that research to you. But, find out what's needed, and start getting it. Like, if you were in PD and wanting to move to accounting, I'd say start working on an accounting degree, or at least an accounting certificate program but really strongly push for a degree instead, cause lots of jobs will do an initial sort of applicants based on “has degree in Accounting”. So, what's the entry requirement for PD? Figure it out, and start getting it.

Then, when you've got the initial entry requirement or are close to completing it, if you see that the PD department has an opening for someone, that's the time to prepare a cover letter and resume to apply for the position, and approach people about your desire to move to PD. They company is not going to create a job for you in PD just cause you want to change careers, so approaching the CFO now will just make him think that you're looking to leave, and not help you change careers. But, also, there's no reason right now for the PD manager – or the CFO – to think you'd be useful to them in PD, cause you're trained as an accountant, not as a PD person. When you're trained in PD, then you can say “Hey, I'd like to move to PD, I've got xyz entry requirements completed, would you please consider me for the PD Assistant position that you're hiring for?”

[Anonymous]

Probably is the industry that is not very appealing. My job has become so repetitive, doing data entry most of the time.

I like the idea of trying Auditing, but don't want to go to a large- firm. I might start looking into some small or medium firms in my area and get a feel for it before making a decision.

I was also planning on talking to the Development Team executive and offer my help as a Project Development assistant and then work my way to a managerial position.

Thank You all for your responses. I really appreciate the insights.

[Author]

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