[ORcpaHOPEFUL]

Hello everyone!

I have passed three exams and am waiting on my score for hopefully my last exam! I worked in public accounting with a large firm for 2 years (10 months in tax and 14 in audit.) I quit to study full time and help out my family with their business. Now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel with the exam, I am looking for jobs. The question is… where the heck to go?!

I know I like audit over tax- and I enjoyed the audit work, just not the whole being a slave thing (working and traveling way too much without being paid overtime.) There are so many options of places to go and things to do I just can’t decide! I also don’t want to pick something, hate it and want to leave after 6 months. Here are some options I have been thinking:

1. Go back into public accounting, but for a smaller firm of 75-80 people with only one office (versus my old office of 200+ and there were over 20 total offices).

2. Go back to the firm I left (they said when I left they would have me back if I wanted)- and work in BSA/AML aka the “internal audit” department where you focus on banks/financial institutions and doing work on Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering. If I did this it would be to get some more experience, pass the CAMS exam and then move into a bank in a compliance job.

3.Go into private accounting- work in a senior accountant role for a private company.

4. Go into government- some sort of accounting for a governmental entity.

5.Go into banking- try to crack into the BSA/AML compliance stuff without more experience.

6. Something else? Work in finance maybe as some sort of analyst?

Any suggestions/personal experiences would be greatly appreciated while waiting for my final score and trying to decide what to do! 🙂

FAR: PASSED!! 64, 68, 79 on 2/27/13!
AUD: PASSED!! 73, 93 on 4/5/13!!!
BEC: PASSED!! 75 (phew) on 5/24/13!
REG: PASSED!!! 77 on 8/7/13 I AM DONE!!!!!

Experience: got it!
Ethics Exam: PASSED on first try (what a waste of money)

[Anonymous]

It's awesome that you have so many options! Regarding #2 and #5, AML is an area very much in demand after 9/11, and I still see tons of job postings. The position descriptions don't often include a CPA requirement, but I'm sure that can only help you tremendously. My one piece of advice (and take this for what it's worth) is that once you get slotted into a very specific type of compliance (e.g., BSA/AML) it will be very difficult to break out of that niche. So if you want to do that forever, then great, but if you want to do something else or more general just be careful about being “type cast.”

I am currently the compliance officer in a private equity firm (and I've worked for broker/dealers, investment advisers, hedge funds, transfer agents, and bank-affiliated entities over the years). Compliance is an in-demand area and as a CPA I think you would be very effective at the complaince/audit function for any of these types of firms.

[vanadium3]

Sounds like Internal Audit is the best option if you know an industry you really like.

CPA

[Author]

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