[Pakpak]

I started a new job at a top regional firm last week. My first few days consisted of onboarding but the latter half of that week I was given work and it was hell. I was coming home at 10 PM working 12 hour day. No real training of processes, programs, or software. They just said ask if you have questions.

Little background about myself. I have 3 yrs of experience in tax. All of it with individual tax returns. I may have embellished a little on my resume and during the interview that I know a some corporate tax. In reality, I did one S Corp 2 years ago and had no idea what I was doing. But I feel like I needed to embellish during the interview to have the opportunity to learn how to do corporate acct&tax.

At first they were giving me individual tax returns, and I was able to do them (even if it took 2-3×s the billable budget – I’m thinking this will speed up over time). But end of last week they gave me a list of complex c corps to work on. I’m thinking, okay, I’ll look at the prior year over the weekend and figure it out. Weekend comes and I can’t find last year’s workpapers or documents in their damn software. I still don’t know how to navigate.

I am so lost, confused and don’t know where to start. Even had a few sleepless nights last week. Now I have to do these Corp returns that I have no idea how to do on top of not knowing their software, programs, or processes. I feel like I am going to be sitting at my desk for 12 hours not getting anything done tomorrow. I am stressed and panicking hard.

I am thinking of speaking with my manager about these concerns by Tuesday. If no real solutions can be made then it’s goodbye. I want to succeed but don’t know where to start. It’s recruiting season so I can most likely find another job maybe at a smaller firm that provides training. Worst comes to worst HR block. My problem is I really need to learn accounting and tax for partnerships, s & c corps. I can only do so many w-2s. I want to grow and enhance my skills.

How should I go about bringing up these concerns to my manager?

[hamcpa2018]

@Lindsey_p87 – sounds grueling and I am glad I don't have to interview today if your scenario is what is playing out on a daily basis. And I agree, it is not unreasonable to ask follow up questions. I will stop there though as I disagree with you, respectfully of course, on the big picture. Good luck with your last exam!

[Recked]

This has been an interesting read. Curious to see how OP makes out.
Bit off a bit more than you could chew. Sounds like a humbling experience.
Maybe they plan to review the work and then teach/train from there?

[jombe]

@Lindsey_p87 – I see this type of arguments in politics a lot. Because someone did this, I feel justified in doing that. Because the hiring process makes someone jump through a lot of hoops, it's OK to lie about your qualifications? Again, embellishing should be limited to make something boring to sound way cooler. It's not OK to claim to have some corp experience, when all you did is one s-corp return while having no idea what you were doing. W/ that said, I understand some employers do have quite burdensome hiring process and I've also wondered at times why they make it so. I also understand that I live in a country where I don't have to go through such a process, if I didn't think it would be worth it at the end.
–
I am by no means a saint myself, but let's not suggest to people that it's essentially OK to lie during your interviews and it's the employers' fault for not catching your lies.

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[hamcpa2018]

@Jombe-bingo! You hit the nail right on the head with the big picture. Collect $200, pass go!
Faith in humanity, restored, lol.

[Mike J]

I'm always “perplexed” by posters like Ham that genuflect to how “the profession that commands honesty, integrity and ethics” when it comes to only it's labor class.

Almost invariably you never read similar posts from such posters regarding the Big4. At any day you can read myriad separate incidents of rampant fraud on GoingConcern.

Yes, it's wrong to lie so blatantly as OP clearly has. I think we should just relax a little on the charges of a lack of ethics.

[AusNat]

I'm going to skip over the squabbling portion of this thread and go back to the original post. What's done is done, and now you're in the middle of fall tax season and floundering. Your ability to handle this situation is going to be as important than your technical knowledge – the latter will be seen as fixable, the former may not.

Early in your post, you said that they onboarded you and then gave you work and said “ask if you have questions.” Sounds pretty normal, honestly. But what I'm not seeing in your post is what happens when you ask all those questions you have. You have been asking, right? You're not an intern that they can (and should) assume knows nothing; they don't know what you do and don't know. You're responsible for asking for help when you need it.

This time of year at a regional firm's tax department, pretty much everyone around you probably feels out of their depth and overwhelmed. I'm in tax at a large regional firm myself… a 12 hour day this time of year sounds short to me, and I spend a whole lot of time feeling unsure of what I'm doing (if not completely lost). It's part of the learn on the job model – as soon as you feel comfortable with work of a specific type or complexity, they should move you on to harder work (and then eventually reviewing other people's work, which is a new beast). It requires staff members to be proactive, both in using their own problem solving and critical thinking to figure things out and also in asking for help.

The goal is overall department efficiency – if someone else can take 5 minutes to explain something and save you 5 hours of flailing around on your own, that's 4 hours and 50 minutes of your time you've freed up for additional productivity. Take notes when you ask questions so you don't have to ask the same ones multiple times, and consider typing/jotting out your questions ahead of time to ensure they're thought out and focused. It's ok to tell a manager or in-charge things like “I'm not totally sure I know how to handle X matter – would you like me to take my best stab at it and then send it to you for review, or keep trying to work through it?”

[NYSCPA]

“I'm going to skip over the squabbling portion of this thread” but first, I will acknowledge it….. Only felt the need to point this out, as unlike other people, my shortest day is 14hrs and i'm doing 7days a week from late Aug to Oct 15th, so amuse me for a moment.

[AusNat]

NYSCPA – Fair. I should have written “I stopped reading every response in this thread, so I may have missed some additional info or be repeating another reply.”

I'm not trying to trump or dismiss anyone's hours. Everyone I know in tax at large(ish) firms is working long hours this time of year and spends a fair amount of time overwhelmed and out of their depth. I'm not unique in that, and I don't think that part of the OP's experience is abnormal. That's my point – I think those are two aspects of working tax in public accounting (I can't speak for other depts) that just kind of have to be accepted. How effectively those long hours are used and whether a person stays stuck feeling lost at the same level of work or masters it and then moves onto feeling confused about more complex stuff are better indicators of success or failure in my experience.

[Author]

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