[Anonymous]

I really need some career advice. I would appreciate everybody’s $0.02!

I am working for a very large, but closely held corporation as a Staff Accountant.The problem is that I don’t see a lot of opportunities to climb up the career ladder in that company. The accounting department is too small. Also, there is no separate Tax, Financial or Reporting departments – all those functions are kept in one department. So I am thinking of passing all four parts of the CPA and starting to look for another job as an Accountant/Fin. Analyst at some public corporation. But that raises three questions:

1) Is it possible to find such job without work experience in public accounting as an auditor, but having the CPA license.

2) Are accounting/financial departments in public corps really that big (internal control and SOX), that I will have way more opportunities for advancement?

3) Should I skip it all together and go work into public accounting as an auditor first???

Thank you in advance for your answers!!!

[Anonymous]

1. Yes, it's possible to get a Staff Accountant level job without auditing experience. It's possible to get higher level ones, too, but at many companies, that's easier to do with the public auditing experience.

2. How big the departments are probably varies based on how separated the duties are. For example, a company the same size as the one you're at now would have smaller departments than yours if the departments were split up into Tax, Reportin, etc., since your company has them all combined. I don't think that being publicly held automatically makes the ability to progress career-wise any greater than in closely held companies; I'd think the company, management, and their view on internal progression matters a LOT more.

3. If your goal is a top-rung position in a publicly held company, then experience in public audit won't hurt anything. It's not necessary, but may be helpful. However, if you're already somewhat established in your career, there's no need to go back to Square 1 just to hope to have an easier time getting what you want eventually.

[Anonymous]

1) Yes, its possible to get a job without auditing experience, if you were trying to get in the financial reporting dept they would be more interested in your experience preparing financials, etc. I was a hiring manager in a publicly traded company/financial accounting. The only auditors that had advantage over other accountants were ones who had experience auditing public companies.

2) My experience was there was plenty of room for advancement. Either within other departments or in Financial Accounting/Reporting and then Controller track. We had depts for each function (tax, cost, financial, treasury, ap, etc) It really depends on the entity.

3) If you want to be in industry, go that route. I hated working in public accounting, personally, so I wouldn't advise it.

I have since left said company and work for a privately held company. My growth opportunities are on the same path. Good luck!

[Author]

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