[TNDCPA]

I’m looking for some advice and almost feel like I’m going through a career crisis at such a young age (I’m 25).

I’ve been in public accounting for about 4 years, and recently got my license a year ago. I started out in tax at a small sole proprietor for 3 years then went to a small local CPA firm to give audit a try. Overall I feel underpaid for my experience and license at $56K, but knew that since I wanted to give audit a try I would have to come in at the staff level. After being in audit for a year now, I’ve found out I’m not as fond of the work or company culture and am overall very unhappy. My boyfriend started applying and got accepted for an offer in a different state. Therefore, I also started searching and applying for public firms to get back into tax and received an offer with a very reputable firm in the same state for a senior tax role. At first I was very excited, mainly just because I no longer wanted to be with my current firm and wanted to have an easy way out. However, overtime as the time grew nearer to leave we both felt we didn’t want to leave for the wrong reasons. After reevaluating everything, we decided to rescind our offers, however, I had already put in a 2 week notice with my current employer. I am overall just burnt out and sick of the public accounting lifestyle (grinding crazy work hours and requirements to network and get new business) and decided my personality is probably more suited in industry. Now, I’m stuck in a rut trying to apply for industry, but with no call backs. I’ve heard industry’s hiring process is a lot slower, unless you have a headhunter. I know busy season is ramping up and public will be hiring so it shouldn’t be as hard to find a position. However, if I did get into public I feel I will lose my opportunity to get back into industry because i would not want to do audit and would probably take tax due to higher pay and I can tolerate it more than audit.

I have had multiple people tell me industry offers higher salaries compared to public, but the opportunity for growth and getting into a higher role is more challenging. I want to continue to learn and be challenged, but not excessively stressed and actually live life. My fear with industry is that I will eventually not make use of my degree and CPA…leading me to feel all I worked for was for nothing. My boyfriend’s mom works in industry and she loves her Company and job..she keeps telling me industry has just as many opportunities for personal growth.

I’m just trying to make the right career choice and don’t want to ruin my opportunities, but I will soon no long be employed so I don’t know how patient I can be with my job opportunities.

Can anyone offer their experience, thoughts, and advice? Sorry if I maybe sounding a little too dramatic, I’m just used to always having things planned out and being financially stable..and this is all causing me to feel super stressed.

FAR - 89 02/27/14
REG - 88 04/30/14
AUD - 90 7/3/14
BEC - 87 8/30/14 DONE!